Beloved and decorated EMT murdered by familiar mentally disturbed person in Astoria

 

CBS New York

 An EMS lieutenant was stabbed to death in a random attack in Queens on Thursday afternoon, officials said.

It happened at around 2:15 p.m. while she was on duty at Station 49 on 20th Avenue and 41st Street in Astoria.

"While outside her station she was stabbed multiple times in a barbaric and completely unprovoked attack," said Acting FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh. "Members of EMS serve only to help and save other people's lives. To be attacked and killed in the course of helping others is both heartbreaking and enraging for our department in ways I can't describe.

"Our hearts go out to the family, her colleagues and the city of New York. We lost one of our heroes," Mayor Eric Adams said.

"This deadly, senseless, broad daylight attack on a uniformed EMT member is a direct assault on our society," Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said. "We can never tolerate this violence in our city. It has to, and will, be stopped." 

NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said Russo-Elling was going to get food when she was "viciously attacked" by the 34-year-old suspect, "stabbing her numerous times about her body."

CBS2's Tim McNicholas spoke on the phone with a business owner who turned his security video over to police. He said he watched it and it shows Russo-Elling near 20th Avenue and 41st Street. He said a man walked out of an apartment building, ran towards her, and stabbed her multiple times.

The business owner said, "It was totally unprovoked. There was no rhyme or reason. There was no back and forth."

McNicholas asked that business owner if he'd ever seen the suspect before and he said he had seen him wandering around the neighborhood aimlessly and that he looked "unhinged" and "like he was on another planet."

This is basically the same type of senseless savage attack that led to the murder of two on-duty police officers nearly a decade ago. They also were on their lunch break like Lt. Russo-Elling. That also happened barely a year into de Blasio's first term in office.

Fuck yo parade Blaz

 

 NY Daily News 

 Thousands of city frontline workers — including paramedics and emergency medical technicians — plan to boycott Mayor de Blasio’s Hometown Heroes ticker tape parade Wednesday.

Members of FDNY EMS will not be marching up the Canyon of Heroes unless they are on duty and working, union leaders said Tuesday.

“Members who are not paid will not attend,” said Vincent Variale, head of the Uniformed EMS Officers Union, which represents lieutenants and captains.

“Our members have been without a contract for more than three years and did not receive any hazard pay during COVID,” he added. “This mayor continues to disrespect EMS and all frontline responders and uses all of us for a public relations photo opportunity.”

  By Tuesday afternoon almost all of the roughly 60 locals that are part of District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal union, said they are boycotting the parade.

“District Council 37 members were the essential workers helping New Yorkers get through the COVID-19 pandemic. They showed up when others stayed home,” said DC37 spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein. “Each local making up our union has made their own decision about whether to participate in the parade.”

Many of DC37′s 150,000 members are angry about the city not offering early retirement incentives authorized by the state Legislature last spring.

Only Local 1508, which represents uniformed Parks Department supervisors, is participating.

City correction officers are also joining the boycott, a spokesman for the Correction Officers Benevolent Association said. City probation officers will also join, their union said in a statement.

Chirlane McCray's ThriveNYC program and personal media entourage has to be funded somehow...

NY Post

“People will die” if City Hall follows through with a plan to lay off nearly 400 EMTs and paramedics, the head of the union representing those workers told The Post.

Oren Barzilay, head of EMS Local 2507, said FDNY brass told him that 10 percent of the city’s 3,700 EMTs and paramedics will be cut under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to slash 22,000 municipal workers.

“The response times will go through the roof. That would put people at risk. People will die,” Barzilay warned.

De Blasio has said the reductions will come in October if the city doesn’t get state or federal aid to fill a major budget deficit caused by the coronavirus. Earlier this month he ordered agencies to come up with lists of cuts, according to Politico.

The number of EMTs and paramedics has already dropped from 4,100 before the pandemic. Four of his members died from the virus and three others committed suicide, Barzilay said. They were on the frontline of the crisis, rushing patients to hospitals around the five boroughs.

During the pandemic, his members responded to 7,000 emergency 911 calls, nearly double the normal amount.

“We were the only ones going into homes to save lives. That’s what we did. This is the thanks the men and women from EMS are now getting,” Barzilay fumed.

“COVID is not over. What happens if there is a surge?” he asked.
Reps for FDNY and City Hall did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Another union source said the cuts are nearly inconceivable.

“I don’t know where they would trim EMS, we are understaffed,” said Anthony Almojera, vice president of EMS Local 3621.

de Blasio still will not raise EMT's wages despite working more in the epicenter of the pandemic

 NY Post

Mayor Bill de Blasio said now is not the time to give EMT workers a raise — just days after emergency medical calls surpassed records set on 9/11 in response to the city’s coronavirus pandemic.

“We want to take care of these workers and support them, of course have their backs, but this is a bigger issue in the labor dynamics of this city,” de Blasio said on WNYC radio Friday.

“It’s not the time to, you know, make something up on the fly in the middle of a crisis. That’s just the truth. We’ll figure this out when we get through this crisis,” de Blasio said.

The mayor made the remarks in response to a woman named Willa from Manhattan who called the radio show to ask de Blasio if he’d changed his position on not raising the pay of FDNY EMTs to match the salaries of their firefighter colleagues.

“This is what these men and women signed up for, this pandemic. And they will meet this moment,” Willa told the mayor.

“They’re risking real sickness and death in doing so but they need to know that you have their back. Do you still value the work that FDNY EMS does less than other first responders in terms of real dollars and cents?” she asked.

About 23 percent of all EMS members were out on medical leave because of the virus or other ailments as of Sunday. Last week medical calls were up to around 6,500 per day — hundreds more than the city’s busiest day of the year.

A January 2019 Post investigation found that the city’s emergency worker shortage was due in part to the pay gap among first responders. Firefighters are paid $86,000 after five years compared to $48,000 for a top EMT.

Oren Barzilay, president of the FDNY EMS, Local 2507, blasted the mayor’s stance.

“It is unfortunate that at a time when FDNY EMS employees need our mayor’s leadership and support, he chooses to stomp on them,” Barzilay said, noting that President Donald Trump recently called for incentive pay for emergency workers.

There the mayor goes again with his dithering just like when the contagion was spreading, "Now is not the time, yadda yadda yadda". But there was a lot of time to find $850,000,000 for his fucking wife's Thrive program and agency.