High schools have seen a surge of weapons confiscations since de Blasio's reopening order

 

 

NY Post

Some New York kids returning to in-person high school this month appear to have packed a little more than their lunch, according to a top NYPD official.

Deputy Chief Olufunmilola Obe warned in a memo Tuesday that the NYPD has seen a surge in dangerous weapons recoveries at Department of Education buildings –accompanying the reopening of city high schools last week.

“The undersigned has observed an increase in the amount of weapons and dangerous instruments recovered on school grounds,” she wrote.

“The increase coincides with the commencement of in-person learning at NYC public high schools on Monday March 22 2021.”

According to the memo, 25 unspecified weapons were recovered over the course of five days.

Obe wrote that seven of the 25 weapons were discovered through school metal detectors while another 12 were found at the “perimeter” of DOE buildings.

Another 6 weapons were taken directly off of students, she wrote.

School Safety Agent union boss Greg Floyd, who wants to block the transfer of school-safety duties from the NYPD to the DOE, said the news should alarm city families.

“The group pushing for the NYPD to be taken out should take note of the job being done here to recover these weapons,” he said Wednesday. “I want to let parents know — you take the agents out of the schools and there will be no one to stop them from coming in.”

 

If you're over 40, the city has a job for you!

From the NY Post:

The city’s narcotics cops are being told to stop arresting suspects over the age of 40 — a major strategy shift designed to target younger dealers, who are more likely to carry guns and use them, The Post has learned.

Top brass issued a directive that makes it all but impossible for cops to bust older drug suspects, in order to combat a spike in shootings — which are up 7 percent in 2015 compared with the same period last year and 12 percent over the last four weeks, police sources said.

The new policy was laid out in a May 14 memo obtained by The Post that scolded police bosses for busting people outside the 18-40 demographic — and demanded written explanations for arrests of midlife perps.

Division commanders who got that memo immediately ordered the rank and file to stop making collars in that age group and threatened officers with transfers and other discipline if they did not comply, according to multiple police sources.

The memo was signed by Assistant Chief Brian McCarthy, head of the Narcotics Division, who admitted at a meeting last week the directive came from higher up, said a source who was in attendance.

Dope who threatened cops arrested

From WPIX:

A man who allegedly made threats to kill police officers was stopped in his tracks Wednesday, officials said.

Elvin Payamps, 38, was allegedly on his cell phone at TD Bank on 79-55 Metropolitan Avenue when a male witness overheard him having a conversation about killing cops and having firearms at his house.

The witness notified police who reported to the bank after Payamps left. They transmitted a description of the man over the department radio, and then canvassed the area for him.

During the search, a man fitting the description of Payamps was found entering a vehicle at 66-26 Metropolitan Avenue.

Uniformed officers in a marked patrol car followed him. After a short distance, they conducted a car stop at Metropolitan Avenue and Rentar Plaza. During the stop, they found a small bag of marijuana in plain view in the front seat of the vehicle.

Police identified the man as Payamps, arrested him and brought him to the 104th Precinct in Queens for further investigation.

They went to his home on Edsall Avenue and obtained verbal and written consent from his spouse to search the home.

Police uncovered two firearms, two bullet proof bests, brass knuckles and a holster. Payamps has since been charged with three counts of criminal possession of a weapon and unlawful possession of marijuana.

Crazy gang member was let out to run around with weapons

From DNA Info:

A convicted killer who was out on bail following a gun charge in July was arrested again with a cache of weapons, ammunition and fake IDs, according to police.

Raymond Morillo, 34, was picked up after police officers saw him near a van with New Jersey plates parked on 108th Street near Horace Harding Expressway the day on Sept. 28, according to the district attorney's office.

Police saw Morillo — who did 14 years in prison for murder — driving the same van in July, but he denied owning it when he was asked about it on Sept. 28, according to the criminal complaint.

After getting a search warrant, officers returned and found a loaded revolver, a loaded 9mm pistol and more than 20 rounds of ammunition in a safe inside the van, police said.

Officers also found a wallet with New York and Texas drivers licenses with Morillo's name and photo, as well as a Social Security card and identification card with a different name, but a photo that matched Morillo, according to police.

He was arrested for multiple weapons charges and criminal possession of stolen property. He was held without bail.

It's just the latest run in for Morillo, who a police source said was a member of the La Familia gang and a threat to the community.

This is the second time this happened!

Knife law gets a lot of unsuspecting people in trouble

From the Village Voice:

Neal ended that night in a squad car. There was only one problem: The knife he was carrying was not a gravity knife. At least, not by most of the world's definition.

According to the vast majority of police departments and district attorneys in New York State -- not to mention knife manufacturers, labor unions, and almost everyone else who knows a thing about knives -- what Neal was carrying was a perfectly legal folding knife. When gravity knives were banned under New York State law in the 1950s, the legislature actually had a very specific style of weapon in mind -- a foot-long terror that bears no resemblance to a knife like the one Neal had. True gravity knives, for all intents and purposes, have been extinct for the better part of a century; today they're relegated mostly to the antiques section on eBay.

Nonetheless, under the department's unique interpretation of Penal Code 265.01, almost every pocketknife on the market today can be considered a gravity knife. It's as if authorities in New York City were using an antiquated law against flintlock muskets to prosecute BB-gun owners.

And the prohibition is as strict as it is all-encompassing. A knife that can be shoehorned into that definition is not only illegal to carry, it's illegal to possess at all, even within one's home. The only narrow exceptions apply to those "actively engaged" in hunting and fishing, and are essentially meaningless in New York City.

The penalties are severe, too, as Neal would learn. As a prior offender, he was eligible for a felony "bump up," rendering the pocketknife Neal possessed the legal equivalent of an unlicensed, unloaded pistol. Though the court said he likely had no idea his knife was illegal, and he wasn't accused of using it toward any nefarious end, he was convicted nonetheless.

After a series of appeals, he was sentenced to six years in prison.

10 Flushing members of MS-13 busted

From the Daily News:

Ten members of the infamous MS-13 gang from Flushing were indicted Thursday on racketeering charges, including violent machete and baseball attacks against rivals, authorities said.

Federal agents and NYPD detectives arrested eight of the thugs in early morning raids while two others were already incarcerated.

The defendants were members of a powerful clique of Mara Salvatrucha 13 wreaking havoc in their Queens neighborhood since 2007, authorities said.

Christian Merino, a reputed leader of the clique, was secretly intercepted on a wiretap discussing a September 2010 stabbing and baseball bat beating with an associate.

A machete was seized from gang member Abraham Iraheta, who is charged with using the large knife in a 2009 attack.

Carlos Hernandez is charged with volunteering to be the triggerman in a revenge shooting against a rival who slashed the face of MS-13 member Kevin Cardona.

The indictment also charges the Queens-based faction with raising money to finance the gang’s activities in El Salvador and with plotting to smuggle MS-13 members from the Texas border to Virginia.

Police bust Crips-Bloods alliance

From the NY Times:

The Flocc street gang had an unusual mix of members. It formed out of an alliance, law enforcement officials said, between two groups that have traditionally been rivals: the Crips and the Bloods.

As the gang muscled its way into the drug trade in Far Rockaway and South Jamaica, Queens, and police officers on foot patrols started proving a nuisance to their business, at least one of their members hatched a plan to shoot them from a rooftop, the officials said.

On Friday, law enforcement authorities announced dozens of arrests as a result of a two-year investigation into the gang that they said tied it to at least 2 murders, 11 shootings, a home-invasion robbery and the distribution of cocaine and heroin.

The investigation included thousands of hours of wiretap surveillance by the Police Department’s gang squad and the Queens district attorney’s narcotics investigations bureau.

Husband stabs pregnant wife and sister-in-law

From the Daily News:

A Queens man - enraged because his wife refused to have an abortion - slashed her throat and then stabbed her sister in the stomach Monday night in front of a room full of children, police and relatives said.

The wounded wife, Petrona Kates, and her bleeding twin, Patricia Kates, both 36, fled their Jamaica residence about 8:45 p.m. and ran to a local bodega, desperately pleading for help.

The Kateses' cousin Lesia Wickham, 32, said that according to family members' account, Petrona Kates' husband, Fitzgerald Jolly, became furious after he returned from Philadelphia and learned his wife was pregnant.

Wickham said that as Jolly stormed out of the house, he "dropped the knife in a neighbor's yard and jumped in his vehicle and drove off." Cops later found the vehicle abandoned on the Whitestone Bridge, but Jolly's whereabouts are unknown, police said.

Petrona and Patricia Kates were both in stable condition last night at Jamaica Hospital, police said.

The makeshift weapons of crafty criminals

From Newsday:

The New York Police Department has found an unintended use for the T-Mobile Sidekick and other hand-held devices - a razor blade can be secreted in their battery compartments, police sources say.

At the same, sources say, officers have been alerted to a recent Harlem arrest in which a cell phone recovered from a suspect had been converted into a stun gun. And officers guarding prisoners in hospitals have been told that meal trays have a vanity mirror that can easily be fashioned into a makeshift shiv.