20th ANNIVERSARY - 9/11 Attack on America

"American Muslims remember how 9/11 changed America as they knew it" PBS NewsHour 9/6/2021

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SUMMARY:  This week, the PBS NewsHour is marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with stories examining some of the ways that day transformed the nation and the world.  Amna Nawaz begins our coverage with a look at the effect on millions of American Muslims.

 

 

"Middletown lost the most residents on 9/11 after NYC.  Here’s how the community is healing" PBS NewsHour 9/7/2021

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SUMMARY:  Ali Rogin returns to Middletown, a New Jersey town where she grew up that was disproportionately affected by the 9/11 attacks in 2001, to see how residents and neighbors coped over the past two decades.

"Remembering the 40 heroes aboard Flight 93 and how they thwarted 9/11 hijackers" PBS NewsHour 9/8/2021

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SUMMARY:  Since 2001, a great deal of attention has been paid to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon.  But less so for Flight 93.  The U.S. Capitol was the likely target of where hijackers had planned to crash the plane.  Instead, passengers and crew forced the plane down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania — now an important touchstone site in the community.  William Brangham reports.

 

"How 9/11 weighs heavy on the generation born after the 2001 attacks" PBS NewsHour 9/8/2021

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SUMMARY:  PBS NewsHour's Student Reporting Labs network of high school journalism programs across the country gathered the reflections of teenagers to explore the legacy of 9/11 on their generation.  They present the voices of young Americans who were born after Sept. 11, 2001, and reveal how their lives were shaped by it.

 

 

"New York’s 9/11 first responders are battling a new kind of mass trauma" PBS NewsHour 9/9/2021

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SUMMARY:  For our endeavor to mark the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, John Yang spoke to first responders and medical workers who have lived and worked through both the attacks and have also more recently seen the mass trauma from COVID-19 in the city that was the epicenter of both: New York.

 

 

"Flight 77 crashed just below Robert Hogue’s Pentagon office.  Here’s his story" PBS NewsHour 9/9/2021

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SUMMARY:  PBS NewsHour's broadcast studio is just a few miles from the Pentagon here in Washington [DC].  On 9/11, that iconic structure designed to project American military might was struck clear out of the blue, just like the twin towers.  184 people died both in the building and on American Flight 77, excluding the hijackers.  But many more escaped.  We hear from Robert Hogue, one of the people who made it out.

 

 

"How the attacks of 9/11 reshaped America’s role in the world" PBS NewsHour 9/10/2021

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SUMMARY:  This week PBS NewsHour has been marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by exploring how they have impacted the U.S. at home and abroad.  Judy Woodruff leads our latest conversation on the ways the 9/11 attacks shaped American foreign policy over the last two decades.

 

 

"A photographer’s view of 9/11 from across the river" PBS NewsHour 9/11/2021

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SUMMARY:  On the morning of September 11th, photojournalist Jennifer Brown raced down to the waterfront in her town of Jersey City, NJ.  Directly across the river from the World Trade Center, Brown photographed the attacks for the former Star-Ledger, now NJ Advance Media.  She spoke to Hari Sreenivasan about the sights, sounds and emotions from her vantage point, and what it was like to capture a moment that changed history.

 

 

"20 years after 9/11, Dearborn market helps unify Arab community" PBS NewsHour 9/11/2021

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SUMMARY:  The attacks of 9/11 fueled Islamophobia, and increased incidents of hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs.  NewsHour Weekend’s Christopher Booker reports on how the events of 9/11 were a catalyst for an Arab community in metropolitan Detroit to unite and combat stereotypes by building a stronger cultural identity through food.

 

 

"20 years later, a remembrance for the NYFD’s fallen chaplain" PBS NewsHour 9/12/2021

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SUMMARY:  When the two towers fell and the New York Fire Department rushed in to save victims, Father Mychal Judge, chaplain of the NYFD, entered the burning buildings, too: he prayed in the lobby for victims and first responders. One of the many searing images from 9/11 is Father Judge's body being carried out of the rubble. In remembrance, this animated segment from our partners at StoryCorps is told by his close friend, Father Michael Duffy.

AMERICA - 9/11/2001 Never Forget

JUSTICE IN AMERICA - The Eric Garner Shooting

"What’s at stake in hearing for NYPD officer who caused Eric Garner’s death" PBS NewsHour 5/21/2019

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SUMMARY:  Eric Garner’s 2014 death at the hands of New York City police sparked national outrage and helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement.  The police officer at the center of the case is now facing an administrative hearing, although it is not expected to call for significant penalties.  Amna Nawaz reports and talks to Jim Dwyer of The New York Times, who has been following the story and the hearing.

THE MET - Donor Accountability

"How the Met is handling dilemma of donor accountability" PBS NewsHour 5/16/2019

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SUMMARY:  Pressure is increasingly being applied to institutions benefiting from philanthropy to be accountable for their funding sources.  Lately, the opioid epidemic has highlighted that dilemma: New York's famed Metropolitan Museum of Art [The Met] is the latest museum to turn down money from a family linked with the manufacturing of OxyContin.  Jeffrey Brown talks to the Met's president and CEO, Daniel Weiss.

JUNK SCIENCE - The Anti-Vax Movement

The Anti-Vax Movement is putting OTHER people at risk, including entire communities.  These people are just science deniers which are willing to put their own children and other children at risk.

"Amid measles outbreak, NYC health officials strive to promote vaccination, dispel myths" PBS NewsHour 4/10/2019

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SUMMARY:  The U.S. is battling one of the largest outbreaks of measles in decades, with 465 cases confirmed nationwide and 78 new cases in the last week alone.  New York City alone has 285 confirmed cases since last fall.  Dr. Oxiris Barbot, commissioner of its Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, talks to Judy Woodruff about efforts to work with the community to promote vaccination and dispel myth.

AMAZON - Nixes NYC Headquarters

"Political, business dynamics prompt ‘stunning reversal’ on Amazon NYC headquarters" PBS NewsHour 2/14/2019

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SUMMARY:  Amazon abruptly announced Thursday that it will not build a headquarters in New York, after some local politicians expressed strong opposition toward the company’s plan.  The “stunning reversal” is a major blow to the politicians who helped broker the deal, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.  Judy Woodruff talks to J. David Goodman of The New York Times.

ART - Met’s ‘Delacroix’ Exhibit

"The Met’s ‘Delacroix’ exhibit shows the artist in full" PBS NewsHour 12/4/2018

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SUMMARY:  “Delacroix,” a retrospective of the 19th century French painter Eugène Delacroix, is a blockbuster show running this month at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  An ambitious Romantic, Delacroix is known for such paintings as “Women of Algiers” and is considered a key bridge to the Impressionist movement.  Jeffrey Brown reports from the Met in New York City, where he speaks with curator Asher Miller.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION - Modeled After "The Godfather"

The Trump White House is the headquarters for the Mob headed by "Don" Trump.



The Godfather

RETHINKING COLLEGE - Low-Income Students

"Filling in this perception gap can help low-income students succeed" PBS NewsHour 5/1/2018

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SUMMARY:  For many students at LaGuardia Community College in New York, making it from the first day of school to graduation is a struggle.  And they’re not alone.  Part of this national problem?  We don't have a good idea of who's going to college, and the ways their complex lives and extra costs can trip them up.  Hari Sreenivasan reports as part of our series Rethinking College.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Gail Mellow points to LaGuardia undergraduates like Diamond Stanback to bring attention to what she says is a misconception of the nation’s college students.

Your average student isn’t what most Americans think of as a college student.  Is there a gap here in our conception of what a college student is and the reality of what you see everyday?

GAIL MELLOW, LaGuardia Community College:  There’s such an enormous gap between who goes to college in the United States and our very old and stereotyped image.  More than half of all American college students, undergraduates, go to community colleges.

More than half of those can’t go full-time.  About a quarter of our students are working more than 30 hours a week to make ends meet.  More than half of them are living at home with parents.  So, the idea of college as being this time away, right after high school, it’s not true.

IN AMERICA - Immigrants Being Killed

COMMENT:  This is a not only a story about immigrants, it is a story about greed.  A company who wants to save money (bigger profits) by hiring people off-the-books THEN lying about it AND killing people.  ALSO, the police are negligent for NOT fully investigating a murder and cover up.

"Treated Like Trash" by Kiera Feldman (Voice of America), ProPublica 5/4/2018

A death.  A cover-up.  An immigrant meets a terrible end in the Bronx.

This story was co-published with Voice of America.

The body of the young man lay in the middle of Jerome Avenue beneath the elevated train tracks, the scene lit by the neon blue sign above the shuttered El Caribe restaurant.  A garbage truck sat mid-turn at the otherwise deserted intersection in the Bronx. 

Emergency medical personnel arrived, records show, and pronounced the young man dead at 5:08 a.m.  on Nov. 7, 2017.

The police came, too.  Officers taped off the scene, and interviewed the truck driver and his assistant, according to records and interviews.  The driver and helper, according to the police report, said the dead man was a stranger who had inexplicably jumped on the truck’s passenger side running board, lost his grip and was run over.  The initial police report left blank the spot for the young man’s name.

Within hours, a Bronx News12 reporter said neighbors thought the victim was “a homeless man that they’ve seen in the area.”  By afternoon, he was “a daredevil homeless man” in the Daily News.

The garbage truck belonged to Sanitation Salvage, among the largest commercial trash haulers in the city.  A company supervisor eventually came to retrieve the truck and take it back to the company yard.  Then, according to workers told about the night’s events, it was promptly sent back out without so much as a cleaning.

Two miles south of the accident, in a Bronx apartment off the Grand Concourse, a mother waited for her son.  Hadiatou Barry, a Guinean immigrant, had come to the Bronx for a better life for her family.  Her eldest son, Mouctar Diallo, 21, had a bed in the living room of their apartment.  The young man often worked nights, and with the sun coming up should have been home asleep.  But his bed remained empty.

Soon enough, Hadiatou Barry got the worst sort of news, a double-barreled blow of devastation and insult.

Mouctar Diallo's nighttime job had been as an informal helper on garbage trucks owned by Sanitation Salvage, and the truck he’d been working on that night had killed him.  Then, she learned, the truck’s driver and main helper — men who’d known him for more than a year and paid him off-the-books for his help hauling trash to the curb — had claimed not to know him.  The rest of the city now knew her son only as a homeless person.

“He is my son, and I want the truth for him,” Hadiatou Barry said in a recent interview.  “In order for it to not happen to somebody else.”

The truth of Mouctar Diallo's death is that the authorities investigating the accident did not learn that he was a worker on the truck for at least two months, and that when they did, they took no action against the driver and helper who had lied to police.  The Business Integrity Commission, the New York City agency charged with oversight of the commercial garbage industry, allowed both the driver and main helper to keep working.  The police and Bronx prosecutors closed their investigation with no criminal charges.

Last Friday, Sean Spence, the Sanitation Salvage driver who authorities say ran over Diallo and lied about it, struck and killed another man, 72–year-old Leo Clarke.  Clarke, walking with a cane, was crossing in the middle of a Bronx block Friday evening when he was crushed by the 40-ton truck.  A police investigation is underway, and Spence now has been suspended from driving for Sanitation Salvage.

“Oh my God,” Hadiatou Barry said when told of Spence’s involvement in the second fatality.

The New York Police Department said lying to the police was not a crime.  The department maintains it did a thorough investigation, collecting witness statements, 911 calls and videotape from the scene.  The police, a spokesman said, had no authority to investigate the operations of a private sanitation company.

A spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney said the Business Integrity Commission had made no criminal referral to prosecutors about the conduct of Sanitation Salvage’s employees and thus prosecutors had no cause to investigate further.

The Business Integrity Commission’s spokesperson said the commission was alerted to the possibility that the November death involved a worker in early January, during a meeting with labor advocates about conditions at Sanitation Salvage.  The fact that it was Diallo who had been killed had been an open secret among the workers for months.  Commission officials said they then confronted Spence and his chief helper, Chris Bourke, and that the two men confessed to having invented the tale of an unknown pedestrian jumping on the truck.

The commission spokesperson said the agency lacked the power to suspend the driver on its own.  It said Spence was suspended after the second death because the commission asked the company to do so, and Sanitation Salvage complied.

Asked why the commission did not make that kind of request immediately after finding that a driver in a fatal accident had lied to police, a spokesperson declined to comment.

Several attempts to contact Spence were not successful.

Sanitation Salvage did not respond to multiple requests for comment over several weeks.

In an interview, Bourke, the main helper on the truck that killed Diallo, claimed not to know where the tale of the daredevil homeless man had come from.  He said he only talked briefly to police, and couldn’t remember what he told them.  Diallo, he said, “popped out of nowhere.”

To this day, Hadiatou Barry and former colleagues of Mouctar at Sanitation Salvage say they are not confident they know the truth about how Mouctar died.  Helpers are not supposed to ride on the front running boards, workers say.  They walk the street, haul trash to the curb and ride the back of the truck.

Every night in New York, an army of private garbage trucks from more than 250 sanitation companies sets out across the five boroughs picking up the trash from all manner of businesses.  Racing to complete long and often circuitous routes, the trucks crisscross the city at breakneck speeds.  The human toll is substantial: Since 2010, there have been 33 deaths attributed to private garbage trucks across the city.

Sanitation Salvage trucks, now involved in two deaths in six months, have failed federal safety inspections at a rate that’s four times the national average.  A Department of Labor investigation found that the company had failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages and that workers pulled 18-hour days.  Drivers are so overtaxed that they hire additional helpers — often young men off the street — to try and complete their routes on time.

Mouctar Diallo was one of those, known at Sanitation Salvage as “third men.”  It is unclear when Diallo arrived in the Bronx — the borough has one of greatest concentrations of Guinean immigrants in America — but he’d begun working for Sanitation Salvage in the late spring of 2016, according to interviews with co-workers.  He first worked with a driver named Timothy Belgrave, and later with Vernando Smith.  Diallo, nicknamed “Gotto,” was beloved for his intrepidness — he wasn’t afraid of rats — and the way he made everyone laugh.  He’d been working with Spence and Bourke for over a year.

“Almost everybody there would know Gotto,” Smith, the former driver, said of workers and management at Sanitation Salvage.  “They would see him on the truck.  Maybe they didn’t know his name but they knew his face.  He was the only African who worked for the company."

Such third men, according to interviews with 15 current and former workers, often got paid off the books, either directly by the company or out of the pockets of drivers and main helpers.  The drivers and main helpers were then sometimes reimbursed by the company, according to current and former workers.  Such informal payments were a testament to how impossibly long the routes were.  A typical route at another company in the Bronx would be around 200 stops.  At Sanitation Salvage, many routes had close to 1,000 stops, if not more. 

Third men could make anywhere from $30 to $80 a night, for shifts as long as 18 or 20 hours, according to workers.

In 2015, after an investigation, the Department of Labor concluded that Sanitation Salvage owed workers $385,000 in unpaid overtime over the past three years.  Sanitation Salvage refused to pay, claiming the workers were seeking to be paid for time actually spent hanging out with friends.  When the department chose not to take the company to court, the issue ended.

Bourke, the helper who first recruited Diallo off the street, said of the long hours and demanding routes, “If you do the math, accidents will happen.”  Waste and recycling work is the fifth-most fatal job in America.

“It’s not just about Gotto’s death,” Bourke said.  “To work like this is unhuman.  They’ll make you work like a slave.  You can do 18 hours one day and, say, go home and get four hours of sleep and come back and do 12 hours.”

Voice of America and ProPublica sent Sanitation Salvage and its lawyers a detailed set of questions weeks ago — about Diallo’s death, the false account given by the driver and helper, the working conditions at the company, and its trouble with the Department of Labor.  The company did not respond.

This week, the Business Integrity Commission said the second death and the accounts of dangerous working conditions had prompted an investigation that could result in halting the company’s operations or installing a monitor.

However, a coalition of labor, safe streets and Bronx community organizations are calling for an immediate suspension of Sanitation Salvage’s license.

“We take these workers’ allegations very seriously,” the commission said.  “If the results of the investigation merit these actions or any others, they will be taken immediately.”

WAR ON ISIS - Adapting to Inspire

aka The ISIS Army is loosing but the ideological war continues.

"Attempted pipe-bomb attack sparks panic in New York subway" PBS NewsHour 12/11/2017

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SUMMARY:  Emergency crews swarmed the streets near Times Square this morning after a man detonated a homemade pipe bomb in the New York subway, creating a panic during rush hour.  The suspected attacker, identified as 27-year-old Akayed Ullah, was taken to the hospital with minor burns.  Officials believe he was inspired by the Islamic State group.  William Brangham reports.

"Counterterrorism chief says ISIS adapting to inspire, not control attacks" PBS NewsHour 12/11/2017

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SUMMARY:  What do officials know about the attempted morning attack of a New York subway and the motives of the alleged bomber?  Nicholas Rasmussen, outgoing director of the National Counterterrorism Center, joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the difficulties of preventing such attacks and the chances of another 9/11-style event.

MANHATTAN TRANSFER - Nutmeg and New York City

"How nutmeg made its way from 15th-century infamy to the Thanksgiving table" PBS NewsHour 11/22/2017

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SUMMARY:  Now a Thanksgiving staple, nutmeg, used to be worth its weight in gold.  The spice, originally grown only on the island of Banda Rhun, was so attractive to the Dutch East India Company that it traded its ownership of land that is now New York City for sole control of its trade.  Why was our favorite eggnog garnish so valuable to 15th-century explorers?  Special correspondent Mike Cerre has the answer.

NEW YORK - 5 Years After Sandy

"Storm-proofing New York is slow going five years since Superstorm Sandy" PBS NewsHour 11/1/2017

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SUMMARY:  Superstorm Sandy flooded coastline communities and led to billions of dollars in damage.  Five years on, the city of New York has tried to mitigate the impact of a future disaster, from raising houses to building seawalls.  But turning ideas into reality has been slow and complicated.  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on how the city is building resiliency and the hurdles that remain.

TERRORISM - New York City Attack

"Suspect in custody in NYC after 'lone-wolf' truck attack" PBS NewsHour 10/31/2017

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SUMMARY:  At least eight people are dead and more than a dozen injured after a rented pickup truck plowed into a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center Memorial in Manhattan on Tuesday.  A 29-year-old male has been taken into custody and Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed that they believe it to be an act of terror.  Special correspondent Marcia Biggs talks with Judy Woodruff from New York.

"Fatal NYC truck incident called an act of terror, here's what it has in common with recent European attacks" PBS NewsHour 10/31/2017

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SUMMARY:  After a deadly truck attack killed eight in Manhattan on Tuesday, multiple news networks have identified the driver as Sayfullo Saipov of Tampa, Florida.  John Yang speaks with Lorenzo Vidino of George Washington University about how the latest incident may fit into recent acts of extremism in Europe.

"New York suspect reportedly planned attack for a long time.  What more could law enforcement do to prevent terrorism?" PBS NewsHour 11/1/2017

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SUMMARY:  The suspect in the deadly New York attack, Sayfullo Saipov, was charged by the federal government for providing support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization.  Special correspondent Marcia Biggs reports on how investigators are piecing together a clearer picture of what led to the attack, and Hari Sreenivasan talks to retired FBI counterterror official Jeffrey Ringel.

NEWSHOUR SHARES - Gulliver's Gate

"Artists remake the world's wonders in lilliputian scale" PBS NewsHour 8/29/2017

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SUMMARY:  In our NewsHour Shares moment of the day, a team of 600 artists from eight countries have teamed up for an exhibit in Times Square that displays the world's most iconic landmarks in miniature.  Gulliver's Gate is an interactive exhibit where guests can experience everything from India's Taj Mahal to Stonehenge.

360-VIDEO:  An up-close view of one miniature world's tiny tourist destinations

PULITZER PRIZE - ProPublica and New York Daily News

"ProPublica, New York Daily News Win Pulitzer Gold Medal" ProPublica 4/10/2017

ProPublica and the New York Daily News today won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, honoring their joint investigation on abuses in the New York City Police Department's enforcement of the nuisance abatement law.  The award is the fourth Pulitzer Prize for ProPublica and the 11th for the Daily News.

THE STORY:

"The NYPD Is Kicking People Out of Their Homes, Even If They Haven't Committed a Crime" by Sarah Ryley for ProPublica and the New York Daily News, 2/4/2016

THE MORNING OF MAY 4, 2011, Jameelah El-Shabazz watched out the window of her Bronx apartment as a team of police officers fanned across the rooftop of Banana Kelly High School?  The 43-year-old mother of five said she didn't think much of the scene — drug raids were common in her neighborhood.

As she did most mornings, El-Shabazz said she went to her bedroom to feed her newborn son and to worship before a shrine of candles and carvings arranged atop her wardrobe?  Her most treasured object was a wooden tray her father had brought her from Nigeria?  A deity of the Ifa religion, which she practices as a high priestess, was carved on its surface and covered in a residue of finely crushed eggshells?  El-Shabazz used the substance, known in her faith as efun powder, to cleanse the shrine?  She took fresh clumps of the powder from a cup and began to break it up in her hands.

That's when the narcotics officers kicked in the door.

Her baby shrieked as the gun-wielding officers tore apart rooms looking for PCP, which an anonymous informant had claimed was being sold from the apartment?  They ordered everyone to lie on the ground, then turned to her eldest son, Akin Shakoor, who along with another son was having frequent run-ins with police?  El-Shabazz said the officers told Shakoor if he didn't give up the drugs, “they would take all of my children away from me and make sure that I was put out of my apartment.”

As evidence, police seized 45 paper cups of the eggshell powder, the sacred wooden tray, and a small amount of marijuana?  They arrested El-Shabazz, her teenaged sister Najah El-Shabazz, and Shakoor, then 21, and took them outside past the handcuffed residents of four other apartments that were raided that morning.

Najah was released, court filings say, but Jameelah El-Shabazz and Shakoor sat in cells on Rikers Island for the next week awaiting the results of police lab tests?  Finally, the results confirmed what she had told the officers all along: the wooden tray and the 45 paper cups of powder were drug-free?  Jameelah El-Shabazz and Shakoor were released from Rikers and fully exonerated.

But El-Shabazz's battle with New York's legal system was only beginning?  That September, another of her sons called to say the police were back, this time with a lawyer and a court order to seal the Bronx apartment?  Her entire family had to leave — immediately.

El-Shabazz was facing a nuisance abatement action, a little-known type of lawsuit that gives the city the power to shut down places it claims are being used for illegal purposes?  The case against her was based on the same drug allegations that had been dismissed in May?  Incredibly, the filing, signed by a New York Police Department attorney, stated, “recovered during the execution of the search warrant were forty-five (45) paper cups of cocaine.”

The nuisance abatement law was created in the 1970's to combat the sex industry in Times Square?  Since then, its use has been vastly expanded, commonly targeting apartments and mom-and-pop bodegas even as the city's crime rate has reached historic lows?  The NYPD files upward of 1,000 such cases a year, nearly half of them against residences.

The process has remarkably few protections for people facing the loss of their homes.

Three-quarters of the cases begin with secret court orders that lock residents out until the case is resolved?  The police need a judge's signoff, but residents aren't notified and thus have no chance to tell their side of the story until they've already been locked out for days?  And because these are civil actions, residents also have no right to an attorney.

Perhaps most fundamentally, residents can be permanently barred from their homes without being convicted or even charged with a crime.

A man was prohibited from living in his family home and separated from his young daughter over gambling allegations that were dismissed in criminal court?  A diabetic man said he was forced to sleep on subways and stoops for a month after being served with a nuisance abatement action over low-level drug charges that also never led to a conviction?  Meanwhile, his elderly mother was left with no one to care for her.

In partnership with ProPublica, the Daily News reviewed 516 residential nuisance abatement actions filed in the Supreme Courts from Jan?  1, 2013 through June 30, 2014?  Our analysis also reviewed the outcomes of the underlying criminal cases against hundreds of people who were banned from homes as a result of these actions.

• 173 of the people who gave up their leases or were banned from homes were not convicted of a crime, including 44 people who appear to have faced no criminal prosecution whatsoever.

• Overall, tenants and homeowners lost or had already left homes in three-quarters of the 337 cases for which the Daily News and ProPublica were able to determine the outcome?  The other cases were either withdrawn without explanation, were missing settlements, or are still active.

• In at least 74 cases, residents agreed to warrantless searches of their homes, sometimes in perpetuity, as one of the conditions of being allowed back in?  Others agreed to automatically forfeit their leases if they were merely accused of wrongdoing in the future.

• The toll of nuisance abatement actions falls almost exclusively on minorities, our analysis showed?  Over 18 months, nine of 10 homes subjected to such actions were in minority communities?  We identified the race of 215 of the 297 people who were barred from homes in nuisance abatement battles?  Only five are white.

Runa Rajagopal of the Bronx Defenders, who leads a division that represents people in the civil courts, called the practice a “collective punishment” on the entire family of those accused of a crime, “used by the NYPD to exert power and control largely over communities of color.”

The NYPD declined to answer any questions about specific cases.

Officials emphasized that because these are civil cases, they're handled separately from criminal cases and thus have lower standards of proof.

“The law does not require criminal conviction, does not require [a] particular disposition of a criminal case, does not even require an arrest of anyone,” said Lawrence Byrne, the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters in an interview with the Daily News last year.

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Assistant Commissioner Robert Messner, who heads the NYPD's Civil Enforcement Unit, concurred, saying, “You have to remember, it's an action about a place.  It's not about people.”

The department's chief spokesman, Stephen Davis, said in a statement that the suits are intended to prevent crimes from reoccurring at 'repeat offender' locations.  “Each nuisance abatement order and settlement is signed-off by a judge.” Davis added.

Though a nuisance abatement threatened to force El-Shabazz out of her home, she doesn't appear to have been the intended target.  Two of El-Shabazz's sons were already known to police when her apartment was raided in 2011.

Akin Shakoor had been arrested at the building at least twice before, in 2009, for misdemeanor possession of drugs.  He pleaded both cases down to non-criminal violations.  Her other son, Jehadh Shakoor, was arrested in the neighborhood with marijuana in 2008, and with PCP in 2009, and convicted of misdemeanor possession charges.  (El-Shabazz said the officers also often harassed a third son, who was an honor student in high school and is now in college.)

The narcotics officer behind nuisance abatement cases against El-Shabazz and others, Detective Peter Valentin, has his own history.  The Daily News earlier identified him as the most-sued officer on the NYPD's 35,000-member force.  Valentin was put on desk duty in 2014 for allegedly fabricating buys from confidential informants.

The NYPD has embraced nuisance abatement actions as part of its controversial “Broken Windows” strategy of aggressively pursuing low-level offenders to prevent more serious ones.

This decades-old approach — which has introduced large numbers of black and Hispanic New Yorkers to the criminal justice system through stop-and-frisks, summonses and misdemeanor arrests — has touched off waves of protests in recent years.

Though little heard of, nuisance abatement actions have long been a key component of the strategy.  William Bratton, fresh into his first tenure as the city's top law enforcement official, hailed such actions in a 1995 white paper on quality-of-life policing as “probably the most powerful civil tool available to the police,” allowing officers to “sweep down on a location and close it without warning.”

Since Bratton wrote those words, the number of nuisance abatement actions filed each year has quintupled.

Bratton was hired back as police commissioner in 2014.  While he has significantly reformed other aspects of quality-of-life policing, the department does not appear to have adjusted its policies when it comes to nuisance abatement actions. 

Sidney Baumgarten, the former city official who commissioned the drafting of the nuisance abatement law in the 1970s, said it is now being abused.  He is alarmed by the sheer volume of cases, especially those aimed at households in which no one has been convicted of a crime.

“I think it's wrong.  I think it's unconstitutional.  I think it's over-reaching,” he said.  “They're giving up their constitutional rights.  And why?  Because they're afraid they're going to be evicted from their home, with their children.  There's a certain amount of compulsion, and threat and coercion, by the very nature of the process they're using.”

In most other cities, officials can't initiate a nuisance abatement action unless they've given landlords the opportunity to solve problems first.  Authorities can only restrict access to a home after a court process that involves all parties.

But in New York, the NYPD begins nearly every nuisance abatement action by making an emergency appeal to a civil court judge without the landlord or tenant present, alleging the dangers a residence poses.  Affidavits detailing three instances of a particular crime, such as drug dealing or gambling, in a one-year period are enough for a judge to authorize an action.

The allegations can be based entirely on the work of confidential informants or undercover officers and need not have led to arrests.  The Daily News and ProPublica identified 17 nuisance abatement actions against residences and 64 against businesses in which no arrests were documented.

When they file a case, the police always ask the judge for permission to lock out the occupants of the residence until the case is resolved.  These requests for what's known as “temporary closing orders” state that the location is being used in an “ongoing illegal manner,” and that the “public health, safety and welfare require immediate abatement of the public nuisance.”

However, the NYPD's court filings routinely do not describe the alleged “ongoing” illegal activity that would justify immediately throwing people out of their homes.  Instead, the Daily News and ProPublica analysis found, police filings describe purported offenses that occurred, on average, at least five months earlier for businesses and six months earlier for residences.

Judge Fern Fisher, the deputy chief administrative judge for the city's courts, expressed concern.  “If it's six months old, then it's not all that much of an emergency that you can't wait three or four days for the (other) party to come in and tell their side of the story,” she said.

Prompted by the Daily News and ProPublica's findings, Fisher issued an advisory notice to judges on Feb. 1 that recommended limiting the granting of temporary closing orders of homes before the tenant or homeowner has come to court.  The notice also cautioned against granting such orders when the evidence of alleged illegal activity is old, or based on “statements with multiple layers of hearsay” and the word of confidential informants.

The Daily News and ProPublica found temporary closing orders were granted in 75 percent of the residential cases examined.  Some judges granted the requests nearly every time.  Queens Judge Orin Kitzes signed them in 235 out of 236 cases that came before him.  Others, such as Manhattan Judge Michael Stallman, routinely crossed out that portion of applications.  Stallman said he does this because the NYPD's attorneys never have any evidence of ongoing illegal activity or information about the outcomes of the underlying criminal cases.

“I can't remember the last time that I've ever had information about the disposition of a criminal case,” he said.  “I've repeatedly indicated that it's difficult for me to evaluate a civil case where I don't even know whether the criminal case is pending.”

NYPD's Messner said his lawyers “talk to” the precinct officers to confirm the location still poses a problem, but don't include this information in court filings for the sake of efficiency.

“The judges don't want to read tomes,” he said.  “We could do 100 cases a year instead of 800 cases a year, with, you know, tremendous levels of detail.  But we wouldn't end up with a better product.  We'd just end up helping a lot less people.”
 The NYPD's Byrne said when officers serve temporary closing orders, they can use their discretion to determine if certain family members can stay.

By law, people affected by temporary closing orders have a right to a court appearance within three business days.  But they could wait as long as five days if their court date would otherwise fall on a weekend.  At the courthouse, the NYPD's attorney usually offers to settle the case without going to trial — often by requiring tenants to bar specific people from their homes or to give up their leases.  Then the closing order is lifted.

But if tenants decide to fight the case, they may not be allowed to go home until the case is resolved.  Though cases rarely go to trial, settlement negotiations can take weeks.

Luis Rivera, 58, was shut out of his apartment in the Bronx for nearly a month in 2013 while he fought his case.  It alleged the requisite three violations: Five months earlier, police said a confidential informant had bought heroin at the apartment on two occasions.  Shortly thereafter, during a raid on the apartment, police said they found seven small paper envelopes of white powder, a marijuana cigarette and two gravity knives.  They arrested Rivera, along with two other men who were staying with him.

Rivera was described by people who knew him as having significant mental and physical impairments.  One woman, who asked not to be named, said she let Rivera sleep on a chair in her studio apartment after the nuisance abatement action left him homeless.  She said the officers should have known he was too sick for the streets.

“He was not doing good at all,” she said.  “He had cancer; he was on the transplant list.  You could tell he was very sick.  There were times when he didn't remember what was what.  He would shit on himself and everything.”

In court filings, Rivera said he did not understand what was happening when the police arrested him a second time as they served him with the nuisance abatement action.  When he was released, he simply went home, then was arrested a third time for violating a temporary closing order.

“My understanding was that I could go back to my apartment because I was given my keys.  I was handed some papers but I am not able to read or understand them on my own,” he said in an affidavit filed through his attorney, Rajagopal.  “I am still very confused as to how or why the police were able to evict me from my home without a hearing or trial.”

The criminal charges against Rivera and the other two men were eventually dismissed, and Rivera was allowed back in his apartment after signing a settlement with strict terms limiting who could visit.

He died last September.

TRUMP LAND - Protecting Trump's Phallic Symbol

"The towering challenge of protecting the Trumps in New York" PBS NewsHour 1/18/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  When Donald Trump moves into the White House, Trump Tower will still be a home of the first family.  Securing the skyscraper presents unprecedented challenges, not to mention traffic gridlock, a hardship on nearby businesses and a fight over who should be paying the sky-high costs.  The NewsHour's Rhana Natour reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  With just a couple days left until the inauguration, much of the nation's attention is on President-elect Trump's move into the White House.

But Midtown Manhattan residents are still focusing on the gold skyscraper of Trump Tower, which will continue to be a home for the Trump family.

Producer Rhana Natour looks at the unprecedented challenges of securing that residence and the financial fallout.

RHANA NATOUR, Producer:  This is the new reality along the storied Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, dogs, chains, and intense security.

The President-elect has used Trump Tower as a base for transition meetings since the election, and while he will relocate to the White House after the inaugural, his wife, Melania, and 10-year-old son Barron plan to stay in Trump Tower through the end of the school year.

Evy Poumpouras is a former Secret Service agent.  For 12 years, she was part of the presidential detail for Presidents Obama, Clinton and both Bushes.

We are seeing delivery truck after delivery truck being searched in and out.  What is happening here?

EVY POUMPOURAS, Former Secret Service Agent:  So, we want to control what's coming into the area of Trump Tower.

And one of the biggest issues are large vehicles that can actually have large amounts of an explosive.  And a truck would be a perfect thing, a perfect IED, a vehicle device, to use.

So, what they will do is, you will typically have the vehicle stopped.  They will search the vehicle, make sure there's nothing inside the vehicle, underneath the vehicle, make sure it's clean.

RHANA NATOUR:  Trump Tower stretches 57 stories, with 26 floors of offices, three retail stores and hundreds of tenants.  It is also surrounded by other skyscrapers, compounding the security challenge.

EVY POUMPOURAS:  Right now, planes aren't allowed to fly over Trump Tower, same thing that happens over at the White House.  But then you have that variable.  He's up top.  He's high on the floor.  Planes are a concern.

RHANA NATOUR:  And, as technology evolves, there are ever greater risks.

EVY POUMPOURAS:  Drones.  Can somebody use a drone, not just to go up there and, you know what, I want to see the future president?  You can actually strap explosives, weapons to those drones, fly them up, and then cause harm in that way.

And then also even cyber-security, radiation, contamination in the air, chemical — any type of chemical airborne attack, that's also an issue.  The tower itself, one of the things we look at is what we call the H-VAC system, which is where the air intake system is.  That's super dangerous as well.

ASTRONAUT - The Book "Spaceman"

"How setbacks and failures shaped an improbable astronaut" PBS NewsHour 11/16/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  It's completely improbable that Mike Massimino actually became an astronaut.  With a fear of heights, impaired vision and difficulty with swimming, he calls his achievement a miracle, but his is a story of overcoming setbacks.  In his new book, “Spaceman,” Massimino details his long and difficult journey.  He talks with science correspondent Miles O'Brien.

MILES O'BRIEN (NewsHour):  Mike Massimino went to low-Earth orbit twice aboard the space shuttle, both times to repair the Hubble space telescope.  In his new book, “Spaceman,” he details the long and difficult journey he took to become an astronaut.

So, you're afraid of heights.

MICHAEL MASSIMINO, Author, “Spaceman”:  Yes, I still am.  I don't like this right here, Miles.  I'm a little worried.

MILES O'BRIEN:  You don't swim very well.

MICHAEL MASSIMINO:  No.  The hardest thing for me as an astronaut was to improve my swimming skills.

MILES O'BRIEN:  Vision was a problem, a real problem.

MICHAEL MASSIMINO:  Imagine being D.Q.ed because I couldn't see well enough.

MILES O'BRIEN:  And you barely got through the program at MIT.

MICHAEL MASSIMINO:  Yes.  Yes.  Yap.

MILES O'BRIEN:  So, really, it's completely improbable that you became an astronaut.  Right?

MICHAEL MASSIMINO:  Yes, yes, absolutely.

MILES O'BRIEN:  We met beside the shuttle Enterprise display at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City, his hometown.

It occurs to me, though, that the lessons you learned all along the way, then, dealing — coping and dealing with those setbacks, those failures, the resilience, are exactly what you need to go through to become an astronaut.

MICHAEL MASSIMINO:  Aha.  Now we're getting at something.

I think you're right, yes.  It's not a question of being the best at something or things coming easy to you, but it's being a person that can work with others and not give up.  And, for me, that was part of it too.

At every step of the way, when I had trouble, there were people that came in, in my life that helped me.  It's important to go seek help when you need it, and to give help when other people need it.  And that is really more important than coming in with a gigantic brain into the astronaut program.

PUBLIC SPACES - High Line Park

"Above Manhattan's bustle, a reshaped public space" PBS NewsHour 8/11/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In the mid-20th century, it was a railroad; now it's a public park.  Built in the 1930s, 30 feet above the streets of Manhattan, the High Line was crucial for transporting cargo.  But with the decline of rail transportation, it closed in 1980 and was abandoned.  Almost three decades later, it opened again -- this time, as a shared space for greenery, art and leisure.  Jeffrey Brown reports.

JAMES CORNER, Founder, James Corner Field Operations:  This is one of my favorite moments.  This is where these tracks crisscross.  It's called a frog.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Railroad tracks of old in a park that has helped changed contemporary thinking about cities and public spaces.

JAMES CORNER:  We amplify found conditions.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Recently, I visited New York's phenomenally successful High Line Park with its designer, landscape architect James Corner.

JAMES CORNER:  I think this is what a lot of people like.  They see this.  They have discovered a found object.  There's a sense of surprise, a sense of delight.  It's real and authentic.  It's not Disney.

JEFFREY BROWN:  And it really is real.

JAMES CORNER:  And people get a kick out of it, especially in the context of modern-day Manhattan.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The original railway tracks, 30 feet above street level, were built in the 1930s.  Trains carried meat, milk and other cargo, sometimes making deliveries direct to Manhattan companies.

After trains stopped running here — the last was in 1980 — the site wasted away, an eyesore that no one could figure out what to do with, until they did:  Create a new kind of public park.

Since its opening in 2009, the High Line has attracted millions of visitors and plenty of attention from other cities eager to recreate its magic.

James Corner's firm, James Corner Field Operations, worked on the High Line with architects Diller Scofidio and Renfro and famed Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf.

JAMES CORNER:  It was a huge effort and a big leap of faith, because the High Line was really perceived by a lot of people to be a liability, derelict, abandoned, dangerous, dark, drugs, crime.

NEW YORK CITY - The Rent Racket

"New York Isn’t Telling Tenants They May Be Protected From Big Rent Hikes" by Cezary Podkul, ProPublica 7/6/2016

Note:  This is also a Greed File.

Excerpt

Due to an error by state officials, rent limits on tens of thousands of New York City apartments were improperly removed.  Now, 20 years later, the state is relying on landlords to fix that problem.  What could go wrong?

In February of 2015, Lilian Piedra received a letter with devastating news: Her landlord was jacking up the rent for her four-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s Washington Heights from $2,100 a month to $3,500.

The notice did not say she faced eviction, but Piedra immediately understood that’s what it meant.  She and her husband were already struggling to raise three young children on her salary as a bank customer service representative and his as a parking garage manager.

“As soon as I received that letter I was crying for a whole week.  Every single day I was crying, even at work,” she recalled.

The prospect of much higher rent touched off months of sleepless nights for the Piedra family as they desperately searched for somewhere else to live.  The only apartment she found nearby was half the size for about the same price.  Her brother offered to let the family move into his house on Long Island, but Piedra knew that cramming nine people into a three-bedroom house was way too crowded.

“I saw myself living in a shelter,” Piedra said.  She ultimately refused to pay the higher rent and, within days, the landlord moved to evict her.

But just before a June 2015 hearing on the family’s eviction, their lawyer made a startling discovery.  Piedra was among tens of thousands of people who had been improperly excluded from a program that protects tenants from New York City’s exploding housing costs.  Raising her rent 67 percent was, in fact, illegal.  So was the resulting eviction.  She ended up staying in her place for $2,100 a month.

Others have not been nearly as fortunate.

The law that protected Piedra — rent stabilization — was tied to a tax break a previous owner had received for renovating the building.  Under a program created by a state law, owners benefiting from the taxpayer subsidy are obligated to limit annual rent increases to modest levels set by the city.

But due to a series of actions — and inactions — by a pivotal state regulator, the benefits of this program vanished for many New York City tenants.

Over two decades, owners of an estimated 50,000 apartments pocketed the tax break while charging market rents.  Tenants who couldn’t pay were forced out, deepening a shortage of affordable housing which Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledges is a “crisis.”

ProPublica has been examining what New York City gets for an estimated $1.6 billion in tax breaks it has granted to property owners and developers.