Is anti-gentrification the ninja's motive?

From DNA Info:

The “ninja” arsonist who's been torching McMansions in Forest Hills is likely a longtime resident fed up with gentrification in his neighborhood and the fires he sets makes him feel he has the power to stop it, experts tell DNAinfo New York.

Louis Garcia, the city’s ex-chief fire marshal and a nationally recognized expert on arson, said the man behind at least seven Forest Hills blazes is infused with power every time he sets a home on fire — attracting increased police and public attention.

“He probably was someone who felt powerless to stop the gentrification and now feels he has power over them by burning their property,” said the 35-year veteran FDNY commander who spent 25 years in the Bureau of Fire Investigation and a decade as the city's chief fire marshal.

“The so-called ninja arsonist in Forest Hills has found a way to stop the gentrification and to feel important. And now, he's getting attention.”

Council member proposes truck study

From the Daily News:

Delivery trucks barrel through the most congested parts of the city, but a Manhattan city councilman wants to see just how much traffic is caused by these gargantuan vehicles.

Councilman Mark Levine will introduce a bill Wednesday to require the city Department of Transportation to study truck deliveries south of 59th St. in Manhattan and in downtown Brooklyn.

Levine wants to see if traffic would improve if trucks made deliveries overnight from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., instead of during rush hour.

“We believe it’s a major driver of the escalating problem of congestion in Manhattan,” he said.

He raised the idea of a congestion pricing scheme for delivery trucks or an outright ban on them during rush hours.

Council votes to support Willets Point plan in court

From the Observer:

Defying the de Blasio administration, the City Council passed a resolution today to support a major Queens development in court.

The City Council voted overwhelmingly to attach an amicus brief reaffirming its approval of a 2013 plan to redevelop Willets Point, Queens. Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat the liberal-leaning Council typically sides with, chose not to stand with the pair of developers after an appeals court ruled earlier this summer that the $3 billion project illegally gobbles up city parkland. The developers, Related Companies and Sterling Equities, challenged the ruling, and won a victory in November when the state’s highest court opted to consider the appeal.

But at least one Queens city councilman disagreed. Councilman Rory Lancman broke with the Queens Democratic establishment to vote down the resolution, agreeing with the rationale of the lower court that the parkland near Citi Field could not be alienated without approval from the State Legislature. He also said the Council didn’t have to be bound by Bloomberg era terms.

‘The intermediary appellate court has found, correctly in my view, that using the land in question for a shopping mall would improperly alienate parkland without the authorization of the state—an important safeguard against the permanent giveaway of cherished public spaces for minimal public benefit,” Mr. Lancman said.

College Point police academy officially opened

From PIX11:

For years mayors have proposed a new police academy for the city’s 35,000 uniformed officers.

The current facility in Gramercy, which opened in 1964, is a tattered mess.

So on the eve of his third term in office, Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly broke ground on a new academy in College Point, Queens.

Current NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio cut the ribbon on the sprawling state-of-the art 30-acre facility.

"We’ve already outgrown it. We’ve outgrown it because of our commitment to training," Bratton said.

"We have five strategies in the NYPD, that are going to guide going forward – dealing with terrorism, tackling crime, rebuilding trust in our communities, acquiring hundreds of millions of dollars in the latest technology – but is all built on the foundation that this building represents – training."

The 750,000 square foot building has mock scenarios of what goes on — on real city streets.

There are simulated precincts, courtrooms, city streets, and businesses.

"Copycat arsonist" arrested

From CBS:

A man has been arrested on arson charges for allegedly setting fire to three garbage cans in Flushing, Queens last week.

Samer Shuaib, 36, of Queens, was charged with arson and criminal mischief in the incidents last week, police said.

The fires were all set between 11:49 p.m. and midnight on Wednesday, in garbage cans on the side of 69-02 Austin St., opposite 69-30 Austin St., and in front of 68-40 Austin St., police said.

No injuries were reported in any of the incidents.

Police sources told CBS2 Shuaib told investigators he was intoxicated and in a bad mood at the time of the incidents. He told investigators walked past a dumpster and smelled something foul, so he decided to light it on fire, sources said.

Gilbert gone

From the NY Times:

Mayor Bill de Blasio, still struggling to manage near-record levels of homelessness, announced on Tuesday that his homeless-services chief was stepping down in another shake-up of the administration’s antipoverty efforts.

The departure of the commissioner, Gilbert Taylor, is the latest fallout from the homelessness crisis, which has become a consuming political problem for Mr. de Blasio as he tries to address deepening inequality in New York City.

Since Mr. de Blasio took office, the number of people in shelters overseen by the Department of Homeless Services has jumped to more than 57,000 from about 53,000, peaking at 59,068.

Another house to church conversion in Bayside

"Last night my mother & I were walking through the neighborhood and walked by a house that has been under construction for quite sometime now. We were stunned to find out that they were not building a new home but rather a Korean church! As if Bayside needs another Korean church! The property is located on the corner of 208th Street and Horace Harding Expressway."

Fire at Elmhurst hoarder house

"Hey Crappie, I haven't seen any mention in the local papers about the fire at the Elmhurst hoarder house on 84th street and 57th Ave a couple weeks ago. Fire Dept. had to cut a hole in the neighbors attached roof to put out the fire. As far as I know there was no injuries.

For years neighbors have been complaining about the unsightly mess of piles of trash in the front and back yard and also of the threat of fire to the other attached homes. Multiple visits by the DOB, Sanitation, Fire Dept., mental health workers and even Councilman Dromm couldn't convince the woman to clean up her act even when faced with fines.

I've watched the TV show Hoarders many times and in some of the cases the municipality will evict the homeowner if they don't clean up the house. It seems NYC doesn't have the same regulations.Anyway now all the yard trash is gone but I heard it's a real mess inside." - anonymous

This house was previously featured here in January of last year.

"Temporary" storage container a long time eyesore

"Does anyone know who oversees the placement and use of storage "PODS" on private residential property? Common sense would say that it would be the DOB, but they refused to accept the complaint. I then attempted to place a request through the online 311 system, and when I checked the address on the DOB BIS system, it was showing up as an "illegal construction" complaint. Just wonderful.

Believe it or not, DOB inspected, and while they indicated no illegal construction, they did note the POD and also indicated that it was out of DOB's "jurisdiction and code."

Really? You can't place a storage shed in your backyard over a certain size without a permit, yet you can dump a storage POD on your front lawn for 5-6 months with no repercussions?

(The photo on 88th Ave in Bellerose was taken several months ago. After a complaint to the storage company that it was partially blocking the sidewalk, they moved it a few feet. That was over four months ago.)" - Anonymous

City Council desperate to have mall built on parkland

From Capital New York:

The New York City Council, which often sides with Mayor Bill de Blasio, is breaking ranks over a planned development at Willets Point in Queens.

The Council plans to vote on Wednesday on a resolution that would authorize it to file an amicus brief defending the plans, which were initially approved by the Council, as land-use applications must be.

The amicus brief itself has yet to be written, and the resolution gives the Council six months to file it in court, but the legislative body will side with the developer in arguing that a mall should be built on existing parkland outside Citi Field.

The Queens Development Group, a partnership of the Related Companies and Sterling Equities, is appealing a decision from earlier this year that would have banned the construction of the mall. The state Court of Appeals last month decided to consider the developer's case.

The Council seems to have no problem disregarding clear public sentiment since 2012, exemplified by Queens Civic Congress being a plaintiff in litigation opposing the Willets West mega-mall on parkland. The Council may be soliciting this vote of its members based on a misrepresentation, as council never considered or voted to approve the mega-mall. (All the council did approve was a special permit to temporarily use Willets Point as a parking lot.) Council must solicit this vote based upon the facts, not upon Queens Development Group's inaccurate revisionist history.

I guess we should be checking campaign contributions in a few months?

Wilson Street illegal excavation leads to cave-in

From NBC:

Several workers had to be dug out of the ground by firefighters after ground they were working in outside a Brooklyn rowhouse gave way Monday, burying them up to their waists in dirt, fire officials said.

The workers were digging an extension in the yard of a rowhouse on Wilson Street in Williamsburg that was under renovation at the time of the accident, authorities said. Two of the buried workers had to be dug out by firefighters; a third was able to extricate himself from the dirt.

The men suffered minor injuries.

NBC 4 New York has learned the building owner did not have a permit for the construction work.

The Department of Buildings put stop-work orders on the landlord's building and evacuated several neighboring buildings, including a home and a synagogue, as a precaution. Dismissal at a nearby school was also modified.

Homeless are sleeping all over LaGuardia Airport

From PIX11:

The homeless population has surged in New York City and now the problem has gone beyond crowded shelters and dirty streets.

More and more homeless are squatting at LaGuardia Airport.

"I think it's the responsibility of the city to make sure that they have actual shelters and can take care of people. They shouldn't be using public facilities like that," airline passenger Vassyl Lonchyna said. "And they shouldn't be cluttering this terminal,"

And while that passenger blamed the city for a poor response at LaGuardia, New York City doesn't actually have jurisdiction within the airport.

According to a spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio's office, "The Port Authority has its own police department and funds a nonprofit to provide homelessness services."

Gangs responsible for 40% of murders in NYC

From the Daily News:

Along with the mass killers and rifle-toting terrorists who are driving the nation’s gun debate are New York’s own gangbangers, who are behind the triggers of nearly half the city’s shootings, officials said.

And when gunplay across the five boroughs turns deadly, gang members are quite often responsible, accounting for 130, or 40%, of the city’s murders this year, police said.

It’s not just the traditional beefs over drugs or money, cops said. Crews are calling each other out over the smallest of slights or — worse yet — the belief that shooting someone will turn a boy into a man.

“It’s a fearsome reality: violence for its own sake,” Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told the Daily News. “The gun has come to define manhood for these young men, and the willingness to use it has become a rite of passage.”

Killings by gangs or crews — smaller groups of young men who claim one or two blocks as their turf — are expected to be slightly higher this year than in 2014, although cops were still tallying the numbers, police sources said.

As of Dec. 6, the 324 murders in the city represented a 5.5% increase over the 307 homicides committed by the same date last year. The number of shootings as of Dec. 6 was 1,061, a 3.2% decrease from the 1,296 committed in the same time frame in 2014. Overall serious crime is down 2.4% citywide.

The News obtained data from the NYPD’s Gang and Juvenile Justice divisions and used it to create maps showing where gangs and crews operate in the city. There are about 375 citywide, mostly clustered around housing projects.

Map is here.

"Permanent, affordable housing" for vets = bunk beds

From DNA Info:

Six long-abandoned apartment buildings on Hollis Avenue could become affordable housing for homeless veterans despite locals protests, officials said.

“We are working on making this permanent affordable housing for veterans as part of the national effort to end homelessness for veterans,” said a spokeswoman for the Human Resources Administration in an email.

The spokeswoman did not elaborate on the proposal, which was first reported by the Times Ledger, and did not say how many people would live in the complex or when it would open.

But locals, who for several months have been holding protests in front of the Hollis development, which is located between 202nd and 204th streets and has approximately 120 units, are upset that the administration did not discuss the plan with the community.

“We need our civic, faith-based and community leaders to stand with us to send a loud and clear message that the reported proposal for the property will have a negative impact and we as a community will not be silent about our displeasure,” state Sen. Leroy Comrie wrote in an email sent out to residents last Saturday. “We are calling on the City to respect the voices of our community.”

The property, which belongs to Rita Stark, have been deteriorating for more than 20 years, attracting squatters and drug users. But in April the buildings were leased to The Bluestone Group, a private investment firm, based in downtown Manhattan, according to local elected officials.

Since then, the property has undergone substantial renovations. Bunk beds, which can be seen through the windows, were placed inside.

On second thought...

From Gotham Gazette:

Two days after announcing that he would be joining a consulting firm as a partner while retaining his seat in the New York State Assembly, Michael Blake has changed his mind.

"I've decided that the clear priority is and always has been the constituents of my district, and I'm not going to allow anything to distract from that. I'm not going to be a partner at Hilltop," Blake told Gotham Gazette Sunday evening, meaning Hilltop Public Solutions, the consulting firm.

"I'm not going to let the noise that's been out there continue," he added, referring to the immediate negative response that the announcement garnered from good government advocates and in the media. "I'm not going to let this be a distraction for the people. I want to be focused on the work and focused on my family."

Homeless plan not working

From CBS 2:

An aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo offered a scathing assessment of the de Blasio administration’s homeless policy.

In a Facebook post Wednesday night, Barbara Brancaccio, who works in Cuomo’s Office of Storm Recovery, wrote: “I want to be very clear … the homeless ‘crises’ is the result of incompetent leadership in City Hall, the Human Resources Administration (HRA) and the Department of Homeless Services. Together, they are tragically misguided, out of control and completely to blame.”

As CBS2’s Marcia Kramer reported, the post signals an escalation in the war of words between Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio over how to get the homeless off the streets.

Hey why not just keep sending money to the same shady organizations?

Because money grows on trees

From NYC Council Watch:

Does the Council imagine that the good times will roll on and on? When a downturn hits, it will be interesting to hear the cries of pain when these social service programs are forced to scale down.

Your Watcher was fascinated last February by the tremendous effort and resources that the Speaker’s office poured into her egregious “State of the City” address. As you may (or probably don’t) recall, she built an extremely elaborate website to livestream her speech, which was branded with a special “Lift Every Voice” theme, very much like a political campaign.

As I wrote then, there is no reason for the Speaker of the Council to give a “State of the City” speech. The mayor is supposed to give one, according to the Charter, but there is no such obligation for the speaker. Think about it: does Carl Heastie give a “State of the State” address? No. Did John Boehner give a “State of the Nation” speech? How absurd.

In any case I FOILed the Council to get information on the cost and planning of Melissa Mark-Viverito’s speech. Building fancy websites is not cheap, and livestreaming an event costs a lot too. The Council’s FOIL officer took nine months to answer my request, and what she gave me makes the release of Hillary Clinton’s emails seem like the epitome of transparent, open government. I received scores of pages of emails that were entirely redacted except for the “From” line. About twenty pages were totally black: it was only just possible to see that these pages were nothing more than screenshots of the website. So why were they blacked from view?

So much for the openness Mark-Viverito promised upon her election. Her office’s answer to my simple request to see emails pertaining to the production of the exercise in vanity that was her “State of the City” speech is an embarrassment.

Strip club shut down

From the Daily News:

The Show Palace, an “all nude” strip club in Long Island City, Queens, was shuttered by court order Friday after investigators learned that servers were selling both marijuana and cocaine along with non-alcoholic drinks and lap dances, officials said.

The NYPD Narcotics Bureau conducted a number of investigations at the Show Palace, according to officials. A week before it was closed, a shooting took place outside the club, a police source said.

“Waitresses were selling drugs to customers,” the source said.

Forest Hills now has second arsonist

From DNA Info:

Three small dumpster fires — including one in front of the 112th Precinct station house — erupted on Austin Street in one night, deepening anxiety in a neighborhood recently targeted by a fire-starting "ninja."

All three dumpster fires set late Wednesday night into Thursday morning were lit along Austin Street, a major commercial strip in the neighborhood, fire and police officials said.

FDNY spokesman Frank Dwyer said in an email that the fires “are suspicious and are being investigated by Fire Marshals and the NYPD.”

Police have released surveillance video of a suspect wanted in connection with the dumpster fires.

A spokesman for the NYPD said Friday that the two patterns appear to be unrelated and the suspect does not match the description of the arsonist being sought in connection with the other arson pattern in the neighborhood.

Police fear this is a copycat.

Assembly Member and a consultant at the same time

From DNA Info:

On the same day one of the most powerful lawmakers in the state was convicted of selling his office, Bronx Assemblyman Michael Blake announced he was taking a job with an influential political consulting firm.

Blake will join Hilltop Public Solutions as a partner, the firm announced in a press release Friday afternoon.

"I am excited to be joining Hilltop,” Blake said in the release, which did not mention he was an Assemblyman. “I look forward to working with the team and helping as we focus on progressive issues around the country.”

Blake, in a telephone interview, said there is no conflict of interest between his two jobs because he will work only on national and international projects for Hilltop. He said the release did not mention his role as an elected official because he wanted to make it clear the two aren't related.

"No conflict at all," said Blake who said the position was approved by the legislative ethics commission. "I understand the sensitivity," he added.