“For young Black kids, there’s not been many spaces for redemption. And to have this opportunity to create that framework, I think, is really powerful.”
Emmanuel Mensah, a private in the Army National Guard, evacuated his six roommates and rescued four neighbors from a deadly Bronx fire. He went back in the building to save more, but wound up among the 12 victims who did not survive:
BREAKING: The New York City police department's internal affair bureau has recommended misconduct charges against an officer who beat a bystander to an arrest on May 2 and kneeled on his back and neck– a move similar to the one used on George Floyd. Two more also face charges.
In court to exonerate two men convicted of killing Malcolm X, the Manhattan district attorney makes a stunning revelation: J. Edgar Hoover himself directed the F.B.I. to order multiple witnesses not to tell police or prosecutors that they were in fact Bureau informants.
Seven out of every eight people arrested for social distancing offenses in Brooklyn were Black, according to data from the borough prosecutor's office that adds to a debate over whether the enforcement recalls Stop and Frisk practices of the Bloomberg era.
The thing spoken quietly is that there are law-enforcement officers who support Trump and believe the election was stolen, and some among them won't stand in the way of an attempt to get it back. I have talked to cops up to the rank of chief who share this stance.
Two longtime suspects in the murder of Jam Master Jay, one of hip hop's greatest mysteries, have been indicted for murder, federal prosecutors and the NYPD plan to announce Monday:
There are so few Black men in New York City's press corp and they are the kind of journalists who have an indispensable perspective that we need in this moment because of their experiences in that identity. And that makes what police did to Tyler so much more outrageous.
Lost my glasses and my ankle is in searing pain after NYPD hit me in the face multiple times with riot shields and pushed me to the ground. I was backing away as request, with my hands up. My NYPD-issued press badge was clearly visible. I’m just sitting here crying. This sucks.
The New York City Council has enough votes to override a potential mayoral veto on a measure to ban police chokeholds and other neck restraints, Speaker Corey Johnson says.
Two men convicted of killing Malcolm X are expected to be exonerated on Thursday, as prosecutors acknowledge that the government hid evidence pointing to different suspects: w/
@Jonesieman
Officer Daniel Pantaleo was "untruthful" when he gave N.Y.P.D. investigators his account of his fatal encounter with Eric Garner, a police administrative judge said in her ruling obtained by The New York Times:
It's against NYPD policy to endorse a political party or candidate while in uniform.
It is unclear (to me, anyhow) what the penalty for this is in the NYPD's new disciplinary matrix, as the offense is not specifically mentioned in the public draft. Test case, perhaps.
Are the people committing violent crimes carrying bags? Are they using these bags for weapons? What is the utility here that elevates these searches from security theater and commuter nuisance?
New: Gov. Hochul announces that she is deploying 750 National Guard members into the NYC subways to conduct bag checks, in addition to another 250 law enforcement members. She is also proposing a bill to ban people convicted of a violent crime on the subway from public transit
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the semanticist, says calling Covid trends a "second wave" is a misnomer because, "This is not a mutated virus, this is failure to deal with the first wave."
"The three cops at the center of the NYPD milkshake 'poisoning' scandal never even got sick, and there wasn’t the slightest whiff of criminality from the get-go" – the start of a blistering lede from
@createcraig
's stunning tick tock
“I should’ve left, and I didn’t because if I would’ve left, my son would not have the things that he needs.” – Jazmine Headley looks back on the arrest that made her a symbol of poor people trying to make it in New York City. (with
@kitastew
)
The first person to die from Covid-19 in a New York City jail was an inmate being held on a technical parole violation, a category of non-criminal offenses like missing curfew that's a focal point in the debate over who to free from Rikers during the pandemic.–a
@Jan_Ransom
scoop
A
#RikersIsland
inmate died today following complications from
#coronavirus
, according to sources. So far, 4 NYC correction staff have also died. 273 inmates, 321 correction staff + 53 health workers have tested positive for
#Covid_19
. Half of the jail population is quarantined.
"Thanks Ash.
And I was beaming when I read of your promotion.
I may see you around neighbor." —
@jimdwyernyt
, Aug. 16, 2020
I will forever treasure being his student, his colleague, and the last person he shared a byline with. ()
BREAKING: Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who used a fatal chokehold on Eric Garner in 2014, was fired on Monday from the N.Y.P.D. and stripped of his pension, Commissioner O'Neill plans to announce.
"Start making arrests" an NYPD commander just said over radio of groups of protesters in Times Square in violation of curfew. "Don't let them get away. Don't let them get away."
Pivotal moment here.
Breaking: A federal court in New York has affirmed a lower-court ruling allowing the release of police disciplinary records in the state, dismissing a lawsuit brought by labor unions representing corrections officers, firefighters and police.
BREAKING: Police say the suspect in the shootings of two homeless men in New York committed three similar attacks in Washington, D.C. All of the victims were experiencing homelessness and two died.
Earlier:
Bill de Blasio's administration worked so hard to block Mr. Garner's family from learning more about Officer Pantaleo and the other officers involved in Eric Garner's death that it led to the expansion of a state law that keeps proven officer misconduct secret from the public.
NEW: Mayor Bill de Blasio on DOJ decision in Garner case: "Years ago, we put our faith in the federal government to act. We won’t make that mistake again."
I hope the same system that was responsible for this travesty of justice also takes responsibiity fo the immeasureable harm caused to me over the last 56 years. - Muhammad A. Aziz
A top NYPD official whose job it was to stop workplace harassment and ensure equal opportunities in hiring was fired after two investigations found he made racist posts on an infamous online forum for law enforcement: w/
@WRashbaum
Eric Garner's death at the hands of police in 2014 fueled promises to change a New York law used to keep police misconduct secret. But it wasn't repealed until George Floyd died in much the same way 6 years later.
Now, 323,911 records are online:
The NYPD has ignored, reduced or rejected 71 percent of a police watchdog agency's most severe disciplinary recommendations since 2001, allowing more than half of the officers accused of egregious misconduct to avoid punishment: w/
@AliWatkins
@BlackiLi
@S_Evangelina
"I'm 41, and my dreams are just starting to come true."
Iono how you're going to top making her dream come true, but I know you will after you wake up from fainting.
When I ask people in Harlem, Brownsville and nabes alike what they think of defunding the police, the reaction tends to be opposition.
When I clarify that defunding means taking money from policing to invest in alternatives, they almost always say that's exactly what's needed.
Nearly 25 years have passed since a woman who was raped in Prospect Park was smeared as a liar. Now, after the rise of
#meToo
, she's getting a full, unequivocal apology from New York City's police commissioner.
Despite .
@NYCMayor
and .
@NYPDShea
's claims, a city analysis of police data suggests New York's bail law and the release of inmates from city jails to slow the spread of the coronavirus "played almost no role in the spike in shootings."
The NYPD's chief of patrol, Juanita Holmes, just said the department does not use 'kettling,' when in fact they have used the tactic, and Commissioner Shea and Mayor de Blasio have defended it:
Three murder-suicides over the last four days in New York illustrated how deadly domestic violence is for women, whether they stay or leave, and whether they report or keep quiet:
Law enforcement authorities convicted 64 rapists and solved dozens more sex crimes after testing 55,000 backlogged rape kits in the United States.
@AliWatkins
's story prompts the question: What would happen if they tested the remaining 250,000?
"I'm hoping they learn different words within colonies — but if they teach the others bad language and I end up with 250 swearing birds, I don't know what we'll do."
It's 2020. They're definitely going to have 250 cussing birds.
Mark your calendars, New York: Housing Works, a nonprofit license holder, tells The Times that it's planning a soft launch for its cannabis dispensary in Union Square on Dec. 29 in Union Square after executing the lease today.
The destruction and looting has so far been concentrated in Midtown and SoHo, with a bit of extension to downtown Brooklyn. Most neighborhoods and even whole boroughs are untouched. I don't aim to minimize the destruction, but no one is served by exaggeration.
For at least the second time since taking office in January, Mayor Eric Adams has defended a police officer involved in a controversial encounter with a Black teenager before investigators could draw official conclusions:
After 10 months of litigation, the unions representing New York City's police, firefighters and corrections officers are withdrawing a lawsuit that sought to limit what disciplinary records could be released to the public.
"This is a deadly serious situation,"
@NYGovCuomo
says, calling on political leaders to set aside their stripes.
"It's red, white and blue," he said. "This virus does not discriminate and it attacks everyone" and everywhere.
Harvey Weinstein's sentence is truly astonishing. It is practically unheard of to get the equivalent of a life sentence for sex crimes with no prior criminal conviction.
New York City will soon reach a milestone ratio of one Covid-19 case per 1,000 residents. At this pace, that'll be tomorrow. But it's possible we've already passed that since the disease is underreported.
Latest
#COVID
numbers from
@NYCMayor
's office, as of 6 p.m.:
- 8,115 positive cases
- 60 fatalities.
- 2,484 in Brooklyn
- 2,254 in Queens
- 1,868 in Manhattan
- 1,071 in the Bronx
- 437 on Staten Island.
- at least 1,450 people hospitalized, at least 370 in the ICU.
A Black man who grew up in public housing and went to jail over marijuana opened New York's second licensed dispensary on Tuesday, a crucial triumph in an ambitious state experiment that has had significant challenges:
In New York City, almost 1 in 5 police officers is a woman. The number of women officers that have held a senior leadership role: 0.
Researchers have a name for this that might sound familiar.
It's called the brass ceiling.
I asked why the N.Y.P.D. cites a safety concern for officers who commit misconduct but also puts officers pictures and names on Twitter when they take gang guns off the street.
“I remember thinking, ‘Wow, it’s this guy.'"
Many have seen the video of a man brutally beating Tina Francisco inside a Brooklyn smoke shop.
Here's the story of how another victim's warning helped her to crack the case and lead police to the suspect:
In New York, it's been illegal to restrain pregnant women with shackles and handcuffs during childbirth since 2009. But a lawsuit says police forced a Bronx woman to give birth in cuffs this year. Read why officers said they did so:
That means that Black and Hispanic people, who account for roughly half of the city's population of 8.6 million, received 82 percent of those summonses.
Here's a man who likes to call black people niggers at 10:30 in the morning because he's the only person in the train car who doesn't want to hear Aretha Franklin slow jams.
@NYCTSubway
#MTA
Many NYers watched Derek Chauvin's trial wondering what might've been if this prosecutor had brought charges against the NYPD officers who put Eric Garner in a chokehold and pinned him on the sidewalk. Some of his dying words were the same as George Floyd's— "I can't breathe."
This has been the NYPD's campaign for more than a year now, and it's mystifying why the department that pioneered data-driven policing hasn't been able to put up data to support its claims about what's driving shootings and other serious crimes.
The top leaders of the NYPD have basically blamed ALL of the recent criminal justice reform for the uptick in crime and
@NYCMayor
says that he understands and respects "that people sometimes need to express their frustrations." Remains unclear to me if he agrees or disagrees
More than 500 people have applied to a unique experiment in New York, where folks punished under marijuana prohibition will own the first legal recreational pot shops. (The deadline is today!)
My 1st story as
@NYTMetro
cannabis correspondent:
Coronavirus in the New York City Police Department, per
@NYPDShea
:
-98 confirmed cases: 70 uniform officers, 28 civilian employees
-3 currently hospitalized
-1 discharged today
-Officers calling out sick at nearly twice the normal rate since about March 17
That's Erica Ford, the creator of New York City's crisis-management system, sitting front-row for President Biden's announcement on gun violence prevention.
Yesterday, I learned that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mother, Alberta Williams King, was murdered six years after her son by a gunman who decided Black ministers were a plague on Black people. That this seems nearly lost to history seems gendered and unjust.
Had to check with my City Hall colleagues to make sure I heard this correctly, but my ears did not fail: New York City's Test and Trace Corps is offering to walk dogs for people exposed to/infected with Covid.
.
@NYCMayor
refuted the comparison on Thursday and has repeatedly said that officers enforce social distancing equitably across the city.
But out of 40 arrests in Brooklyn, 16 were in Brownsville, a predominantly Black neighborhood. Zero were in whiter, more affluent Park Slope.
NYPD brass are doing a media blitz this a.m., but haven't had a crime briefing since March. Reporters who cover the police have had to pray, fast and sacrifice firstborn for mere hope of being called on at the mayor's briefing on the rare occasion the police commissioner attends.
"On the one hand, we want to beat back the pandemic. That’s critical. That’s the end goal. ... On the other hand, we’re seeing social distancing being used as a pretext to arrest the very communities that have been hit hardest by the virus.” Great national context here:
Crowds of mostly white protesters have defied Ohio’s stay-at-home order without arrest, while in several of the state’s biggest jurisdictions, police departments have primarily arrested black people for violating the order.
Melinda Katz, the Queens district attorney, declined to prosecute this case for lack of evidence, despite video of the sheriffs taking the stolen booze to their cars. And now one of the deputies has another job with a badge.
Why? Why wasn't the evidence enough? What was missing?
New: A group of city sheriffs drank liquor confiscated from bars and clubs that were raided for violating pandemic shutdown rules inside a “man cave” where boxes were placed to block surveillance cameras. The Queens DA declined to charge any of them.
More than 200 people have been killed in shootings this year in New York, about twice as many as 2019, including many bystanders: a 22-month-old boy, young parents enjoying child-free nights out, a man walking his dog, and the latest, an immigrant mom.
At least one person is feared dead after an elderly man attempting to park in New York's Chinatown mounted a curb and struck several people. The Fire Department said it's treating six patients, but a spokesman did not yet know their conditions.
19 people have died on Sunday and officials expect the toll to rise after a morning fire sent flames and smoke spreading through an apartment building in the Bronx: It's the deadliest fire in New York City since 1990.
But there's more.
Chapo wasn't only spying on Emma's phone. He had two side chicks (who look exactly like her by the way) and he was spying on their phones too.
So guess what the FBI got their hands on?
That's where we're headed after this quick break, it seems.
"The people who are supposed to be leading us out of this can't even keep themselves safe." —
@errollouis
articulating one of the most terrifying parts of this pandemic
Once de Blasio's NYPD felt the headwinds changing on 50-a, they started using the Freedom of Information Law and the Public Officers Law in its place to deny public records requests. So it's hard to think this repeal will change much.
Mayor de Blasio is starting this morning's press conference touting Albany's repeal of 50-A, a law that his administration re-interpreted to make it harder for the public to access police records. This is "how you build faith and trust," he says, of the legislation.
The New York Post editorial board presses the state on a baffling decision: why the health czar "insisted on sending coronavirus-positive patients to nursing homes, when it’s been clear from the start that the elderly are most at risk from the virus."
“... when that phone represents a young person’s entire ability to engage with family, school, work ... court appearances and obligations ... & when cases are dragging on ... that confiscation is completely unjust and unacceptable.”
Urgent story
@GrenchPAN
I interrupt the seven-alarm "New York is in crisis" narrative to inform you that some people in Harlem are so unbothered by the raggedy year 2020 and they are outside right now popping fireworks. Long live Harlem.
There's nothing in
@NYCMayor
's statement on the police arrest of Jazmine Headley that other city officials didn't say nearly 24 hours ago. What a contrast to the mayor who was lifted to office promising police reform.
This was a disturbing incident. Like anyone who’s watched this video, I have a lot of questions about how this was handled. NYPD & HRA will get to the bottom of what happened.
36 businesses and nonprofits received the first licenses to sell weed to the public in New York, a historic moment clouded by concerns that state efforts to provide them with storefronts and loans are lagging as they compete with hundreds of illegal shops:
NYPD officers arrested a public housing groundskeeper on charges that accused him of assaulting a police officer. However, that's not what video of the incident shows, and an officer is now under investigation:
Scoop: Businesses on Harlem's 125th Street have filed a lawsuit to stop the state from opening a cannabis dispensary across from the Apollo Theatre, citing concerns about crime, the lack of community input, and the landlord's ties to a shady smoke shop:
The killing of Lesandro Guzman-Feliz last week could have gone unsolved like so many other crimes. But video and social media provided a deluge of tips under the hashtag
#JusticeforJunior
that police say led to several arrests on Sunday. More are planned:
Yapping to
@NestorARamos
about cannabis legalization in New York has landed me a new gig covering the changing market. I'm psyched for what's to come with
@Zeke_Minaya
editing.
Congratulations as well to a stellar reporter/my future boss,
@troy_closson
:
Gun violence in New York City has been surging since the spring and is now at its worst in eight years. I'm thankful to The Daily for persisting for weeks to bring attention to a problem that's so urgent.
"He's gone, and I miss him. And we're going to be the weaker for it."
A gutting end to
@NYGovCuomo
's touching tribute to
@jimdwyernyt
, whom he called his contemporary and whom he visited in recent days.
Excess deaths– the number of deaths above what is normal– in New York City have reached 20,900.
The official death toll from the coronavirus is about 16,700.
The difference is 4,200 additional deaths that have yet to be explained:
The Photoshop claim works as well for Prince Andrew as it does for Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The flags in Harlem were there. I've seen them with my own two eyes. So have thousands of other people who've gotten off at that station.