Civic group may file slander suit against BdB administration

From the Times Ledger:

The Juniper Park Civic Association is threatening to sue the de Blasio administration for slander by one of its spokeswomen, according to its president, Bob Holden. After city Comptroller Scott Stringer was invited to Middle Village last week speak to a town hall meeting addressing concerns with the city housing single men at the Holiday Inn Express, Aja Worthy-Davis released a statement saying, “Scott Stringer is courting a group advocating for kicking women and toddlers onto the street, using White Lives Matter as their protest song. He should be ashamed.”

The civic group hired attorneys who fired off a letter to City Hall asking for an apology and a retraction before taking the matter to the next level. They have not heard back, Holden said.

“It’s so slanderous and we’re going to take action on it because it’s so irresponsi­ble,” he said. “Nobody connected with the Juniper Park Civic Association used that term during our rallies, only the mayor’s office heard it. It has no remote connection to our group. We invited Scott Stinger to speak to us. It’s the mayor’s office that made this political and racial. I don’t have words, but it reflects the kind of people this mayor has hired. It is false. It is slanderous.”

In late September, the city produced two videos of the Maspeth group protesting outside a Bellerose hotel, and released them to social media. Holden and Addabbo believe the White Lives Matter chants were edited into one of the videos.

Be careful whose version of events you believe

Last weekend, there was an alleged hate crime reported at the restaurant Shi in LIC. A husband and wife and their gay friend had just left the restaurant when they were allegedly pounced on by a bunch of goons yelling racial and gay slurs. The couple then tried to get back inside the restaurant they just pleasantly dined at and the doorman/management refused to allow them back inside or call 911. That was the victims' story last week, anyway.

This sounded kind of bogus to me, so I decided to wait before posting anything about it. And my intuition was correct. The Queens Courier is now reporting that surveillance video shows that the attack happened down the street and no such refusal to help happened, and the owner says the couple had been thrown out for bad behavior. The NYPD is not charging anyone with a hate crime, and there is at least one report that they provoked the attack.

I've been duped by stories before as well, but the media did a real hatchet job on this restaurant which went viral. Social media lit up with condemnation of Shi based on lies, which is likely to affect their bottom line. I hope the restaurant sues the pants off them all. It seems all people have to do these days is cry discrimination and they are automatically believed, no matter how fishy their story sounds.