Archive for August, 2007

Heat may rise - blame travels downwards

Published
by
Jon
on August 30, 2007
in Fire
. 0 Comments

According to a Sally Goldenberg exclusive in the Staten Island Advance, the FDNY fire captain disciplined for failing to inspect the Deutsche Bank building was in fact following a policy not to inspect during the demolition process.

Link to Goldenberg piece here. An excerpt:

One of the three firefighters stripped of his command for his role in the fatal Deutsche Bank building blaze at Ground Zero was instructed not to conduct inspections in the building, but he is now being criticized for failing to inspect the site at 130 Liberty St., his brother, a Staten Island attorney who is representing him, told the Advance.

- snip -

Great Kills lawyer John Bosco said his brother did not inspect the building because he was following FDNY policy.

But upon announcing Bosco’s reassignment to headquarters on Monday, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta and Mayor Michael Bloomberg pointed to a policy to do routine inspections of standpipes in buildings under construction and being demolished.

The Deutsche Bank building was in the demolition phase and had been knocked down to 26 stories from its height of 41 when a seven-alarm blaze engulfed it on Aug. 18, and took the lives of two firefighters. The standpipe was inoperable and did not deliver water to the 14th floor, where firefighters Robert Beddia, of South Beach, and Joseph Graffagnino were battling the flames when they died of cardiac arrest from smoke inhalation.

“There was a conflict in policies. One policy called for no inspections to protect firefighters from exposure to toxins at 130 Liberty St. The other policy called for inspections to make sure fire codes were being complied with,” John Bosco said. “The decision as to which policy to follow was made before Captain Bosco arrived at Engine 10″ in late December or early January.

“Moreover, the recognition and resolution of conflicts in policies is the responsibility of those higher up the chain of command than Captain Bosco and the two other fire officers who were summarily reassigned,” John Bosco said. “That’s the whole key: The top brass never recognized or resolved those two conflicting policies.”

- snip -

These claims corroborate with [sic] comments made by Beddia’s half-brother, Ed Carman, who told the Advance earlier in the week he was hesitant to fan blame but believed firefighters were not supposed to enter the bank building.

When presented with Bosco’s accusations, FDNY spokesman Jim Long declined comment.

A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who stood with Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta to announce the reassignment of the three fire officers to headquarters, also did not comment.

Let’s recap:

  1. FDNY Captain disciplined for not entering and inspecting building.
  2. FDNY Captain says - in fact, we weren’t supposed to inspect;
  3. What’s more, according to today’s Times, John Bosco (the attorney brother), told Al Baker of the Times -

There were no hazardous material suits, no decontamination equipment, no protocol for how firefighters — untrained for that sort of work — were to perform an inspection in such a setting.

4. Faced with this rebuttal, forceful on its face - the Mayor, Fire Commissioner, and FDNY spokesperson respond with no comment.

Link to Al Baker’s excellent piece in the Times. Rather than a mere “no comment,” Baker got a somewhat fancier “inappropriate at this time to disclose …” response from Nicholas Scoppetta.

The “no comment,” or “inappropriate at this time,” under the circumstances, and without in due course advancing an argument in rebuttal -

- at least suggest that Captain Bosco has the better of this argument.

And if that’s so - that the FDNY has wrongfully disciplined an officer who hasn’t behaved improperly - perhaps to deflect blame from the administration.

Disclosure: Nicholas Scoppetta was counsel at the Knapp Commission, which happened while I was in high school. He’s one of a handful of lawyers - like Samuel Dash, say, the Senate Watergate counsel, many civil-rights lawyers in and out of the government - who made me want to go to law school. In my mind, he’s a good guy. So I’m hoping that I’ve missed something here, and that Nick Scoppetta, an archetypal good guy, is going to do the right thing - and not make Captain Peter Bosco the scapegoat for FDNY and mayoral policy. The Department - and especially the previous mayoral administration - already have enough to answer for to firefighters, people trapped in stairwells, and a growing number of people who got sick at Ground Zero.

But unless I hear something persuasive, my money’s on Captain Peter Bosco.

Fatal shooting 22 August on Parkside Avenue

Published
by
Jon
on August 30, 2007
in Crime and Parks
. 3 Comments

According to the Times, Thursday 30 August:

A Brooklyn man was charged yesterday with fatally shooting another man near Prospect Park last week, the police said. The police said that the suspect, Tony Canales, 26, shot Antonio Bruce, 25, of Stanley Avenue about 11:20 p.m. on Aug. 22. Mr. Bruce was shot once in the abdomen on Parkside Avenue, the police said. Mr. Canales was charged with murder.

Link to article (”Metro Briefing”) here.

This is all we have at the moment. We’re going to see about more details.

Update, 1750 hours. According to a spokesperson for the office of Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes, Canales was arrested on August 28th at 1:40 P.M. The names and unit(s) of the arresting officers were not immediately available, nor was the precise location at which the incident is alleged to have occurred.

Canales was arraigned in front of Judge McGuire (no first name available at present), remanded (held without bail) awaiting grand jury action.

Prompt grand jury presentations - more often than not, followed by indictment - are typical in cases in which murder or homicide is alleged. The Caton Avenue Blog will try to follow the case. JS

UPDATE 8/31 ProspectParkLiving raises important questions in the comment below. (Readers: forgive me - I’m new at managing blogs - and while I assume it’s de rigeur to respond to comments in the “comments” section - I wasn’t sure how to direct attention there). Paraphrasing PPL:

  • What’s going on here?
  • What’s the trend?
  • Does it have to do with street drug sales?

I’ll add these incomplete responses:

  • I don’t know about the trends. This is supposed to be easily available information, as per the NYS Freedom of Information Law - but usually requires pestering, lawyers, press, or power. A virtuous local legislator could probably manage this with one phone call (the statistics - reported/cleared violent crimes by location, in this case)
  • Don’t give up on this neighborhood. The odds are with us, which I’ll try to explain in more detail in the near future.
  • As some CatonAvenue readers know, I have a background in what might be called “applied criminology” - I’ve been a private investigator, risk consultant, prosecutor, and occasionally a criminal defense attorney. I’m cautiously optimistic because:
    1. lots of things - more uniformed presence, better lighting - can make a difference
    2. for the most part, drugs aren’t the causal factor - it’s drug trafficking 
    3. and even then - violence mostly comes from instability in markets (people competing for turf, enforcing rules). That means that while illicit drug trading may be inevitable - markets being what they are - its sequelae are not.

We’re making inquiries.

Good Samaritan killed on Prospect Expressway

Published
by
Jon
on August 25, 2007
in Crime, Hazards and Traffic
. 1 Comment

From the Times’ “Metro Briefing” on Thursday, page B4 of the print edition, link to online archived version here

A man who stopped to help a driver in a disabled car on the Prospect Expressway early yesterday was killed when a drunken driver in a third car smashed into his car and the broken-down vehicle, the police said. The police said the victim, Rafael Rafailov, 50, stopped to assist a vehicle that was stopped in the middle southbound lane about 1:20 a.m. Mr. Rafailov and the driver of the disabled car were outside their vehicles when a car driven by Alexey Bushuyev, 22, of Brooklyn, struck their cars, the police said. Mr. Bushuyev and the driver of the disabled car, who was not identified, suffered minor injuries. Mr. Rafailov was declared dead at the scene, the police said. Mr. Bushuyev was charged with driving while intoxicated.

This is, of course, quite disturbing, and sad.

I’d like to know how this fatality is reported in the Times. Is its newsworthiness becasue it involves a crime (drunken driving) and a death? My impression, as a reader of the Times for longer than I’d like to admit, is that a story either one of those elements - but not both wouldn’t make it into the paper - and the sine qua non is not the fatality - but the arrest. Which is likely generated via NYPD press release.

And if this is all the information we’re getting from the paper of record about traffic safety on the Prospect - what we’re seeing is a narrowly selected grop of trees - but not a cue about the size, shape, color, or age of the forest.

Cross-posted on www.catonstratford.com .

“A moment of Stray Voltage”

Published
by
Jon
on August 11, 2007
in Con Edison, Energy and Hazards
. 0 Comments

This is why the Times policy of limiting certain articles to Times Select subscribers is disturbing. I’m going to write now about an actual life-and- death issue for New Yorkers, but can’t link to it because of their restrictions. We regard the following excerpt as within the scope of the “fair use” doctrine of the copyright laws.

And here’s a link to Behind the Times (Subscripton Wall), and a link to the Dwyer piece. Here’s a piece:

At the corner of Hudson and Morton Streets, he called her from a pay phone.

“Hello,” she said.

Something jolted Mr. Vanaria’s elbow. Then it shot into his arm. Waves of pain ran along his arm. He nested the phone on his left shoulder, cranked his ear down.

“I said, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack,’ ” he recalled this week.

He was just about to turn 47, the hour of life when the body becomes a permanent suspect in acts of treachery. To calm himself, Mr. Vanaria reached for one of the posts next to the phone, and gripped it. He screamed. Someone was shooting him dead, a machine gun, it was the tail end of an era of drive-by killings, he was being riddled with bullets. He looked into the street to see his murderers.

No car. No gunmen. No one.

Then he realized that he could not let go of the post. Panic and pain ripped through his body. His arm fought with his fingers, which were locked onto the post by an invisible force. He unclenched his grip and pulled away.

A man stood nearby. “What’s happening?” he asked Mr. Vanaria.

“You don’t understand,” Mr. Vanaria said. “I was being electrocuted.”

- snip -

He had, he learned, suffered a brain injury. He had literally been fried.

“Those first five years were really, really dark,” Mr. Vanaria said. “I wouldn’t call it attention deficit. It was a collision of thoughts, like a car crash.”

He had to give up his job teaching third graders at a parochial school. He stopped dancing in clubs. He used to draw, but felt that his sense of shape and color had seeped away.

He sued Con Edison, which, it turned out, had installed a high-voltage vault beneath the pay phone at Hudson and Morton Streets. The utility had put a pump in the vault to clear water out; the pump burned out, but because it was not equipped with a circuit breaker or a fuse, electricity passed to the pump, then to a drain pipe, a metal grate, up to the telephone and into Philip Vanaria’s body and brain.

There was no question that Con Edison had been negligent, a judge found; only the amount of damages was at issue. The jury awarded Mr. Vanaria $1.9 million. The circuit breaker would have been a few dollars.

Here are some questions whose answers might be helpful:

  1. Who tracks these injuries and deaths?
  2. How do we detect this problem on our own?
  3. What’s our risk here? Is this a acceptable level?

This subject will bear some further inquiries. Please check back. [Cross-posted at www.catonavenue.com and www.popularlogistics.com

5 Stratford + 1110 Caton = CatonStratford.com

Published
by
Jon
on August 1, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

and that building’s blog is at: www.CatonStratford.com

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