Archive for the 'Crime' Category

Shooting At Girls’ Yeshiva in Williamsburgh - Homeland Security News

Published
by
Jon
on March 19, 2008
in Crime
. 0 Comments

According to National Terror Alert,  a shot was fired into a girls’ yeshiva in Williamsburgh on Monday; no injuries reported, no arrests.

Link to “Shooting At Jewish School For Girls In Williamsburg Brooklyn”

Herbert questions NYPD arrests, Hynes prosecutions as meritless

Published
by
Jon
on March 4, 2008
in Crime and Justice/Injustice
. 0 Comments

Bob Herbert sometimes behaves like a very clever hunting dog, alternately flushing his prey and waiting quietly. Of late, he’s been hunting a canard - in this case, a riot which seems not to have occurred.  He makes a compelling case that the Kings County District Attorney’s office seems to be persisting in an unjustified prosecution for no reason other than to save face.  See Herbert’s column Cruel and Gratuitous (Times, February 15, 2008) for details.

New York City homicide rate “lowest toll in decades” - Al Baker, The New York Times

Published
by
Jon
on December 3, 2007
in Crime
. 0 Comments

Al Baker reports in November 23rd editions of the Times that the city’s homicide rate is the lowest in years:

New York City is on track to have fewer than 500 homicides this year, by far the lowest number in a 12-month period since reliable Police Department statistics became available in 1963.

But within the city’s official crime statistics is a figure that may be even more striking: so far, with roughly half the killings analyzed, only 35 were found to be committed by strangers, a microscopic statistic in a city of more than 8.2 million. Continue reading ‘New York City homicide rate “lowest toll in decades” - Al Baker, The New York Times’

UPDATED: Knifepoint robbery on/near Caton Avenue

Published
by
Jon
on November 14, 2007
in Crime
. 0 Comments

We have a secondhand report that a knifepoint robbery occurred sometime earlier today, the victim someone who’s a regular visitor to our building - 1110 Caton Avenue (Stratford & Westminster).

Unfortunately, this is a reasonable predictor of increased risk of additional robberies. We’ll try to obtain additional information and post it as soon as possible.

UPDATE: It’s been reported that there were three attackers in this incident. - JS 

Hynes announces guilty pleas in stock fraud case

Published
by
Jon
on September 11, 2007
in Crime
. 0 Comments

According to a press release dated today, the Brooklyn D.A.’s office has obtained guilty pleas from two defrocked brokers in Clinton Hill. This is, of course, a good thing. Not clear if any of the complainants were local. My guess is none. (This is one of the great advantages of white-collar crime: you can rip people off with very little risk you’ll run into them at the grocery store). From the press release:

Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes today announced the conviction of two formerly licensed stockbrokers, Damascus Lee and Ian Bynoe, who created a fake real estate investment firm to launch a million-dollar securities fraud.
 
Bynoe and Lee both pleaded guilty to all the charges facing them, including Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, and Money Laundering in the Second Degree. They will be sentenced December 3, to two-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half years in prison.

As a condition of their plea, Bynoe and Lee will each be required to pay $200,000 in restitution. Should they fail to make payments, their sentences will be increased to four to 12 years.

Assistant District Attorneys Bryan Wallace and Michael Vaccaro prosecuted the case. Nice work.

 

 

 

 

Lee, 35, and Bynoe, 34, created a fake real estate development company called Vanguard Development and Management and then sold stock in it. The company was based in Wyoming but did no actual business. However, from the J.P. Turner & Company branch office they operated at 469 Clinton Ave., in Clinton Hill, Lee and Bynoe had other stock brokers working for them contact potential investors around the world. The brokers Lee and Bynoe supervised told potential clients that investments in Vanguard Development were officially approved by J.P. Turner, when no such approval existed. They were also told to say the company had incredible growth potential and would go public within a year to a year and a half.

 

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 .

Why we need a blog

Published
by
Jon
on July 31, 2007
in Crime, Energy, Polar Bears and Traffic
. 3 Comments

Because many of us are having conversations about the same subjects - and this blog might help in aggregating those little conversations - to find consensus and a larger, clearer voice. Here are the issues that I find myself discussing, often, with neighbors:

  •  traffic on Caton Avenue
    • noise
    • safety
    • pollution
  • Green energy issues -
    • solar paneles
    • insulation
    • other  ways to save money, and make the neighborhood a nicer, healthier place to live (and to stop global warming, which will eventually cause us to be overrun by polar bears)
  • crime
    • this seems - at the moment - more an issue for people on the (eastern)?) end of the parade ground - Parade Place, etc.
  • Environmental health and safety issues
    • the fuel pipelines which are underneath us
    • the possibility of a breast cancer cluster in Kensington

So - I think that’s a starting point.

Jon

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