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The New York Times

November 30, 1998, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Failed by a System Meant to Help Her;
A Chronic Runaway's Journey Through a Foster Care Maze Ended in a Brutal Death at 14

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1971 words

Childhood was never an option for Marleny Cruz. At the age of 9, she was sent from her native Dominican Republic to live in New Jersey with her father, a man she would later say abused her. When Marleny was 10, her mother was killed in her homeland in an argument over drugs, cheating the young girl of the reunion she longed for. By her early teens, Marleny had felt the pull of drugs and had made several attempts at suicide.
And at 14, she was dead -- battered, sexually abused and left in a gutter in the Fordham section of the Bronx. Her body was not identified until late October, more than eight months after she was found and nearly buried as someone else's child.
It was a brutal end for a girl whose prophetic fear, friends said, was that nobody would notice if she was gone. In retrospect, it seems that she was destined for that final cruelty. Perhaps she was. But it was only the last indignity suffered by Marleny, whose concluding years were spent in a rough passage through New York City's foster care system, one that friends, relatives and foster parents say, seemed to fail her at almost every turn.
Marleny was shuffled from foster home to foster home and, in perhaps the bitterest turn for a girl so desperate for the security of a home, was denied the chance to live with a family who wanted to adopt her. As a result, she frequently ran away, eluding those who cared for her but were not equipped to keep her life from falling apart.
Marleny's case may be more extreme than most, but it is not altogether unusual. According to the Administration for Children's Services, which oversees the city's foster care system, about one-third of the 40,000 children in their charge are teen-agers, many of whom are chronic runaways.
Most of these children disappear for only a few days, agency officials say, often to see a boyfriend or girlfriend or relative.
In some cases, though, they said, a repeated pattern of running away signals a deeper problem, either in the child or in the child's placement.
Although agency officials deny that the handling of Marleny's case is representative, critics say stories like Marleny's underscore an all-too-common failure by both the city and the private agencies that manage the foster cases to either properly care for their most difficult wards -- referred to by the agency as AWOL's -- or keep track of them as they meander through the system.
"They need to change the system for these kids," said Alice McLeod, Marleny's last foster mother, adding that her efforts to place the girl in drug treatment or another specialized program were rebuffed by Graham-Windham, the private agency that handled her case.
"The caseworkers need to stay on the cases of these kids that run away, but a lot of the time they don't," Ms. McLeod said. "Often they just sit around and pass them off from foster home to foster home. Maybe now they will change the rules and do something right."
Two weeks ago, city officials said that a review of Marleny's case records at Graham-Windham shows "deficiencies in AWOL case practice procedures" at the private agency, which contracts with the city.
They added that they were reviewing Graham-Windham's current AWOL cases and had received a plan from the agency outlining ways to improve its tracking of runaways.
"The AWOL problem is one that greatly concerns us," said Leonora Wiener, a spokeswoman for the Administration for Children's Services, which says it has no way to calculate how many children in its care run away. "We are doing what we can to help reduce AWOL's."
Although the city would not provide details of Graham-Windham's plan, and the private agency forwarded all inquiries to the city, a city official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that it calls for caseworkers to communicate regularly with the police when a child is missing, a practice not now in use.
City and law enforcement officials say such weak links in oversight may have contributed not only to Marleny's remaining missing for more than eight months, but also to the police's inability to link her name to the body they found shortly after her disappearance.
"We found a body but didn't have a record of a missing person coinciding with it," said Sgt. Nick Vreeland, a Police Department spokesman. "We were lucky to have ever identified her."

Hopes for a Better Life Are Quickly Dashed
This final calamity was but the last of many to befall Marleny, according to police records, as well as interviews with the girl's family, friends and foster parents.
Marleny's life began to unravel almost from the moment her mother sent her to the United States, hoping to give her child a better life than her native Dominican Republic could provide. It was the end of 1993, shortly after the child's ninth birthday, and her father had agreed to take her in at his home in New Jersey.
But about six months later, Marleny abruptly returned to her mother after telling her great-aunt, Maria de la Cruz, that her father had been sexually abusing her, the police said. It was a claim that Marleny would make often in the years to follow, both to friends and to the authorities. While the charges were investigated, they were never substantiated, police records show.
The girl returned to New York on Sept. 15, 1994, moving into Mrs. de la Cruz's apartment in the Bronx and waiting for her mother to join them. But a few months later, Marleny received word that her mother had been killed in a car accident.
At the graveside, Marleny found out from other relatives that her mother had actually been shot to death during an argument over drugs.
"She was depressed and she cried," said Mrs. de la Cruz, adding that Marleny's depression concerned her so much that she began sending her to a therapist. "She asked why there were bad people in the world."

Truancy, Thievery And Suicide Attempts
But after five months, Marleny refused to go. As more time passed, the girl who once loved to dance to flamenco music with her aunt became sullen and distant. By 1997, according to police records, Marleny, then 13, had stopped going to school and had begun to steal from her aunt.
She also began running away, and was hospitalized after several attempts at suicide. Mrs. de la Cruz looked to the Administration for Children's Services for help. "I decided that I couldn't continue like this," she said.
However, Marleny's problems remained after she was placed in the Graham-Windham group home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., six months later. Most noticeably, she continued to run away, an administrator of the home said. He said the plan was to place her in foster care as soon as something opened.
Marleny did not wait. Friends said that in late September, she ended up at an apartment in Yonkers and found what would prove to be one of the few bright moments in her short life.
Alecia Lawrence, 16, had gone to the apartment to see friends and noticed Marleny in the corner. They began to talk, Marleny pouring out her childhood and crying that no one cared whether she lived or died.
"She was this abused kid being shipped from home to home, who didn't really care about herself and didn't think anybody else did, either," Alecia said. "But something was telling me to bring her to my house. All she needed was love."
Marleny followed Alecia home, and soon the two girls were inseparable, singing in the bathroom to rhythm and blues artists like Mary J. Blige and hanging out so much together they became known, with two other girls, as the Four Musketeers.
Alecia's mother, Angela, decided that she should try to keep the child and possibly adopt her. But when she inquired about it, Mrs. Lawrence said, the agency told her it would be impossible because she had not been licensed as a foster parent; police documents in the case support her assertion. Mrs. Lawrence said the agency also discouraged her from adoption, saying the process was too long and cumbersome.
"I was going to keep her," said Mrs. Lawrence, whom Marleny called Mommy, "but they said there would be too much red tape."
Graham-Windham took Marleny away in the middle of December, placing her instead in the care of Aggie Johnson, a foster parent in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.
Just two days later, the girl vanished after borrowing money from Mrs. Johnson. Although police officers later found the child huddled in a Bronx stairwell, Mrs. Johnson said that the agency never told her and instead transferred the girl to yet one more foster home, Mrs. McLeod's.
Mrs. Johnson said she did not know what happened to the girl until she read news stories in October about her body being identified.
"It is one sad story after another," said Marsha R. Lowry, the director of Children's Rights, a nonprofit child-advocacy group that is suing the city over what it says is chronic mismanagement.
"Youngsters are simply placed wherever there is an open bed, with no particular care about the child's needs," Ms. Lowry said. "This is especially true when they are teen-agers, who are just written off."

Leaving on an Errand, Never to Return
For Marleny, Mrs. McLeod's home would be her last stop in foster care. Last Jan. 29, as had been the case so often before, the girl left on an errand and never returned. Mrs. McLeod said she reported the girl missing the next day and called the agency for months to see whether Marleny had been found. She was worried because Marleny was a fragile girl, easily impressed by older men in the neighborhood and often addled by drugs.
Officers in the 46th Precinct in the Bronx found the child at the home of Clara Cabreja, a friend of Marleny's mother, on Feb. 6. They then called Graham-Windham to report finding her and closed the case, the police said. But Graham-Windham maintained that it did not receive the call, city officials said.
In either case, workers at the agency never retrieved the girl or checked on what they wrongly assumed was a continuing police investigation into her disappearance, said the officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Marleny simply left the woman's home after a day or two and vanished forever from the foster care system set up to protect her.
Mrs. Cabreja said she did not report the child missing because Marleny often came by, but rarely stayed long. When Marleny did not return, Mrs. Cabreja said she assumed that the child was back at her foster home.
On Feb. 23, police officers found the body of a sexually abused and beaten girl near Valentine Avenue and 183d Street. The body was taken to a city morgue, where it remained unclaimed for two months, until a family said it was their missing daughter's.
The family was holding a wake when Bronx detectives showed up at the funeral home and told them that the young girl was not theirs; their daughter was in fact alive.
With no other leads on their Jane Doe, detectives began to sort through school records of more than 500 habitual truants and then began showing a picture of the body to every foster home in the Bronx, the police said.
In late October, detectives knocked on Mrs. McLeod's door and showed her the photograph. It was not the pretty girl she had remembered leaving her home that day in her favorite blue plaid shirt and jeans, the one with the bronzed complexion, the dark curls and the ready smile. But it was Marleny Cruz.
"If she had stayed with me long enough, she would have realized that someone cared about her," Mrs. McLeod said.
"She was a sweet person who just got caught up in the system, like a lot of children out here," Mrs. McLeod said. "If someone had been there for this one, she might still be alive."
Marleny Cruz, who friends said most feared being unloved and unknown, now rests in an unmarked grave in Monmouth County, N.J.

LOAD-DATE: November 30, 1998

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Maria de la Cruz, a great-aunt of Marleny Cruz, visited Forest Green Park Cemetery in Monmouth County, N.J., on Nov. 14 to place flowers on her unmarked grave. The area was being regraded, and it took Mrs. de la Cruz several hours to find what she thought was the site. Marleny worried, her friends said, that no one would notice if she was gone. (Andrea Mohin/The New York Times)(pg. B1); Angela Lawrence, shown with her daughter, Alecia, considered adopting Marleny, but says she was discouraged by foster care workers. (G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times)(pg. B5)

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company

The New York Times

June 13, 1998, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Preparing for Worst, Giuliani Is to Build Blastproof Shelter

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1249 words

Having tamed squeegee men and cabbies, murderers and muggers, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is now bracing for a whole other order of urban treachery and cataclysm by building a $15.1 million emergency control center for his administration -- bulletproofed, hardened to withstand bombs and hurricanes and equipped with food and beds for at least 30 members of his inner circle.
The ambitious project, which will sprawl over 46,000 square feet of one of the smaller buildings of the World Trade Center complex, will be big enough to accommodate at least 50 different city, state and Federal agencies and will allow them to coordinate response to disasters from the smallest sewer explosion to the largest nerve gas attack.
Among its amenities will be back-up generators in case of power failures, a storage tank with enough water to last at least a week and technology that will include a secure "red" phone for the Mayor and video-conferencing capabilities so that he can talk to and see the President of the United States if necessary. Construction is to begin soon, and city officials said it would take several months to complete the center, plans of which were approved by the City Planning Commission in December and obtained yesterday by The New York Times.
On the 23d floor of the building, the center will be across the street from the famous Twin Towers, the target of a terrorist truck bombing in 1993 that left six dead, wounded more than 1,000 and shattered the notion that American cities were immune to such attacks. But city officials said the location was ideal since the building lacked a basement and was already well fortified because it houses the New York bureau of the United States Secret Service.
Saying that the facility is "not a bunker" meant merely as a safety haven for the Mayor, Jerome M. Hauer, head of the city's Office of Emergency Management, asserted that New York City's emergency response system had become a model for other cities and that the planned center was a natural next step in keeping that lead.
"This is something the city has needed for a long time, a state-of-the-art center with a sophisticated communications system that is survivable so the city can continue to function," he said. "If there is a citywide blackout, a hurricane, a blizzard, this is the facility that will allow us to keep working, to make sure that people are not in jeopardy."
Colleen Roche, a press secretary to Mayor Giuliani, said that financing for the command center would come out of the fiscal 1999 capital budget. But the news of the center's construction troubled many in city government, especially City Council members like Sheldon Leffler, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, who said they found out about the project only after being contacted by a reporter. Some said the existing command center on the eighth floor of police headquarters had functioned admirably during storms, blackouts and a terrorist attack.
Ms. Roche denied that the financing was done in secret. "It's clearly laid out in the budget for anyone to inspect and review," she said. "I would point out that there are some members of the Council who claim to have not known that they voted for a tax increase either."
Councilwoman Kathryn E. Freed, whose district will house the new center, questioned whether the investment was prudent when the Mayor has threatened to cut financing for centers for the elderly, city hospitals and services for the poor.
"At a time when the Mayor is screaming and yelling about pork in city government and trying to cut city services that keep libraries and day care centers open, it seems bizarre to me that the city would be putting nearly $16 million into a rented space that the city doesn't even own," Ms. Freed said. "Making a $16 million improvement to another guy's building? I sure hope this is a 99-year lease."
City officials said that the $1.4 million annual lease on the space ran for 20 years.
The facility will be built at 7 World Trade Center, a 47-story building chosen for its proximity to City Hall and One Police Plaza and because of its sturdy nature, Mr. Hauer said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, law enforcement officials said that the new center would be bulletproof, able to withstand the shock of some bomb blasts and have a ventilation system that could be closed in the event of a biological or gas attack. They said telecommunications in the center would also be able to withstand the blow of a nuclear assault.
Mr. Hauer confirmed that the center would also withstand 150-mile-an-hour hurricane winds and function during extreme flooding. In case of disaster, he said, more than 100 top representatives from government, law enforcement and utilities will be organized in modules, connected by high-tech computer systems and almost invincible telecommunications lines and guided through video-screens, computer mapping and a global positioning system that can pinpoint the proximity of disaster to every sewer line, water main and subway tunnel in the city.
The center would have a place to cook and enough beds to allow at least 30 residents to sleep, including top city officials and members of Mr. Giuliani's family, said a city official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Mr. Hauer said there would be enough food for at least seven days and enough fuel to power the facility through a four-day blackout.
The Mayor would have a bit of privacy as well because the center will be built with a separate area where he can meet with select commissioners, a room with a pullout couch for him to sleep and a shower separate from the others. While the furniture would be ergonomically designed and the lighting selected to prevent headaches, Mr. Hauer said that the center was more austere than it might sound.
"We were very cautious about what we were spending," he said. "We wanted to be comfortable because this is a stressful environment, but nothing is opulent." And while there would be room for the Mayor's family to visit, Mr. Hauer said the Mayor's bed would be a couch.
"If there was a citywide blackout, we want to make sure that it is easy for people to work and that includes making it easy for them to eat and use the bathroom," he said.
Although it would only be in alert mode during crises, Mr. Hauer defended the price of the facility by saying that when the city was running smoothly it would be used to host training seminars and conferences for emergency response.
But the plans are far more elaborate and expensive than those of other major cities. Philadelphia saved money by placing a similar center in an existing fire building, which has its own water well, and spent only a few hundred thousand dollars on communications equipment and computers.
Los Angeles, which has had to contend with disasters ranging from mud slides, forest fires and earthquakes to riots, converted a 4,000-square-foot bomb shelter built as part of the civil defense program in the 1960's for $1 million in 1980. Since then, the city has updated the computer and communications equipment for $2 million, according to Dean Levenworth, a city spokesman.
Currently, the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management is at 100 Church Street, where it shares space with two other mayoral agencies. The Emergency Operations Center, which is staffed in all emergencies, rests a few blocks away in Police Headquarters, in a cavernous room lined with giant overhead television monitors and city maps.

A New Deal in the Drug War, Sort Of
An emphasis on treatment--and the bad guys
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 5/13/01

NEW YORK--In 1973, when New York State Sen. John Dunne asked for whom the bell tolls, it tolled for drug offenders. Dunne was fed up with dopers ruling the city. And he saw the solution in tough sentences pushed by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller--drug laws that are still the nation's most punitive. Nearly three decades later, though, the 71-year-old Republican is leading a campaign to reverse these laws. "We have been left with something that is not only unjust," he says, "but also horrendously expensive."

Dunne's not alone. In November, voters in California, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and Oregon approved ballot initiatives softening drug laws. The votes came on the heels of a dozen other wins for drug-law reformers in the past six years. Now law-and-order governors and legislators in at least four other states, including Connecticut and New York, are poised to do the same.

What's going on? With drugs cheaper and more plentiful than ever, even some veteran drug warriors despair over the nation's enforcement-first policy. In statehouses across the nation, there's a growing clamor for more emphasis on treatment.

Washington is a different story. On Capitol Hill, stiff prison terms and interdiction in supplier countries like Colombia are still all the rage. However, there is talk of change at the White House. Last week, President George W. Bush made two major drug-policy nominations and promised an "unwavering commitment" to both curbing supply and reducing demand for drugs. "A successful antidrug effort," Bush said, "depends on a thoughtful and integrated approach." More emphasis on treatment? Maybe. As governor of Texas, Bush focused on incarceration. His words last week could signal a change, though the two appointees he announced are both drug-war hawks. John P. Walters, who worked for Bush's father in the Office of National Drug Control Policy, is slated to head the office now as the new drug czar. Republican Rep. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who has been active in drug enforcement policy (and helped lead the impeachment effort in the House against President Clinton) is Bush's pick to head the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Ripple effect. Whichever way Washington goes, the push for a new approach on drugs is sure to continue in the states. And nowhere is the effort more focused than in New York. The state's Legislature is expected to pass--and Gov. George Pataki has said he will sign--some version of legislation watering down the state's Rockefeller laws. Says Robert Gangi, head of the state's nonprofit Correctional Association: "True reform in New York would send ripples across the nation."

It might also mark an end to stories like that of Kevin Muscoreil, one of the more than 9,000 inmates currently imprisoned under the Rockefeller laws. A 31-year-old drug addict, Muscoreil is doing 15 years to life for possessing less than 5 ounces of cocaine. If New York's laws are changed, Muscoreil's tale might be more like Jamell Galloway's. When Galloway was picked up two years ago on a minor cocaine-selling charge that skirted the Rockefeller laws, he was sent to a treatment center in Harlem--not to jail. "It's the first treatment I've ever gotten," says Galloway, 21, "the first time I've seen a future."

Reformers love that sort of talk. But experts fear that an increased emphasis on treatment could fall victim to budget problems. California expects to begin diverting more than 20,000 drug offenders into treatment a year, beginning July 1, but critics say there aren't enough funds or treatment centers to serve them. The New York legislation, if it passes, would free up as many as 5,500 prison beds a year. That could result in annual savings of more than $50 million. But Governor Pataki is mum about whether that money would go to treatment or where any new money for treatment would come from.

Drug-law reformers say the lack of new money for treatment may be more inimical to the success of the drug war than any of President Bush's appointments. It's "the Achilles heel of all these initiatives," says John Coppola, executive director of the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Providers of New York. "Without [the money] . . . we will go right back to locking up drug addicts and throwing away the key."

Rockefeller's revenge

Drug offenders as a share of all new prisoners in New York State

[Data for chart not available.]

Source: New York State Dept. of Correctional Services

This story appears in the May 21, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

The New York Times

February 23, 1998, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Prostitutes on Wane In New York Streets But Take to Internet

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 2056 words

The old prostitution haunts now crawl with nearly as many police officers as streetwalkers, part of New York City's continuing assault on "quality of life" crimes. Once-seedy areas where the sex business flourished, like Times Square, have given way to Disney-style family entertainment. And the combined forces of AIDS and drug addiction have further thinned the ranks of prostitutes on neighborhood streets.
But while prostitution may be less visible in the city, it is no less prevalent. The Internet, pagers, cellular phones and subterfuges like escort services have enabled more discreet forms of prostitution to thrive beyond the reach of the street-level crackdown, the authorities and prostitutes themselves say.
"You have some people who have no alternative but the street," said Capt. John Costello, commander of the Manhattan South police vice squad. "But there are a whole lot of people that we never deal with, working out of offices, apartments and the Internet. And if they are acting behind closed doors and are discreet, we will never hear about them."
As the police have forced prostitutes to change tactics, the city's resurgence as a destination for conventioneers and tourists has expanded the demand for prostitution, said Ronald Moglia, a professor of human sexuality at New York University.
And the business is adjusting. Prostitutes cruise the Internet nightly looking to arrange liaisons in New York, the computer and modem having replaced the sidewalk and street lamp as the means by which many prostitutes and customers meet, size one another up and negotiate transactions. Ads for sexual services flourish on Web sites and in mainstream publications. And the current Manhattan Yellow Pages now has 52 pages devoted to escort services -- legal businesses that the police say frequently front as prostitution rings. That is 17 more pages than two years ago.
Long-established escort services are feeling the competitive squeeze.
"This business is growing like crazy," said Nerissa Braimbridge, whose International Escort service in Manhattan has brought together young women and wealthy men for more than two decades -- for companionship only, she said, adding that her service receives many queries over the Internet. "It's grown from something small to something degenerate. Everyone is getting into the business and operating as an escort."
Prostitutes have certainly not been driven off the streets, and many still shiver nightly on the sidewalks in desolate stretches of the city. But they are an increasingly beleaguered, often desperate group.
"It's not like it used to be," said Candace, a 41-year-old prostitute who has worked in Hell's Kitchen and other Manhattan neighborhoods for more than a decade. Referring to Ninth Avenue, she said: "There used to be 15 girls working here; now it's only me. You've got to move around a lot more and work more secluded places to get by, and you can't take as much time sizing up your customer. Things are tough on the street."
But another prostitute, a 26-year-old man who gave only his professional name, Steve, has managed to do brisk business while keeping far away from the hazards of the street corner. On a recent evening he worked at his computer making dates for Valentine's Day. He said he had found steady work since he began selling sex on the Internet, through an on-line account that cost him $10 to set up.
A posted profile describes Steve as a "head-turning escort for evenings or travel" whose hobbies include "making wealthy men very happy."
On-line prostitutes say the Internet is a natural medium for selling sex: it is anonymous and connects them to a vast array of potential clients. It is safer than the streets, where vice officers and predatory strangers are constant threats.
And it is cheap. An escort company can buy an ad on a Web site for $50 a month, compared with thousands of dollars for half a page in the Yellow Pages. Prostitutes also say the Internet enables them to avoid sharing their profits with a pimp or an escort agency.
One beneficiary of the evolution of New York prostitution has been Redlightnet.com, a clearinghouse for the on-line sex trade that has been run for a year and a half out of a small apartment in Chelsea. Redlightnet's page on the World Wide Web is supported by more than 10 regular advertisers in the escort business and more than 400 personal ads.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do this job, it just takes looks," said Alan M., a 26-year-old former Navy sailor who said he started selling sex out of his home in Chicago several months ago and averages $1,500 a week for about 10 hours' work. His costs are mainly for clothes and keeping his computer in good repair. Clients pick up most other expenses, including taxi and plane fares when he travels to New York and other cities.
In these and other ways, off-street sex workers are sharply different from those who walk the streets, experts say. They usually do not refer to themselves as prostitutes, sociologists say, noting that it is easier for them to escape the industry's stigma because they are unlikely to develop a criminal record and are more often in business for themselves.
"You have a more open attitude toward sexuality on the part of young people," said Ira Reiss, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Minnesota. "Now we have a variety of new communication devices, there is a much easier moral code and a willingness to experiment and try new things by both men and women. And it's much easier to say, 'I'm just making extra money.' "
There are no authoritative figures on the prostitute population in New York City. But evidence from a variety of sources suggests that the industry is growing, even as fewer prostitutes work the street. And electronic technology appears to be central to the industry's success, both in attracting business and avoiding the authorities.

Discreet Operations Are Rarely Targets
The police say prostitutes who work on line or for escort services are unlikely ever to be arrested, since law enforcement agencies rarely go after discreet indoor operations. In fact, the only way such businesses get into trouble, escorts and police officials say, is by employing under-age prostitutes, annoying neighbors with too much foot traffic, or failing to pay taxes.
One New York State law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said his office had made several attempts to reel in on-line sex workers over the last year but had failed each time because the prostitutes became suspicious before a deal was brokered.
According to the city police, only 30 establishments were closed during the first eight months of last year, and only 44 were closed the year before. While the Police Department could not give complete statistics for prostitution arrests in 1997, vice squad officers arrested fewer than 2,000 prostitutes and clients in 1996, fewer than a third of whom were prostitutes working inside buildings.
From January to October 1997, the department's vice enforcement division arrested only 1,380 prostitutes and their customers, fewer than half from inside establishments.
The police say there is no evidence that a significant number of street prostitutes have gone into the booming escort business. But many have adopted more modest technological means to stay ahead of the police. They try to build client lists so that they can arrange work by phone rather than on the street. Others work out of bars or dance clubs, giving out pager numbers to clients. Pimps sometimes set women up in roving vans and limousines, beeping them whenever the police are spotted.

Using Technology To Evade Prosecution
Escort services, which are often fronts for prostitution, are notoriously ingenious at evading prosecution. Police officials said attempts to find and infiltrate such services required a great deal of luck. The telephone numbers they use are often in locations where no prostitutes have ever set foot, instead housing only a receptionist with a bank of phones.
Donna, a 26-year-old escort who has worked for several services in the city, including one on line, said she had never met the madam of a service that calls her regularly. Its phone number, which turned out to be a beeper, was given to her by another escort she knew. When she first called looking for a job, she left her number and was quickly called back by a woman who asked her who she was and what she wanted, then told her to go to a bar in SoHo and wait.
Donna was met there by a man who asked her questions about her background and took her phone number. He gave her a key to a hotel room in mid-Manhattan and explained the rules. She was to report when available, for periods ranging from all day to one hour. The key was for a hotel room that contained a locked closet, where the money that she and other escorts made would be left.
Now, she is paged occasionally and told to go to a certain client's hotel room. Or she is told to go to the service's hotel room and wait five minutes for a man to come calling. One always does, she said.
Undercover officers say that when they do make contact with a real bordello, its operators usually tell them to call back from a pay phone before giving out their address. Someone from the operation then looks out the window to see if the client is a recognized officer.
If he is, the receptionist just hangs up. Should an officer get in the front door, he will be questioned by a worker and asked for several forms of identification before he is allowed to pass.
"They have closed-circuit cameras, lookouts and sometimes vastly superior technology," said Captain Costello, the Manhattan South vice squad officer, adding that officers often show up at an establishment to find that their cover has already been blown.
"They say they're sorry, we're closed," he said. "Then, you're just standing there looking like a jerk."

After Crackdowns, A Changing Market
Although prostitutes have thrived behind closed doors, their counterparts on the street have had far less luck in evading the law. The city's police crackdown on streetwalking began in 1994, when more than 9,500 prostitutes and clients were arrested. Clients found their names being published and vehicles taken away, while judges proved less likely to allow prostitutes back on the street without jail sentences.
Experts say the crackdown has cut the number of streetwalkers in half in some parts of the city, and repeat offenders are fewer.
The number of convictions per prostitute has also declined, with 50 percent of the prostitutes now seen by the court having no more than one prior conviction, said Michele Svirdoff, research director at the Midtown Community Court's Center for Court Innovation.
"When the court first opened, it was not unusual to see defendants who had 100 prior arrests on their sheet," she said. "Now, a majority of those we are seeing are novices. What that tells is that the market is changing."

Upturn in Consumerism Is Increasing Prostitution
Like any service industry, prostitution is affected by the economy, and both sociologists and prostitutes can cite numerous economic reasons that it flourishes in New York City. For one, in a city where well-paying, low-skill jobs are scarce and the unemployment rate, nearly 9 percent, is well above the national average, the lure of prostitution can be high. At the same time, experts say, demand for prostitutes has been increasing sharply now that clients have more disposable income and tourism and convention business is booming.
"Prostitution is a market-related economy, so if there is a lot of consumerism, then it grows," said Professor Moglia of New York University. "And an increase in tourism obviously increases prostitution because it is an increase in consumerism."
The operator of Redlightnet, the on-line prostitution clearinghouse, who spoke on condition that his name not be given, said more ads were coming in and more prostitutes were going on line every week.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's campaign for safer streets, he said, had unwittingly helped his businesses. "He has generally made the streets safer for all New Yorkers and tourists, and more tourists means more hookers here to take care of them."

LOAD-DATE: February 23, 1998

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: The Web site of Red Light magazine, which is Redlightnet.com, carries advertisements for escort services and a variety of products aimed at the on-line sex trade. (pg. B4)

The New York Times

February 23, 1998, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Uncertainty For Those Still Outdoors

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 4; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 378 words

Offering sex and aching for crack cocaine, Latoya Cook danced alone beneath a street light in industrial Brooklyn. She stumbled, began dancing again, then rushed to meet the client who was going to get her through the night.
A couple of miles away, two tough young girls calling themselves Pretty Eyes and Midnight strutted for men leaving the drive-through of a White Castle restaurant as their pimps bicycled by.
In Harlem, a prostitute who said her name was Blondie hustled for drug dealers to supplement her income, while Beatrice, who is homeless, walked with a shopping bag full of her clothes looking for a place to sleep.
Drug addicts and runaways, they represent the working prostitutes left on the streets. The technological revolution that is transforming prostitution has passed them by while violence and drugs trim their ranks. Each faces an increasingly uncertain future, social workers say.
According to Priscilla Alexander, research director for From Our Streets With Dignity, a nonprofit group that helps prostitutes, the incidence of the most brutal crimes -- rape and murder -- are on the rise. Between October 1995 and January 1997, among the 2,000 prostitutes Frost'd sees each year, the number of such crimes rose to 5 per month from 2 per month.
"Between the criminals and the cops, it's gotten real tough for us, and I can't tell you how many times I've been roughed up or had a gun put to my head," said Blondie, 36, rubbing a pale blue eye that had been injured.
Pretty Eyes, 20, said that she had once been kidnapped, beaten and sexually assaulted by a client who robbed her before letting her out of his car.
The prostitutes left on the street are those with the fewest options. Women like Blondie don't carry cellular phones or own computers. They spend more than half of the $75 to $100 they make each night feeding their addictions. The rest goes for food and maybe a place to sleep.
Frost'd, which provides counseling and offers tests for infectious diseases to street prostitutes, estimates that approximately 67 percent of its clients -- like Blondie and Ms. Cook -- smoke crack cocaine, while 40 percent inject drugs. And it says that around 17 percent of the clients are infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

LOAD-DATE: February 23, 1998

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Latoya Cook, a prostitute, in Brooklyn in October. The ranks of streetwalkers have thinned, but prostitution persists through the Internet and pagers. (Edward Keating/The New York Times)

The New York Times

August 12, 1999, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Use of Police in Parole Raids Stirs Praise, but Also Concern

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1849 words



Late one night last month, police and parole officers swarmed down on more than 20 parolees in two Brooklyn housing projects, rousing them from their beds before questioning them about crimes in the area and forcing them to give urine samples to test for drugs. Those who tested positive or failed to give samples were taken to the local precinct house for further questioning.

The raid was part of a widening city effort to monitor parolees more closely by having the police accompany parole officers on some of their visits. The effort stems in part from police statistics that show that convicted criminals tend to go back to lives of crime upon release from prison. But it also reflects concerns nationwide that the parole system has often failed to monitor released inmates adequately.


Similar initiatives are being tried around the country, but the aggressiveness of the efforts in New York City have alarmed civil libertarians and even some parole officers, who express concerns that parolees are becoming targets of illegal searches and harassment by the police.

Further, they say that the police role could undermine the main goal of the parole system: to smooth the way for former convicts to re-enter society.

Police officials and politicians in New York have lauded the city's parole efforts, saying they have been so successful that they now want to bring all of the initiatives under one task force and export the tactics to other communities around the state.

They say the effort also reflects a larger integration of the parole system with police operations, as in recent years police computers have been linked to databases that include parole information, letting officers quickly tell, for instance, whether someone ticketed for littering on the subway is also on parole.

Officials say the increased scrutiny of parolees -- and probationers, under a different program -- is already having a marked effect.

"This is about providing safety in our community," said Katherine N. Lapp, Gov. George E. Pataki's director of criminal justice services. "The bottom line is it's better to have two pairs of eyes watching people in the community rather than just one."

"We have a lot more to do, but this is a good first couple of steps," she added. "The proof is in the pudding; we get results."

The partnership has been encouraged by state officials, and Ms. Lapp said the tactics had greatly increased the number of parolees picked up on warrants.

Police officials add that random sweeps have also helped solve many crimes. Edward T. Norris, Deputy Commissioner of Operations for the Police Department, noted that officers found guns in the homes of two parolees during a sweep last month and used the seizure of the weapons to coax more information about other crimes from the ex-convicts.

"Because of that leverage, they gave up information about several murders," he said.

Since the operations are directed by police commanders at local precincts, it is unclear how many parolees have been visited during these joint operations, or how many have been sent back to prison because parole violations were found, the police said, adding that they are now attempting to collect data from precincts. There are about 60,000 parolees in the state, roughly two-thirds of them in New York City.

Under the law, the police can enter someone's home -- including a parolee's -- only with a warrant or in emergency circumstances. But under the conditions of release from prison, parolees agree to allow a parole officer inside their homes whenever the officer wishes. All parolees must also consent to drug testing by their parole officers at any time, and must allow the officers to search their living areas.

Some parole officers say that in teaming up with them, police officers have, in effect, been given these powers.

"I have no problem with trying to elicit information for the purpose of solving crime, but I do have a problem with some of the tactics now being used in this initiative," said Willis Toms, a union leader and 14-year veteran parole officer. "We are not in the Gestapo; we are in a free society, and some of the constitutional rights we all have are being violated by the N.Y.P.D."

Denyce Duncan Lacy, a spokeswoman for the New York State Public Employees Federation, which represents parole officers, said that several officers filed a grievance a few weeks ago challenging one aspect of the program, which requires officers to administer spot urine tests of parolees at the behest of police officers. They contend that the parole officers should not be forced to handle the samples.

Police and parole officials say there have been no legal challenges to the tactics, which some precincts started using about two years ago.

But Ms. Lacy said that the union might initiate a lawsuit.

Similar programs have cropped up across the country, as states have clamped down on the parole system. In fact, 14 states have done away with discretionary parole altogether, something still being urged in New York by Governor Pataki and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Advocates of bringing parole and probation officers into closer cooperation with the police say that initiatives like those now being used in New York City can forestall more drastic changes to the system by beefing up the supervision of parolees.

Under the New York City program, parolees who live in high-crime areas, or who are seen as possible repeat offenders, are singled out for visits by parole and police officers during special nighttime operations. Usually, 25 to 30 parolees in one area are sought out each time, parole officers say.

While parole officers do not normally conduct urine tests on the spot, they have been instructed to do so using Police Department specimen containers, according to an internal memorandum put out by the Division of Parole and obtained by The New York Times from a parole officer who opposes the policy.

During one operation last month, parole officers were ordered to handcuff any parolees who refused to take the test and to transport them to the station house, according to an internal memo written by a parole officer and filed to supervisors.

The parole officers were also ordered to "attempt to gain permission from either the subject himself or an adult member of the household to search the subject's living area."

"Whether or not permission to search was granted, we were ordered to transport the subject to the local precinct for debriefing by N.Y.P.D.," the statement continued.

Parole officers say such operations have hindered their ability to do their jobs and led not only parolees, but also their families and neighbors, to see the officers as little more than an extension of the police force. They say that on several occasions, the police have also interrogated others in the parolees' homes and conducted illegal searches.

"As parole officers, we can search the immediate area where the parolee sleeps, but we cannot search his mother's room, his sister's room or the living room," Officer Toms said. "The police are coming into these homes in a very abrupt and violent way and conducting illegal searches."

Ralph Schwartz, a 19-year veteran parole officer and union official, added that parole officers in Far Rockaway, Queens, were told to do their interviews in the local precinct house. And, he said, the police in the Bronx set up shop in vacant parole offices two Thursdays every month, handing parole officers a list of people they wish to question, even though the men may not be scheduled to visit their parole officers on that day.

"They are told to come in and then given over to the police for questioning in a separate room, not for arrest or anything but interrogation," Officer Schwartz said. "This is what we are seeing a lot more of, gearing toward regular parolees and using parole officers to get them started talking about anything and everything the police want."

Ms. Lapp said that she knew of no instances in which peoples' rights were being violated but that her office would investigate any such allegations fully. She added that once parole officers are involved in the program and all participants understand their roles, "people work well together."

While some attribute criticism of the tactics to union griping, lawyers with the New York Civil Liberties Union and other legal experts say that such visits by police officers raise troubling legal questions.

"The general rule is that a police officer cannot go into a home unless they had probable cause to arrest the person and ordinarily there needs to be a warrant," said Vivian Berger, a professor at Columbia Law School, who noted that the initiative appeared to be "an end-run and an attempt to piggyback on the parole system, which is unwarranted and may be harmful."

Despite constitutional questions about such police tactics, law enforcement officials justify the initiatives by citing statistics that show a high recidivism rate among people conditionally released from jails and prisons.

According to the Federal Department of Justice, a study of more than 100,000 prisoners released conditionally from prison in 1983 found that 63 percent were rearrested within three years. Patrick A. Langan, a senior statistician with the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, added that more than one-third of all homicides and one-fourth of all killings of police officers are committed by people on probation or parole or out on bail.

Most initiatives linking police with parole and probation officers are loosely based on one begun in Boston seven years ago. That operation is conducted in conjunction with several other programs that have paired social service workers and ministers, among others, with special sections in the Police Department, like the police anti-gang unit. The program focuses mainly on teen-agers.

Crime experts say that none of the programs have been sufficiently studied to draw conclusions about their effectiveness. But the Boston Police Department credits its effort with helping to squelch gun violence, saying it may be part of the reason there has been a nearly 70 percent decrease in the number of people 24 and under killed by guns between 1990 and 1998.

Lieut. Detective Gary S. French, the commander of the Boston Police Department's youth violence strike force, said that the focus of that city's effort is on connecting former convicts with their communities. The Boston program is intended to be nonconfrontational and was set up only after consultation with lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, he said.

He added that his officers do not conduct urine tests or searches during these home visits.

"If something like a gun is in plain view, we get a warrant," he said. "We don't go on a fishing expedition."

"Sometimes, lights go off when you explain the program to officers," he said. "There's this idea of, 'Hey, this is great; we can go in and snoop around.' But you have to be very careful, because one slam-dunk court case can shut all of these programs down."

The New York Times

March 15, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

School Janitor Is Arrested In '74 Killing of Mobster

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 35; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 625 words

It was a cold case for more than two decades. The body of a mobster found stuffed in the blood-soaked trunk of a car in Coney Island, the second such discovery by the police in less than a week. Suspicion for both killings focused on organized crime.
But yesterday the police said that the man who strangled and then stabbed Anthony Orlando, 41, a gambler and associate of the Colombo crime family, had not been a hired killer at all, but a love-struck youth caught in a compromising position with Mr. Orlando's wife. That youth, now a 42-year-old school janitor, had been arrested and charged with the murder, they added.
The suspect, Michael Farley, a custodian at a public school in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn, was picked up by the police Friday afternoon as he emerged from the school and started driving home, said Deputy Inspector Martin Johnson, a Brooklyn detective commander.
Investigators zeroed in on Mr. Farley three months ago, after an acquaintance of the man came forward with new information about the killing, but they were able to bring him in for questioning only because he was driving with a suspended license and had several unpaid traffic tickets, the commander said.
But once at the 60th Precinct station house, Inspector Johnson said, Mr. Farley began to talk. "Farley made statements implicating himself in the crime, but his version is something different than what actually happened," said Inspector Johnson. "We are not classifying it as a confession."
Mr. Farley, who lives at 3809 Kings Highway, has been charged with second-degree murder and unlicensed driving, said Teresa General, a spokeswoman for the Kings County District Attorney's office. He would face from 25 years to life in prison if convicted in the slaying. He is being held without bail.
Mr. Farley's defense lawyer, Richard Izzo, said his client would plead self-defense.
According to the police, Mr. Farley killed Mr. Orlando in March of 1974 after Mr. Orlando walked into his wife's candy store on Ridge Street in Brooklyn one night and caught Mr. Farley in an embrace with her. Mr. Orlando's wife, Michaela, apparently didn't know her husband had a key to the front door, the police said.
When Mr. Orlando walked in, the police said, Mr. Farley strangled him, stabbed him in the head and neck with a broken bottle, and then -- with Mrs. Orlando's help -- hoisted him into a 1965 Mercury sedan. Mr. Farley, they said, then drove the body to Coney Island and left it in the trunk there. Inspector Johnson said that although the police believe Mrs. Orlando helped Mr. Farley dispose of her husband's body, she would not be charged because the statute of limitations on such a crime has lapsed.
The slaying was reported in The New York Times on March 29, 1974, in an article detailing the killing of Thomas DiLio, who, like Mr. Orlando, was an organized crime figure, the police said. The cases were also similar because the bodies of both men were found within two days of each other and both had been stuffed in the trunks of abandoned cars.
Though officials first thought the killings might be connected, investigators later discounted the theory. It also appeared that robbery was not the motive in the killing of Mr. Orlando, who still had about $100 in his pocket and a wristwatch on his arm when he was found on March 26, 1974.
The thought that Mr. Farley could be responsible for such a crime shocked his neighbors in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where he and his wife, Nancy, have lived for 10 years. "He was protective of his children, and seemed like the best father. This whole thing sickens me," said Leonard Sweet, 47. Delores DiRaimondo, 64, said the news "just knocked me over." She added, "I'm sure it's a mistake."

LOAD-DATE: March 15, 1998

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Michael Farley in custody outside the 60th Precinct station house. (William Lopez for The New York Times)

The New York Times

February 15, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

River Searched After Grisly Clue Found

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 37; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 590 words

Police divers returned yesterday to search the waters of the Hudson River off Battery Park City after a severed human foot was found Friday in a plastic bag beneath a pier.
The discovery of the skeletonized foot, which was dressed in a white gym sock and a Fila sneaker, drew crowds of police investigators, reporters and spectators to the water's edge amid speculation that the it might be a clue in the November disappearance of a Manhattan couple who lived in a loft on Pearl Street and often jogged in the area.
Police investigators said they were considering a link to the case, but Assistant Chief Kevin Farrel, commander of the Manhattan detectives, who was in charge at the scene, said that any connection to the couple, Michael Sullivan and Camden Sylvia, was "something that requires further investigation." Detectives, he said, were "working on this diligently."
As Chief Farrel spoke, several detectives stood on a windswept pier jutting out into the North Cove Marina. They huddled around a map with dock workers, pointing to various watery locations that might hold further clues, while joggers slowed their pace on the pedestrian walkway to gawk at the scene.
Near the north wall of the marina's concrete base, the divers rose and fell with the choppy waters, then dived 15 feet to the bottom. They searched near the juncture of the marina's north and east walls, where Chief Farrel said dock workers helping to repair the slip at the marina found a decomposed, apparently female, foot late Friday afternoon.
After 45 minutes in the water, the divers were called back. "The water is cold and visibility is limited," Chief Farrel said. "It's difficult but we will continue this afternoon and into the night if we can."
Divers returned to the water shortly before 4 P.M., but gave up after 30 minutes because underwater debris made the search too difficult. They plan to return early this morning.
The foot was sent to the office of the city's Medical Examiner, which will have an anthropologist examine it and begin tissue tests, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the office. While DNA tests would also be possible, she said any attempt to match the foot to Ms. Sylvia would be impossible without a comparison sample of her DNA.
Ms. Sylvia, 37, and Mr. Sullivan, 54, disappeared after renting a video from a store near City Hall. Neighbors have said that the couple, who had a rent-controlled apartment at 76 Pearl Street, had been arguing with their landlord that day over a lack of heat in the building and had threatened to withhold their rent.
The landlord, Robert Rodriguez, vanished from his home in Orange County on Nov. 14, after telling his family that he was going to the police to answer questions about the missing couple. He reappeared two weeks later but refused to meet with detectives. In recent months he has returned to running a locksmith store in the ground floor of his Pearl Street building.
A sign was posted on the front door of the building yesterday that read "Mike and Camden we miss you" in big black, green and blue letters.
Across the street a police officer sat in his patrol car, where the department has placed at least one officer in vigil 24 hours a day since the couple's disappearance.
"I would hope that they would reappear in good health, that this would turn out to be just some bad dream," said Ronan Downs, a friend of the missing couple who owns a bar next door.
"But I don't believe that, I don't think most people believe this might happen."

LOAD-DATE: February 15, 1998

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Police divers working yesterday off Battery Park City, after the discovery of a human foot in the water. (William Lopez for The New York Times)

The New York Times

January 23, 1998, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Slaying Charge Called Justified by Confession

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 5; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 462 words

A day after a presumed murder victim returned home safely to Queens, law enforcement officials stood by their earlier decision to charge a man with murder in the case, saying the man repeatedly confessed to killing the 13-year-old girl, who had been missing for five days.
The murder charges against the man, Glenville Smith, 28, were dropped on Wednesday night after the teen-ager, Felicia Leighton, returned to her home in Jamaica, Queens.
The police and the girl's family now say that she ran away from home last Friday and that Mr. Smith, who was a boarder in the family's home, had nothing to do with her disappearance.
But Mr. Smith still faces two misdemeanor charges, filing a false report and obstructing government administration, said Mary De Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the Queens District Attorney's office. She added that Mr. Smith was in custody and was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation at Kings County Hospital Center.
The District Attorney's office insisted that it acted appropriately by charging Mr. Smith with murder -- despite the fact that there was no body.
"Probable cause existed strictly through his own admissions, and there were witnesses to the fact that he had the opportunity to have done what he said," Ms. De Bourbon said. "It would have been foolhardy not to arrest him and risk his fleeing, or worse, hurting someone else."
According to the District Attorney's office, Mr. Smith was the last person to see Felicia before she vanished, and he repeatedly confessed to killing her, providing specific details about how he carried out the crime.
While legal experts said the evidence did not constitute proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Smith committed the crime, they agreed with the District Attorney's view that it gave detectives probable cause to arrest him.
"If somebody confesses to a crime, that is evidence that they committed the crime and it is admissible in court," said Gerard E. Lynch, a former Federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Columbia University. "Unless the confession is incredible on its face, the police would be appropriate in making an arrest."
Mr. Smith gained the attention of the police on Sunday, when he began telling Felicia's family that he had visions of her body being buried on a beach on Long Island. Although no body was found when he took detectives to the beach later that night, Mr. Smith was quick to produce other possible murder sites in Queens, according to investigators who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"All of a sudden he became a psychic and kept taking us on a wild goose chase." said Barbara Murray, Felicia's grandmother. "He would say she's under the sand, then under the water, then in the air. And she was never where he said she was."

LOAD-DATE: January 23, 1998

The New York Times

March 21, 1998, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Once Again, Police Raid the Wrong Apartment

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 864 words

Seeking drug dealers, the police came to the Fulton family's Bronx apartment Wednesday night with a battering ram. But after barging inside with their guns drawn, the officers instead found a grandmother, her daughter and her 6-year-old grandson watching television.
"I was scared, scared they were going to shoot us," the youngster, Jaquan Fulton, said, recounting how he jumped into his grandmother's arms when the police burst in. "I cried. I didn't say a word."
Yesterday, the police acknowledged they had made a mistake, saying the officers had misunderstood an undercover officer's directions to the apartment where drug dealers were thought to be operating.
But the botched raid comes after several similar errors that have raised questions about whether the Police Department's aggressive drug strategy -- which has often led officers to search for dealers inside apartments -- is subjecting law-abiding citizens to potentially dangerous confrontations.
Nobody was hurt in Wednesday's raid, and the department has said that out of 45,000 drug raids conducted last year, only 11 involved officers mistakenly entering a home not listed on the warrant. But some raids are conducted without warrants, as was the case with Wednesday's operation. The department said it did not have information on how many raids, with or without warrants, result in arrests or the seizure of drugs.
The problem of mistaken raids has become enough of a concern that police officials began circulating a memo last month instructing officers how to contact locksmiths and door repairmen if they do break into the wrong home.
Yesterday afternoon at their apartment at 964 Sherman Avenue, the Fultons were finally getting a new door to replace the one destroyed by the police battering ram.
According to the police, an undercover officer had gone into the first-floor lobby of the building on Wednesday night to buy drugs, and, over a concealed radio, told the officers waiting outside which apartment he was heading toward. Over the radio, the backup officers heard him knock on a door, and then heard no more from him.
The ranking officer on the scene, fearful that the undercover officer might be in danger, ordered his men to rush into the building, Police Commissioner Howard Safir said. But the Commissioner said the officers mistakenly believed that their colleague had said he was going into the apartment that was "the first to the left" instead of "the furthest to the left." The officers went to the door of the Fulton family's studio apartment and began to knock.
"We were all lying on my bed watching television and talking about how we wanted to find a better apartment where there was not so much crime and noise, and someone kept knocking on our front door asking for somebody," the grandmother, Elizabeth Fulton, said.
"I kept yelling, 'You got the wrong apartment,' but the person just kept knocking," she added. "Then, next thing I know, there's this boom, boom, boom, and people at the door were saying they were police. At the same time, they were opening it with their guns drawn."
Jaquan jumped into Mrs. Fulton's arms, while her daughter, Asija Fulton, 24, sat frozen.
"They had flashlights and were going into my closet," Asija Fulton said. "They kept telling me that I knew why they were here. I just kept saying, 'You've got the wrong apartment, you've got the wrong apartment.' "
The police realized that a few minutes later, after they regained radio contact with the undercover officer. He had already left the building after buying a substance believed to be crack cocaine at the apartment down the hall. The officers then began apologizing to the Fultons, handing out business cards and offering to help fix the door if the family had any trouble with the building's management.
Three people from the apartment where the undercover officer made his purchase were arrested later that day and charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance, said Deputy Inspector Michael Collins, a department spokesman. Another was still being sought.
Commissioner Safir apologized for the raid on the Fultons' apartment at a news briefing yesterday afternoon, but defended the officers' actions, saying they were concerned that the undercover officer was in danger.
"The report says that they feared for the safety of the undercover officer, and the supervisor instructed the field team to move in," he said. "They had lost contact with him and believed him to be in possible danger."
The Fulton family's lawyer, Benjamin Heinrich, said the family was preparing to file a $30 million lawsuit against the city over the incident.
The city and the Police Department also face a suit filed by lawyers for Ellis Elliot, whose apartment on Sheridan Avenue in the Bronx was mistakenly raided in late February. Mr. Elliot, not realizing that the men breaking into his apartment were police officers, fired a shot from an unlicensed gun to ward them off. The police responded by firing 26 rounds, then dragged out Mr. Elliot, who was not hit by any bullets. While the Fulton family's belongings suffered little damage, Mr. Elliot's apartment was ransacked.

The New York Times

March 4, 1998, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Bronx Man Recounts Abuse By Police in Mistaken Raid

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 5; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 660 words

Sitting amid shards of glass in his bullet-ridden apartment, a Bronx man whose home was mistakenly raided by the police accused officers yesterday of kicking and beating him and using a racial epithet as they shouted, "Where are the drugs?"
The police said they could not comment on the allegations because the man, Ellis Elliott, was preparing to sue the city over Friday's raid, in which officers mistakenly burst into the apartment looking for a drug dealer. Deputy Inspector Michael Collins, a spokesman for the Police Department, would say only, "There is a vigorous investigation ongoing relative to this matter."
Mr. Elliott made the accusations at a news conference at his apartment yesterday in which his lawyer, Joseph Kelner, produced a picture that he said was taken after the incident and showed Mr. Elliott with a cut on his forehead. Mr. Kelner offered no other evidence of the alleged beating, saying his client had only just been examined by doctors.
A police investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity said there was no evidence of injury to Mr. Elliott in the police report that was filed in the case.
Mr. Elliott, 44, gave his account of the raid yesterday, pointing out the bullet holes -- 26 in one count -- that lined the front hall of his ransacked apartment.
"I was afraid for my life," Mr. Elliott said yesterday, intermittently smoking and hyperventilating into a crushed paper bag. "You could just hear the bullets tearing through stuff. They wanted to make sure that whatever was here was going to get it."
As Mr. Elliott tells it, several men went to his home at 8 A.M. Friday and began to bang on the metal front door of his fourth-floor apartment as he slept. Fearful that the men might be robbers, he jumped out of bed naked, pulled an unlicensed .25-caliber revolver from his night stand and yelled at the men to move away from the door. When they did not and the door began to open a crack, Mr. Elliot said he fired a single shot from his gun into the top of it.
The police then returned fire. Only after they strafed both sides of his vestibule, nicked a bureau in the dining room and shot a hole through a little earring box resting on the living room table did they stop, he said. Mr. Elliott added that the men identified themselves as officers only at that point and ordered him to approach the door.
After one of his hands was cuffed, he said, the officers used it to drag him out into the hallway. "They kicked me and beat me and kept asking me, 'Where are the drugs, where are the drugs?' The only way they would address me was 'nigger,' " he said. "Then they dragged me through there like a piece of toilet tissue."
The police investigator said one of the nine arresting officers was black, three were Hispanic and the rest were white.
Mr. Elliott, who now faces charges that he illegally possessed a firearm, was then finally clothed, though only in a woman's blouse and slacks that officers took from the apartment. They belonged to his girlfriend, Mary Barnes, who had left earlier in the morning for her job at the post office. It was unclear why they had not given him his own clothing.
Saying they were the same clothes he wore in jail until his release on Sunday, Mr. Elliott added: "I was lucky I wasn't raped on the way home."
According to the police, narcotics officers receiving information from an undercover informant misidentified Mr. Elliott's apartment at 930 Sheridan Avenue as one holding drugs and guns.
The police said on Monday that Mr. Elliott would be reimbursed for any damages.
The Police Department conducted more than 45,000 such raids last year with only 10 resulting in the wrong apartment's being stormed, according to Marilyn Mode, a police spokeswoman. She said the department did not keep records on how many of those raids actually produced the drugs being sought or how many resulted in suits against the city, like the one promised by Mr. Elliott.

The New York Times

March 4, 1998, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Man Accused of Keeping 2 Men Captive

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 4; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 710 words

A Harlem man was arrested yesterday on charges that he held two mentally retarded men in virtual captivity for several years, stole their government benefit checks and beat them into submission, the police said.
The suspect, Jeffrey Bennett, 35, was taken into custody yesterday afternoon at the apartment at 55 La Salle Street, in the Grant Houses project, after a neighbor saw him hit one of the two men with a baseball bat, said Deputy Inspector Michael Collins, a Police Department spokesman.
The police did not identify the men, but said they are retarded. The men identified themselves in their apartment last night as James McKnight, 25, and John Jamerson, 37. The methods of abuse ranged from brutality, to intimidation, to being tied to a chair when Mr. Bennett left the apartment, they said.
The way they explained it, they have moved from group homes to the streets to the iron hold of Mr. Bennett. No social workers knew about them and none came to visit. After being questioned by the police last night, the men were released and allowed to return to their apartment, said Detective Robert Samuel, a police spokesman.
Mr. McKnight said he moved into the apartment four or five years ago after living on the streets. He lived with a friend named Ralph, who later died of AIDS, neighbors said.
At first, Mr. Bennett did not live in the apartment. But when both Mr. Bennett and Mr. Jamerson moved in a year after Mr. McKnight, they said the beatings began.
Since then, the police said, Mr. Bennett coerced them into turning over thousands of dollars in disability checks. Each man received $500 a month.
Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said that Mr. Bennett threatened the younger man with bodily harm to make him walk to a nearby check-cashing business and then hand over the money.
"He used to take our money, and he would never do the right thing," Mr. Jamerson said, showing a scar on his neck he said was the result of an argument with Mr. Bennett. "I was scared," Mr. McKnight said. "He punished us like we were kids. We could go out when he told us."
When asked why they did not leave, Mr. McKnight said simply, "We had no place to go."
A neighbor called the police yesterday after she saw Mr. Bennett strike one of the men on the head with a baseball bat during an argument outside the housing project. Jennifer Cheeks, the neighbor who called the police, said she also heard one of the men screaming early yesterday morning. "I heard him yelling, 'I didn't take your money.' "
When the officers arrived, they found all three men in Mr. Bennett's apartment.
Mr. Jamerson later said he had a bump on his head the size of a walnut from being struck by the bat. "I didn't want to give him my money," Mr. Jamerson said.
Although the freezer in the apartment contained chicken and ice cream last night, and the cupboards fully stocked, the men said they rarely got to eat -- usually just rice and beans.
Ms. Thompson said that both men said that Mr. Bennett had hit them on several occasions and that he seldom let them go outdoors alone.
Law enforcement officials said it was unclear what type of disability checks the men received, but they added that Mr. Bennett was not a registered care provider and appeared to be unemployed.
The police said that Mr. Bennett had been arrested and convicted more than 15 times since 1982, mostly for fare beating but also for attempted burglary, assault, criminal impersonation, resisting arrest, menacing, aggravated harassment, grand larceny, possession of stolen property and robbery. The longest sentence he ever served in jail was one year, after a 1987 conviction for robbery, assault and criminal possession of stolen property.
There was also an order of protection against Mr. Bennett, although the police said they did not know the circumstances.
In this case, Mr. Bennett has been charged with assault, robbery, unlawful imprisonment and coercion. The robbery and assault charges carry up to seven-year prison terms, the District Attorney's office said.
Deputy Inspector Collins said that additional counts might follow."This is a complex allegation that we are continuing to investigate," he said.

The New York Times

February 13, 1998, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Boastful Man Is Accused of Selling Nonexistent Cars to 2 Buyers

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 12; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 457 words

As big as a house and as smooth as a song, the man who called himself Derek O'Connor seemed like every restaurateur's dream. And for a while he was, spinning out tales of his successes in the luxury car market as he filled his 6-foot, 300-pound frame with hefty meals and vodka at two lower Manhattan eateries.
But the man -- the police have yet to determine his identity -- seems to have succeeded only in swindling at least one restaurant owner and one worker out of about $25,000 they gave him to buy fancy cars that he never produced, the Manhattan District Attorney's office said yesterday.
The man, a 33-year-old Polish immigrant who has also gone by the names Darivsz Zdojkowski and Darek Davidoff, was arrested yesterday on two counts of grand larceny, said Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney's office.
The police said the man had previously been charged in New Jersey with receiving stolen property, tampering with public records and theft. But they said the disposition of the charges was unclear.
Steve Savic, 25, a bartender at Penang Bar and Grill in SoHo, gave the suspect a $5,000 down payment for a Nissan Maxima that apparently was never Mr. O'Connor's to sell.
Mr. Savic said he first met the suspect in mid-1996, when he held a party in the restaurant, spending several thousand dollars and leaving Mr. Savic a hefty tip.
The big man returned again and again, Mr. Savic said, chatting up strangers as one of his luxury cars sat double-parked outside.
"He would always run up a gargantuan tab and then pay with a big tip," Mr. Savic said, adding that he soon made the error of asking his new customer about his business.
"I didn't want to be a busybody, but he would always show up in this brand new Rolls or Mercedes and act like he had money to burn," he said. "I guess I was curious."
The suspect told the bartender that he bought used luxury cars at auctions and then sold them at outrageously cheap prices. When Mr. Savic explained that his car had recently been totaled, his new friend was quick with a solution: a Nissan Maxima was in a nearby parking lot and could be his cheap. All that would be required was a small down payment while he worked on transferring the car's paperwork.
After seeing the car, Mr. Savic forked over the cash. Later, he went back to the parking lot and discovered that whoever had left the car there owed more than $1,000 in parking fees. When he told friends what had happened, he learned that the owner of another restaurant had given the suspect a $20,000 down payment for a Mercedes 600SL that never arrived, said Ms. Thompson, of the District Attorney's office.
"You just want to trust people," Mr. Savic said. "He's proof that you can't."

The New York Times

February 1, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Man Arrested In Killings At Strip Club

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 25; Column 6; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 754 words

A suspect who had eluded capture for a year and a half in the 1996 slaying of two workers in the Scores strip club on the Upper East Side was arrested early yesterday morning at a New Jersey motel where he had been lounging with his girlfriend, the police said.
The suspect, Simon Dedaj, 34, had been sought on a Federal fugitive warrant since he and two other suspects fled the club on June 21, 1996, after an argument that ended in the fatal shootings of a bouncer and a waiter. His brother, Victor Dedaj, 38, was captured last March after a search led F.B.I. agents and the local police to a resort hotel in Valley Forge, Pa., where he was also found in a room with a girlfriend.
Simon Dedaj and his girlfriend, Donna Kelly, 33, who was wanted for assisting Mr. Dedaj's flight, surrendered to law enforcement officers without incident around 12:30 A.M. yesterday at the Inn at Ramsey on Route 17 in Ramsey, N.J., the police said.
The brothers are charged in the deaths of Jonathan Segal, 25, and Michael Greco, 22.
The Manhattan District Attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said yesterday that investigators from his office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and detectives from the 19th Precinct "did an outstanding job" in finding Mr. Dedaj.
In some ways, the brothers may feel safer in police custody. According to the United States Attorney's office prosecuting the accused mobster John Gotti Jr. for a string of crimes, the Dedaj brothers became an object of wrath within the Gambino crime family after the murders at Scores. Prosecutors say the club was the target of an extortion scheme in which everyone from the club's owners to the dancers and parking attendants paid kickbacks.
According to the Federal indictment of Mr. Gotti and other Gambino associates, members of the crime family were angered by the disruption of business caused by the investigation into the murders and conspired to have the brothers killed.
The club shootings occurred after the Dedaj brothers began to make advances on the girlfriend of a Gambino crime family boss, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
At some point, Mr. Segal, a waiter, and Mr. Greco, a bouncer, told them who the woman was and asked them to leave her alone, said the official. The brothers eventually left.
But with revenge on their minds, the brothers returned to the club with a third unidentified man after it had closed, prosecutors said. They shot Mr. Segal several times in the chest and then stabbed him, and shot Mr. Greco in the head. The suspects then walked outside and vanished until the following February, when detectives received information that led them to Victor Dedaj at the Park Ridge resort a few weeks later.
Mr. Morgenthau said Victor Dedaj was set to be tried in a Manhattan Criminal Court this February, but the date would likely be changed so the brothers could be tried at the same time. When asked about the possibility of a third suspect, Detective Mark Patterson, a police spokesman, said the investigation was continuing.
Simon Dedaj, while difficult to track, apparently never left the region while he was in hiding.
Last June, dozens of police officers from New York City and Westchester County descended on Bronxville after Mr. Dedaj was spotted there, possibly for a meeting with Ms. Kelly, a resident of White Plains. Officers chased him on foot along the Bronx River Parkway in eastern Yonkers, but Mr. Dedaj jumped into a car and sped off. He did not re-appear until Friday night, when officers tracked his girlfriend to the motel in Ramsey.
Detectives had long assumed that Mr. Dedaj regularly visited his girlfriend and decided on Thursday to follow her, said investigators who spoke on condition of anonymity. At one point, the investigators said, detectives lost sight of her car but proceeded to the hotel, which she was known to frequent.
Agents from the New York City Police Department, the Bergen County SWAT team, the Manhattan District Attorney's office and the F.B.I. then surrounded the room and yelled for Mr. Dedaj to come out with his hands up. He chose instead to attempt an escape out a back window in the room, falling into the waiting arms of the SWAT team.
Mr. Dedaj faces murder charges in the Scores slayings as well as Federal loansharking charges, said James M. Margolin, an F.B.I. spokesman. Ms. Kelly has been charged with hindering prosecution. Both are being held in the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack, awaiting extradition proceedings.

January 18, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

January 11-17;
Dog Day at the Trade Center

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 4; Page 2; Column 1; Week in Review Desk

LENGTH: 276 words

They began the day on a road to fame and riches, slipping into one of New York City's most secure buildings last Tuesday, then walking out with $1.17 million in stolen money. People on the street wondered about their brilliant criminal minds while security experts called it a "brazen well-planned heist."
But their infamy lasted less than a day. What began with the promise of "The Great Train Robbery" soon degenerated into "Dog Day Afternoon." A newspaper headline summed it up: "Bozo Bandits Busted in Trade-Center Heist."
The robbers, precise as they were about meeting the two Brinks security guards on the 11th floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:30 A.M., were a little fuzzier about their exit from the building once the money was in their hands.
As they left, half a dozen security cameras captured images of their unmasked faces for posterity.
And as Brooklyn boys universally disliked in their neighborhood, their decision to return there proved calamitous. Before the sun had set, friends and neighbors by the dozens were calling police hot lines, hoping to collect a $26,000 reward for the thieves' capture.
Melvin Desmond Folk was the first to fall, turned in by his wife, according to police investigators. Michael Reed came next, handcuffed in the home of an elderly acquaintance who was feeding him cookies.
And the lone holdout, Richard Gillette, has three law enforcement agencies in hot pursuit as well as a host of civilian trackers hoping to win the crime-stoppers lottery.
One tracker predicted it wouldn't be long, adding "They aren't the sharpest knives in the cabinet."

The New York Times

January 18, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

His Nervous Behavior Gave Man Away

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 27; Column 4; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 815 words

The attempted escape of a third suspect in last week's World Trade Center bank robbery was foiled on a train trip in New Mexico by drug enforcement agents who thought the fugitive's nervous demeanor and the amount of cash in his possession fit the profile of a drug trafficker.
The suspect, Richard Gillette, 39, was taken into custody after a long ride on an Amtrak train bound for San Bernardino, Calif. He was being held yesterday in a New Mexico jail while awaiting a hearing before a United States magistrate in Albuquerque on Tuesday. He will later be returned to New York, to join Melvin Desmond Folk and Michael Reed in facing Federal bank-robbing charges, according to agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Law enforcement officials have left open the possibility that other accomplices, as yet unnamed, may still be arrested. Also being questioned are the two Brinks guards robbed in the Tuesday morning robbery. Last week, they performed poorly on lie detector tests conducted by the F.B.I., according to law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mr. Gillette's undoing, like that of two other suspects charged in the $1.7 million robbery, was a nervous inability to sit still and a lack of answers when questioned by the police, law enforcement officers in New Mexico said. They added that Mr. Gillette's haggard appearance and his continuous clutching of his only luggage, a red lunch box, also made them suspicious.
Though officials with the New Mexico State Police first said that a conductor had alerted agents to Mr. Gillette's presence on the train because he was flashing around large amounts of money, agent Jonathan Salazar, the state drug interdiction officer who first questioned Mr. Gillette, disputed that account.
"The only suspicion we had at first was his quick cash reservation in New York City," Mr. Salazar said. "But when we boarded the train, he was walking around, looking over his shoulder at people and acting real nervous."
According to the agent, Mr. Gillette identified himself as George Grillo but said that he did not have any identification. He also did not have proof that the $18,500 he was carrying in his lunch box legally belonged to him, the agent said, adding that he became even more suspicious after finding identification bearing Mr. Gillette's name.
But the name did not register with the officer, who, fearing he did not have probable cause to take Mr. Gillette off the train, merely took all but a few hundred dollars of the suspect's money. "I gave him a receipt and told him that he could retrieve it with a good birth date and other information," the officer said, adding that he figured out who was on the train only after running a check on a law enforcement computer.
By this time the train had taken off, so the officer scheduled it for an impromptu stop as it passed through a nearby Indian reservation. But Mr. Gillette was already one step ahead, jumping the train and heading for an Albuquerque bus station. But he then stopped at a local bar, the police said.
For a moment, at least, Mr. Gillette apparently felt he had time to relax, sitting in front of a big-screen television at Famous Sam's sports bar as he chatted with the waitresses and drank a beer. "He was just another customer," said Kathy Smith, a 38-year-old waitress, who added that earlier in the week she had joked with co-workers about one of the robbers possibly coming to take her to Mexico with him.
But the authorities had begun to catch up with the suspect shortly after he ordered his second beer. The state police had put out an all points bulletin after losing him on the train, and hundreds of officers were scouring the city in search of what was clearly now the most wanted bank robber in the United States. And by wearing a Green Bay Packers jacket and hat and speaking with a heavy Brooklyn accent, the authorities said, Mr. Gillette had provided an easily identifiable description.
When three police officers walked into the bar shortly before 8 P.M., nearly everyone in the place recalled seeing Mr. Gillette sitting in the corner and having a drink, but they also recalled that he had left.
As it turned out, Mr. Gillette had slipped into the bar's restroom to remove his distinctive jacket. After the officers left, he sat back down and finished his drink before he himself left the bar, the police said. Workers in the bar, noticing that Mr. Gillette had returned to finish his beer, called the police back.
A few minutes later, the officers found Mr. Gillette, a grimace on his face and his jacket stuffed in a shopping bag, in the lobby of the Kings Inn Hotel.
"We were told to keep an eye out for a sports nut with a crooked nose," said Sgt. Cornelius Heitzman of the Albuquerque Police Department. "And there he was, trying to stuff a 10 gallon jacket in a 2 gallon bag."

The New York Times

January 17, 1998, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Lie-Detector Results of Brinks Guards Raising Questions

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 5; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 740 words

The Brinks security guards robbed of more than $1 million Tuesday at the World Trade Center did not perform well on lie detector tests given shortly after the incident, law enforcement officials said yesterday.
Meanwhile, the third suspect in the robbery, Richard Gillette, was apprehended last night after he briefly left a Los Angeles-bound Amtrak train during a 30-minute layover in Albuquerque, N.M., the authorities in New Mexico said.
The two guards who were robbed while delivering money to a Bank of America currency exchange office Tuesday were given the lie detector tests early Wednesday, said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said one guard did poorly on the test, while the other did better but still had trouble.
While the test results did not establish that the guards were involved in the robbery, the official said, "It raised questions with both of them."
The results of lie detector tests are not considered reliable enough to be used as evidence in New York courts, but they often prove useful to law enforcement officials or companies conducting investigations. In the World Trade Center robbery, investigators have said they believe that the robbers may have had some inside help. The test was administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Martin Crowe, vice president of security for Brinks Inc., declined to comment on the case, saying only that the two guards were still employed with the company, which is based in Darien, Conn.
"It is the position of Brinks Incorporated not to comment on stories concerning robberies of our employees," he said.
Last night in New Mexico, Sgt. Bill Johnson of the state police said the third suspect, Mr. Gillette, was questioned at the Albuquerque train depot in a routine check for drug couriers and fugitives.
Mr. Gillette, 39, who was wearing a bright green Green Bay Packers jacket and hat, became noticeably nervous, raising the authorities' suspicion, but the authorities released him. A computer check then revealed that Mr. Gillette, who gave his real name when questioned, was wanted in New York.
Officials found that Mr. Gillette had left the train and officers fanned out across downtown Albuquerque, Sgt. Johnson said. Mr. Gillette was arrested 45 minutes after he was initially questioned. He was carrying $18,000, Sgt. Johnson said.
Yesterday, one suspect, Michael Reed, 34, was brought before a Federal magistrate, Kevin Nathaniel Fox, who denied Mr. Reed's request for bail and scheduled him to return to court for a preliminary hearing on Feb. 2, said Marvin Smilon, a spokesman for the United States Attorney's office.
Mr. Reed was arrested in an apartment above a friend's home in the Windsor Terrace section of Brooklyn on Thursday.
John Costello, a childhood friend of Mr. Reed's who was also questioned by the police but later released, said that Mr. Reed had gone to his house after the robbery and offered him a night on the town. The pair first went shopping in midtown Manhattan, with Mr. Reed buying new tennis shoes and a watch before offering dinner at a seafood restaurant, Mr. Costello said.
Another suspect, Melvin Desmond Folk, 44, was arrested after being turned in by his wife on Wednesday night. He was also denied bail by the magistrate.
The suspects face Federal bank robbery charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
In recent days, investigators have increasingly focused on the possibility that someone other than the three suspects planned the robbery.
They noted that although the three suspects had extensive experience committing petty crimes, none had a history of bank robbery. They added that the men apparently knew exactly when the money shipment would arrive. And they knew which bags of money they wanted, ripping open four of the seven bags before walking away with $1.17 million in mostly foreign currency, according to a Federal complaint.
But they were oblivious to the half-dozen security cameras that captured their faces on tape before and after the robbery.
Security experts said the robbers' precision in showing up at the location just as the guards were about to leave a freight elevator with the money, their apparent knowledge of which bags they wanted and their limited understanding of the bank's security system meant that they probably had help in planning the robbery but that a bank employee probably was not involved.

The New York Times

January 16, 1998, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Two Suspects Are Arrested In Robbery at Trade Center

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 760 words

Two of the three men suspected of stealing more than $1 million from security guards making a delivery in the World Trade Center have been arrested, law enforcement officials said yesterday, adding that they were closing in on the third suspect.
Although it is unclear how the suspects got past security at the twin skyscrapers to carry out the robbery Tuesday morning, an investigator said yesterday that it appeared all three entered through the front door, with at least two of the men flashing fake identification cards to the guards patrolling there. The investigator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the inquiry was now focusing on how the robbery was planned and whether it was the work of someone who did not participate in the robbery itself but paid the others to commit the crime.
As for the stolen money, investigators have found only a small portion of it and say they believe the robbers hid the bulk somewhere on their route back to Brooklyn.
But it was certainly not the perfect crime. Even as pictures of the men were being broadcast on television newscasts and published in newspapers, at least two of the suspects went back to their old haunts in the Windsor Terrace section of Brooklyn, the authorities said.
One suspect, Melvin Desmond Folk, was caught in nearby Park Slope, where he often collected aluminum cans. Another, Michael Reed, who sometimes worked as a butcher, was found in an apartment above a friend's house, eating with an elderly neighbor. The third suspect, Richard Gillette, was still at large.
Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said they found two suspects quickly because dozens of residents of Windsor Terrace had called the police giving detailed information about the men. The three suspects were longtime residents of the area, the police and neighbors said, adding that they were spotted together before the robbery.
"We've gotten two suspects within two days, and we're optimistic that we will get the third quickly," said James M. Margolin, an F.B.I. spokesman. But, he added, "It wouldn't be thorough of us to assume that these are the only three people involved."
Mr. Folk, 44, was arrested without incident shortly before 7 P.M. on Wednesday, said Lewis D. Schiliro, acting director of the New York F.B.I. office.
An investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Mr. Folk, who had $10,000 in United States currency with him when he was arrested, was turned in by his wife. The couple appeared to be separated, the investigator said, adding that the wife could collect at least part of a $26,000 reward.
Mr. Reed, 34, was arrested yesterday at the home of Annette LaRocca, 73. She lives in an apartment above the home of one of Mr. Reed's close friends, John Costello, in Windsor Terrace. When the police came to the building, asking to search Mr. Costello's and Mrs. LaRocca's apartments shortly after 5 P.M., they found Mr. Reed sitting in the woman's kitchen, drinking tea between spoonfuls of macaroni and bites of butter cookies.
Mrs. LaRocca said Mr. Reed had knocked on her door only a few minutes before the authorities arrived. "He said he was hungry," she said, adding that he appeared to know that the police were after him but did not want to talk about it. "I fed him because I felt sorry for him," she said. "That's why I let him in.
"Then they called him and had their guns out like there was something they were afraid of," she said. "But he wasn't really hiding. He was eating. And he went like a good sport."
Mr. Costello, 32, also left in handcuffs, on suspicion that he had been harboring his childhood friend since the robbery, the police said. Shortly before the investigators came to his house, he had professed his innocence to a reporter, saying he had not seen Mr. Reed since the two met for a haircut on Tuesday.
"I don't know if Michael did it, but I had no involvement at all," he had said while eating lentil soup and scanning the pictures of the suspects in yesterday's newspapers.
"I've done some things that I regret and made some foolish moves, but not this," he said. "I mean, that's a Federal crime, and I would never get involved with anything like that."
The police said they had known the whereabouts of Mr. Reed for at least a day but had waited to arrest him, hoping they could catch him with the money.
The suspects took $1.17 million, according to the complaint, not $1.6 million as originally reported. They face Federal bank robbery charges, which carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

January 15, 1998, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Tips on Bank Robbers Lead Police to Brooklyn

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 7; Column 4; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 407 words

Police investigators began scouring the Windsor Terrace section of Brooklyn yesterday after receiving dozens of tips from residents who said they knew the three suspects wanted in Tuesday's $1.6 million bank robbery at the World Trade Center.
According to the Police Department, more than 56 people called investigators yesterday after pictures of the suspects were printed in local newspapers and shown on television. Nearly all of the calls came from residents of Windsor Terrace, said investigators, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The three robbed two Brinks security guards outside the Bank of America at the World Trade Center around 8:30 A.M. on Tuesday, the police said, but security cameras recorded their pictures after they had taken off their ski masks.
The callers have provided enough information about the suspects for the police to tentatively identify them, investigators said. They added that it still remained unclear where the suspects were hiding or whether they were working alone.
Although officials with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is working on the case with the New York City Police Department, refused to comment on the leads, an F.B.I. spokesman, Joseph A. Valiquette, confirmed that they had received a great deal of help from local residents yesterday.
"We have received a lot of calls following yesterday's press conference and we have taken all of the calls seriously," he said. "Hopefully, one or more of these calls will prove fruitful."
The police have yet to release the names of the robbery suspects, though they said that all three have extensive criminal records.
Residents of Windsor Terrace said they had been questioned by police investigators yesterday about the suspects. The residents said that two of the men were neighborhood regulars who were often in trouble with the law.
Residents described both of them as heavy drug users who sometimes stayed with their families, but often lived on the streets. They supported their habits by burglarizing homes and robbing women, said a patron of a local bar.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the man added that although he was not surprised to see the men wanted for a widely publicized crime, he was stunned that they had been able to pull off a large-scale bank robbery.
"I used to see them here every day, well every day until two days ago," he said. "These guys aren't the sharpest knives in the cabinet."

The New York Times

January 14, 1998, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

3 Gunmen Rob Guards of $1.6 Million at World Trade Center Bank

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1076 words

Three armed men got past security yesterday morning in the World Trade Center, disarmed two Brink's guards delivering money to a currency exchange center there and then fled with with $1.6 million, the authorities said.
The robbery came nearly five years after the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey tightened security at the complex in response to the terrorist bombing on Feb. 26, 1993, which killed 6 people and injuredmore than 1,000. Since then, all people entering the complex's elevators have had to show identification, though they do not have to pass through metal detectors.
At least one of the men who took part in the 8 A.M. robbery carried a gun. The three made their way up to the 11th-floor office of a Bank of America corporate currency exchange center without being stopped, the Port Authority police said. There, wearing ski masks, they intercepted the Brink's guards delivering cash to the center.
While the robbery was successful, half a dozen security cameras did film the men as they entered and left the offices, the Port Authority said. Police investigators said the robbers' precision raised suspicions that they either had worked in the building or knew someone who did.
While no one was injured in the robbery, the crime highlighted how the Port Authority has to juggle security concerns with the need to accommodate the needs of the 100,000 people who use the complex on an average day. Officials said yesterday that the 10 million-square-foot complex remained one of the safest buildings in the country, and added that the robbery would not result in any Draconian measures to heighten security.
"After an incident like this, you certainly evaluate the measures you have in place," said Mark O. Hatfield Jr., a spokesman for the Port Authority. "But there are a number of issues to deal with here. This is not a Federal nuclear laboratory, which you can completely shut down to public access. Within an environment like this you have to provide access and egress for a large number of people."
"I think that our track record over the past 26 years has certainly been an excellent one," he added. "And, while no one will be satisfied until it's perfect, I think it is safe to say that this is the most secure office building in Manhattan."
According to the Port Authority police, the three robbers, all carrying duffel bags, entered One World Trade Center, the north tower, about 8 A.M. They took a passenger elevator to the 11th floor and walked to a freight elevator near Bank of America, whose money exchange center there is not open to the public. After the freight elevator doors opened, the robbers confronted seven people in the elevator, including the two Brink's security guards, who were delivering six currency bags to the bank, said Chief Frank Fox of the Port Authority police. He said the bags contained more than $3 million in cash, including some foreign currency.
The police said the robbers seemed to know what they wanted. One robber held a gun, telling everyone that they would not be hurt if they remained calm. Another grabbed a gun from one of the security officers and told all the passengers to get down.
According to Chief Fox, the robbers then tied the hands and feet of everyone in the elevator, ripped open three of the currency bags and stuffed the money into their duffel bags. He said the robbers appeared to know just which bags they wanted, and did not touch the other three.
Officer Cheryl Cox, a New York police spokeswoman, said the men took only bags of foreign currency.
The robbers took a passenger elevator down to the lobby, sending their victims in the freight elevator up to the 22d floor, which is uninhabited because of construction. The police were notified by one of the security guards, who managed to break the plastic ties around his feet.
Though all three robbers remain at large, Chief Fox said that investigators had bank videotape that clearly showed the robbers' faces after they took off their ski masks and began to leave the 11th floor. Some tapes also showed other people, indicating that the cameras were hidden in public areas and that the suspects wanted to blend in. Investigators added that the tight security in the building -- and the robbers' clear knowledge of the security guards' routine -- led them to believe that it was an inside job.
"The joint F.B.I. and N.Y.P.D. task force will be investigating this," said Chief Fox, adding, "There is really good security in this building. We don't know exactly how they bypassed security. They could be employees."
Lewis D. Schiliro, the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York office, said the police were offering a $1,000 reward for the arrest and capture of the robbers, and Brink's added its own $25,000 reward.
Howard Safir, the New York City Police Commissioner, added, "We will expend a great amount of resources to find these perpetrators."
A representative of Kroll Associates, the security company that was consulted after the terrorist bombing in 1993 to evaluate and enhance the protection at the center, said yesterday that Kroll would have no comment on the robbery.
Since the bombing, every one of the 40,000 employees who work at the Trade Center has had to show an identity card to security guards to get on elevators. Visitors are required to show a picture identification and to be buzzed upstairs by the company they are visiting.
But Scott Waldman, a 27-year-old lawyer who works in the complex, said that guards had waved him through on several occasions without checking his identification and that messengers often arrived at his office unannounced.
"I'm not shocked that this happened because there are plenty of days when you can wave an ID in front of them and they just let you in," he said. "Often they are talking to each other and don't even look. You can give them anything."
Security experts said that it would be hard for any system to stop the robbers who appeared yesterday morning, noting that they appeared to have compromised the complex's security system from the inside.
"This was a very bold, well-thought-out and well-executed robbery where the robbers had several levels of obstacles to overcome," said Greg Longworth, senior vice president for investigations for Strang Hayes Consulting, a security firm in New York. "It's obvious that this wasn't a random attack. Someone had inside information."

January 11, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Parolee, 19, Is Charged In Killing Of Student, 13

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 23; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 829 words

A 19-year-old parolee was arrested yesterday on charges that he fatally stabbed a 13-year-old Queens honors student as she waited for her mother to return home, the police said.
The parolee, Joseph Oates, was accused of beating and stabbing the girl, Charise Gardner, with a pair of kitchen knives after she invited him into her Flushing, Queens, apartment to listen to music on Wednesday afternoon, the police said. Charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon, Mr. Oates could face life in prison, said the Queens District Attorney, Richard Brown.
The police said that a few hours before the killing, Mr. Oates, who was convicted in 1996 for cocaine possession in the same building, had visited his parole officer.
His arrest occurred as family and friends of the victim gathered for a vigil at her home, the day after what would have been her 14th birthday.
At a news conference yesterday outside the 107th Precinct station house, just across the street from the housing project where the murder took place, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir used the case to take issue with the state's parole guidelines, saying the girl's death could have been avoided if inmates were forced to serve their entire sentences.
Mr. Oates had served only half of his three-year sentence before being released three months ago, they said.
"In my view, parole should be abolished for everyone," the Mayor said, "as they have done in the Federal courts and in many other states. New York is behind here and New York should not be behind, it should be ahead."
Noting that Mr. Oates also has a sealed record on juvenile arrests, Mr. Giuliani added, "There is no reason for violent criminals, whether they be young or old, to have the benefit of having their records sealed -- particularly if they have proven over and over again that they viciously attack other citizens of the city." Investigators said that Mr. Oates had been arrested for robbery and assault as a juvenile.
Charise, a popular eighth grader at Parsons Junior High School, was killed in her mother's two-bedroom apartment in the Pomonok Houses shortly before 5 P.M. on Wednesday, said a Police Department spokeswoman, Officer Valerie St. Rose.
Charise's body was found by her mother, Dana, when she returned from work at a nearby grocery store.
An investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity said that detectives had been looking for a man they believed was in the apartment less than an hour before Charise's death.
According to the investigator, a friend who called Charise on the phone several times around 4 P.M. heard the victim yell out to the man during one of their conversations.
A few minutes later, residents who lived in the apartment above heard a scream, a loud thump and several cries for help. But apparently no one called the police.
The investigator added that a piece of electronic equipment was missing from the house when Charise's mother found her body, indicating that robbery was a possible motive. Charise was pronounced dead at New York Hospital Medical Center at 5:40 P.M.
The police suspect that Mr. Oates was the visitor overheard on the phone, though Commissioner Safir would not rule out the possibility that other suspects were being sought.
Mr. Safir said that Mr. Oates was arrested in Queens after homicide investigators received tips from callers. The investigators also recovered a knife, the Commissioner said.
Charise was killed two days before her 14th birthday, a date that was recalled yesterday afternoon by the scores of friends who gathered in front of her apartment complex to celebrate her short life.
"Oh God, we pray for the soul of Charise," exclaimed the Reverend Reginald Wells, as the girl's mother wept nearby and friends planted a medley of flowers in her honor. "We pray for healing to take place."
Then her father, David Gardner, addressed the crowd at the vigil, and recalled Charise's wit, intellect and compassion.
Neighbors remembered her playing double-dutch in the courtyard, laughing with friends, while classmates whispered about her accomplishments as a choral singer, saxophone player and champion speller.
"Our daughter received so much love in her life. Unfortunately, she made a bad decision in trusting others, trusting a dreg of life," he said, warning the dozens of schoolchildren there to be careful as they grow in the world. "But through it all my daughter fought, and in fighting he took her life."
Candles were lighted, illuminating a sign that read "Charise, your memory will live in our hearts forever," and Charise's uncle, Keith Gardner, spoke of the twilight that had enveloped his world.
"She was a star. She could be anything and everything she wanted to be," he said. "We loved her more than words can say."
A few hours later, Mr. Oates was escorted in handcuffs from the police station across the street to a waiting police car. He was then driven away.

January 10, 1998, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

From Suspect To Samaritan For Youth, 16

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 703 words

Eight days after being shot by an off-duty police officer he was trying to save from a beating or worse, a 16-year-old police buff was visited at his hospital bedside by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and praised as a good Samaritan in a case in which he was initially viewed as a possible suspect.
"We wanted to give him something to show our appreciation," the Mayor said after meeting the youth, Raheem Dawkins, at St. Vincent's Hospital and giving him a Police Department cap. "As soon as he recovers we will do something for him at City Hall, give him some official recognition of his acting as a good Samaritan."
The accolades were in sharp contrast to the treatment Mr. Dawkins received after the shooting. In the original police report of the incident, which occurred on Jan. 1 after Officer Michael O'Shea was attacked by several men at a Canal Street subway station, Mr. Dawkins was described as a "possible suspect," a definition one investigator in the case privately called "outrageous."
Mr. Dawkins was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing. After initially failing to provide any information about the incident, the department released a report on the shooting yesterday morning, after being questioned about it by a reporter from The New York Times.
According to the police report, Officer O'Shea, 31, was off duty and traveling north on the No. 4 line with his girlfriend after celebrating New Year's Eve when he spotted four men smoking marijuana and rough-housing in his subway car. One of the men walked up and struck the officer's girlfriend in the head, said Lieut. Dennis Cirillo, a department spokesman. He said an argument then took place, with Officer O'Shea identifying himself as a policeman before he and his girlfriend fled onto the subway platform at Canal Street.
Lieutenant Cirillo said the suspects followed, shouting, "Get his gun, get his gun" as they struggled with Officer O'Shea in front of the token booth. During the fight, Mr. Dawkins arrived. The report then states that Officer O'Shea's gun discharged and a bullet struck the youth in the thigh.
The report does not say that Mr. Dawkins was trying to help Officer O'Shea. But Mayor Giuliani did, and Mr. Dawkins and his family were pleased by that.
"We are happy that the Mayor has acknowledged Raheem," said his brother, James Dawkins, a security guard. "It's a good gesture by the city and took the stigma of possible perpetrator off of him."
He added that Mr. Dawkins felt no ill will toward the officer who accidentally shot him, or toward the Police Department he had grown up admiring. Mr. Dawkins, a sophomore at South Shore High School in Brooklyn, used to play with his brother's badge, and for the last three years has done community work with police officers through the 73d Precinct's Law Enforcement Explorers Program. His dream has been to become an officer himself, his family said.
"Raheem knows that Officer O'Shea didn't mean for this to happen, and we want him to know that our prayers are with him," James Dawkins said.
Police Commissioner Howard Safir said there may someday be a place for Mr. Dawkins in the police force.
"From what I have seen, he is exactly the kind of young man we would like," he said.
"Physically fit, energetic, he didn't hesitate to help a police officer," Mr. Safir said. "A very positive attitude."
He also defended the Police Department for initially failing to release any information about the shooting to reporters, even though the department routinely informs news organizations of incidents in which officers fire their weapons.
"It was an omission," he said, blaming the mistake on miscommunication between detectives working on the case and the department's public information office. "There was nothing conspiratorial about it. They just made a mistake."
In Mr. Dawkins's hospital room yesterday, flowers and cards from well-wishers were abundant. Mr. Dawkins wore a Correction Officer cap, which he quickly removed when Mayor Giuliani offered him a New York City Police Department cap in trade.
"I suggested that he alternate them," the Mayor said. He said Mr. Dawkins beamed when Mr. Safir also handed over a Police Department T-shirt.

January 3, 1998, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Mother Freed, Finds Child In Hospital; Sitter Charged

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 685 words

A Bronx woman was released from Westchester County Correctional Facility yesterday, only to learn that her young son was in the hospital and her babysitter was in jail, charged with violently shaking the toddler on New Year's Day, the police said.
The mother, Veneisha Clarke, who had been convicted in Westchester County on a minor drug charge in November, completed her sentence and left her jail cell at 3 P.M., shortly after her babysitter, Betty Chambers, 32, was arraigned on assault and child endangerment charges in Bronx Criminal Court.
Ms. Clarke's 2-year-old son, whose name was withheld by officials, remained in critical condition at Montefiore Medical Center, with serious neurological injuries and abdominal bleeding, child welfare investigators said. He needed a respirator to breathe, they said.
According to the criminal complaint filed by the Bronx District Attorney, Robert T. Johnson, Ms. Chambers, whose bail was set at $125,000, grabbed the child by the stomach on New Year's Day shortly after midnight, then began to shake him violently. The court document adds that the shaking damaged the child's liver and caused blood to leak into his eyes and brain.
Emergency medical technicians found the child when they arrived at Ms. Chambers's apartment at 3638 Holland Avenue in Williamsbridge, the Bronx, shortly before 1 A.M. on Thursday after receiving a call that someone was injured, the police said. The technicians took him to Jacobi Medical Center, and notified the police that the boy appeared to have been abused, said Detective Joseph Pentangelo, a Police Department spokesman. Officers then arrested Ms. Chambers, he said. Detective Pentangelo added that the child was later taken to Montefiore.
Emergency Medical Service technicians said Ms. Chambers originally told them that the child fell down some stairs in her apartment building, but the court papers say that his injuries are not consistent with such a fall.
Detective Pentangelo said Ms. Chambers's three children, ages 3, 6, and 8, were turned over to the city's Administration for Children's Services, but a spokeswoman for the Administration for Children's Services, Jennifer Falk, said later that two of the children were later turned over to relatives, while the third was put in foster care.
Ms. Falk said that Ms. Chambers had come to the attention of the agency only once before, when she was arrested in December on shoplifting charges. She said that Ms. Chambers's children showed no signs of abuse or neglect then, and none when she was arrested on Thursday.
Residents in Ms. Chambers's three-story apartment building said that she had lived there for only two weeks and that she kept to herself. Ms. Chambers's brother, Desmond Chambers, 29, said he was shocked to learn that his sister had been arrested and charged with child abuse. He said his sister was a gentle person who had immigrated to America about 10 years ago from Jamaica and had worked as an adult care attendant until November.
"I've never seen her beat her kids, so why should she do something like that to someone else's?" the brother asked, adding that he suspected she was covering up for someone else in her house. "She's not stupid, she's not on drugs," he said. "She couldn't do such a thing."
A Queens woman, Fabiola Valasco, 19, was also arrested on child abuse charges on Thursday after she returned from a dinner date about 10 P.M. and found that her home in Corona was in flames, and her children, ages 4 and 3, were being treated for smoke inhalation at Elmhurst General Hospital. She had left them alone while she was out of the house for an hour, officers said.
Officer Arek Tarih, a Police Department spokesman, said a fire marshal arrested Ms. Valasco at the scene, and charged her with reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child. He said a lighted candle in the house apparently caused the fire during the hour that Ms. Valasco was at dinner. Officer Cheryl Cox, a Police Department spokeswoman, said the children were turned over to the Administration for Children's Services.

December 7, 1997, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Forklift Kills Homeless Man Sleeping in a Box

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 47; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 599 words

A homeless man sleeping in a cardboard box was killed early yesterday when he was run over by a Department of Sanitation forklift removing trash from a vacant lot in Brooklyn, the police said.
The homeless man, Ted Lovaska, 47, was sleeping in the carton with Katazyna Lovaska, 68, when the 10-ton forklift rolled over him in the lot at Union Avenue and Middleton Street in Williamsburg shortly after 3 A.M., a Police Department spokeswoman, Carmen Melendez, said. The police did not know Mr. Lovaska's relationship to the woman, who was not seriously hurt, but neighborhood residents said they believed she was his mother. She was treated at Bellevue Hospital Center and released.
As the forklift operator, Joseph Carosano, 48, was cleaning the lot, Ms. Lovaska leapt from the swirl of garbage and began to scream, the police said. "Two tires ran over the man," said Lucian Chalfen, a Sanitation Department spokesman, adding that it appeared Mr. Carosano had followed proper procedures in checking the area.
Mr. Carosano, a 12-year veteran of the Sanitation Department, passed a breath-analyzer test administered by the police, and the Department of Sanitation was awaiting the results of a urine test. Ms. Melendez said that the incident was preliminarily ruled an accident and that Mr. Carosano would not face criminal charges.
Its fence long broken by illegal dumpers, the small lot remained cluttered with old tires, trash, clothing and brown weeds yesterday afternoon. In the refuse were two foam-rubber mattresses, one stained with blood.
Neighborhood residents said the Lovaskas and another man they believed to be Mr. Lovaska's father had been sleeping on the mattresses for the past three months, covering themselves with blankets, carpets and a large piece of plastic to protect themselves from the wind and rain. Some recalled that the family had earlier lived in a nearby park before being told to go elsewhere by police.
"I used to see them walking hand in hand, mother and son," said Louis Zillamil, adding that it appeared they had no other family. "They never bothered nobody. I feel really sorry for them."
Mary Brosnahan, the executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said Mr. Lovaska's death showed the precarious lives of the city's homeless. Facing increased scrutiny by social service agencies and a crackdown on their shantytowns by the police, the city's homeless people have been increasingly pushed into a nomadic shadow existence, she said.
"People are being pushed into more marginal locations at night and made to keep moving constantly during daytime by the police," Ms. Brosnahan said. "With invisibility becoming a premium, in terms of their survival every day, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that people are bedding down in trash."
Mr. Chalfen agreed that finding homeless people amid piles of trash was common, particularly with the bitter chill of winter approaching.
"Unfortunately, this happens," he said. "I have heard of many stories where our workers have found people sleeping in empty vans, boxes and rolled up in carpets that then begin to move once they're picked up. That's why whenever we clean an area like this, we are very careful to check for people. More often than not, we find somebody inside the garbage."
The area where the Lovaskas were sleeping was commonly used as an illegal dumping ground, Mr. Chalfen said, one of perhaps 50,000 such dumps in the city. "We are as aggressive as we can be in terms of cleaning up the lots and citing violators," he said, "but it's hard to catch them."

The New York Times

November 21, 1997, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Bicyclists Are Police Priority After a Fatal Crash

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 924 words

Earl Morton, a nine-year veteran of the bicycle messenger wars, stood near his bike in midtown Manhattan yesterday as a team of six police officers swooped down on a bewildered restaurant deliveryman who had coasted through a red light.
In a matter of minutes, the officers had issued the deliveryman four summonses -- from not having a bell on his bicycle to not heeding pedestrian traffic -- totaling nearly $200 in fines.
The Police Department has intensified its efforts to catch bicycle messengers and deliverymen who break traffic laws since a 68-year-old businessman leaving an Upper West Side restaurant Tuesday night died after being struck by a deliveryman illegally riding on the sidewalk.
"There are a million cops out there, and it's just going to get worse now that a pedestrian got killed," Mr. Morton said. "They're really cracking down."
Officers at precincts throughout the city were told at roll call yesterday to keep an eye out for bicyclists breaking the law. And the department has added officers to bicycle enforcement patrols like the one Mr. Morton watched at the Avenue of the Americas and 50th Street, which have been operating in the precinct for last three years.
Sgt. Joe Grogan, the leader of the six-officer team, said he had given out more than 100 summonses yesterday, a relatively high amount. "I'm about done," he said, rounding up the officers for another detail. "My hand hurts."
Leonardo Alcivar, a Police Department spokesman, said precincts in midtown and upper Manhattan had been alerted last month to problems caused by cyclists, adding that the death of Arthur Kaye, the man struck Tuesday night, had "caused the department to reinforce the importance of bicycling laws."
The police could not say how many additional officers were involved in such operations yesterday or how many precincts had set them up.
Some teams of officers use bicycles to chase lawbreakers on bikes. Other operations, such as the one Sgt. Grogan was in charge of yesterday, work by placing officers as lookouts at street corners, while others wait down the street. When a bicyclist is spotted running a red light or hopping a curb, the lookouts radio other officers down the street.
One such previously scheduled crackdown on Wednesday, in the 19th Precinct on the Upper East Side, resulted in 162 summonses being issued, including some to owners of restaurants who failed to provide deliverymen with uniforms and identification cards or to keep logs of where their deliverymen were sent. Five bicycles were also confiscated from people who rode them on the sidewalk, the police said.
The raid followed a declaration by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on Wednesday that bicycle scofflaws were among the biggest quality-of-life issues in the city.
Mr. Kaye was the second pedestrian this year to die after being hit by a bicycle and the third such death since the beginning of 1996.
While the number of deaths is small, many pedestrians said yesterday that those statistics do not reflect the daily close calls they encounter on the city's crowded streets.
Mohamed Elsayed, 34, said that he had been hit numerous times by cyclists maneuvering between his hot dog stand and a street near Rockefeller Center. "The police shouldn't have waited until somebody got killed to enforce the law," he said. "The sidewalk over here is almost too dangerous to walk on."
But for the people who rely on bicycles to earn a living, the city's crackdown was just one more hazard that they must contend with.
Jose Giobano, who was riding against the flow of traffic on Columbus Avenue last night delivering food from the Museum Cafe, said that he often worries about being struck by cars. "I think we sometimes ride on the sidewalk to be safe from cars," he said. "We must work fast because we have to do our job."
Cyclists stopped by the police yesterday said that the officers appeared more willing to give out tickets for all possible offenses, including relatively small infractions like not having a bell on the handlebars.
Mr. Morton, the bicycle messenger, said he began his career after dropping out of high school. He said he could earn up to $800 a week, but that tickets often eat up a good portion of that income.
Mr. Morton said he had not yet paid six of the tickets he had received this year, saying he would get more if he were to do his job properly. "If I'm rushed and there's a lot of traffic, I've got to hit the sidewalk," he said.
John Kaehny, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a bicyclist advocacy group, said that the police crackdown was misguided. He said the only way to really quell the battle between pedestrians and cyclists was to impose fines on the owners of establishments who employ the cyclists.
"There is an extensive set of commercial enforcement laws that require employers to give their cyclists identifying clothing with identification numbers, identification cards and other things and they are not being enforced," Mr. Kaehny said. "The owners making the profit are completely disconnected from the laborer who is facing the fines. They should be held accountable."
One of those given a summons by the police yesterday, Diego Morales, a 25-year-old who delivers pizzas, said he was troubled about being pulled over for running a red light on Columbus Avenue near 81st Street.
"If I'm not fast, I lose customers," he said, adding that he delivers four or five pizzas an hour. "Now I must pay a ticket and make no money. I want to quit this job."

The New York Times

October 12, 1997, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Despite Fears, Little Evidence Is Seen of a Rise in Gang Violence

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 37; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk; Second Front

LENGTH: 1557 words

School was out and the D.S.A. gang was roaming around its turf near Police Plaza in lower Manhattan. J.A., otherwise known as Reptile, had just stuffed a hot dog into his lanky 15-year-old frame. More of the crew began to appear, bookbags dragging off oversized T-shirts and baggy jeans scraping the sidewalk.
Joker -- like other gang members, he identified himself only by street name or initials -- lurched forward, a neck full of red and yellow beads dangling onto a cross on his chest. Suddenly, there was a flurry of hand gestures, and their talk turned to the latest perceived threat: gang members who called themselves Bloods.
The D.S.A. gang -- what the initials stand for is a gang secret, members said -- did not exist last year. It is one of a new crop of youth gangs, or crews, that have popped up in schools and on streets across New York City as a defensive answer to the real and imagined dangers of the streets.
Reports in past weeks of several random slashings have heightened the specter of a gang menace to the point where Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and other city officials pledged Wednesday to wage an all-out war on gangs.
But gang specialists in the Police Department, school officials and their statistics suggest that despite the increased concern about gang mayhem, there is little evidence that gang-related violence is on the rise. Nor is there evidence of a New York recruitment drive by the feared Los Angeles-based Bloods gang, police investigators said, although there are recognized gangs that use the name and others with no affiliation to established gangs who are acting out what they have gleaned from popular culture.
Echoing the feeling of many school officials and investigators, Gerard P. Beirne, the principal at John Adams High School in Ozone Park, Queens, said gang activity around his school has remained relatively constant during the six years he has been there.
"It has always been that way," he said. "Kids reach out to each other and form crews, sometimes for a sense of family or structure and sometimes just to be with each other. This is basically not going to stop. What we have to watch out for is when these groups reach the stage where people begin to get hurt."
Some parents and their children are even complaining of what they call a climate of hysteria that may only be helping to encourage students to affiliate with gangs for self-defense.
Officials at Fiorello H. La Guardia High School in midtown Manhattan warned the student body over a public address system last week that there had been "rumors of gang violence." They urged students to travel in groups and to go home immediately after school. Though defending the announcement as a safeguard for an increasingly dangerous time, one official said there had never been a gang-related incident in the school.
Mike Judd, whose 17-year-old daughter Erin goes to La Guardia, received a frantic long-distance call from his daughter, who was so upset she called him in St. Louis.
"It just seems ludicrous to tell kids things like that, then send them on their way," he said in a telephone interview. "She's calling me and saying that they think there's going to be a gang war. What's a 17-year-old girl supposed to do with that information?"
But around many schools, the perception of trouble is enough to cause students to band together for self-protection.
In Woodhaven, Queens, children as young as 8 who call themselves Netas sit on corners by Franklin K. Lane High School and talk of how they must protect their homes from Bloods, who have yet to slash a Netas member. At Lenox Avenue and 118th Street in Harlem, teen-agers who label themselves Bloods warily eye Crips who live two blocks away. In Los Angeles, the Crips are the mortal enemies of the Bloods, but in Harlem, gang members admit there is hardly ever a skirmish. And in lower Manhattan near the Brooklyn Bridge, members of the D.S.A. stand in wait for anyone with a name.
According to Capt. James McCool, commander of the Police Department's criminal intelligence unit, there are only 1,000 true Latin Kings in New York City, about 600 Bloods, even fewer Netas and only a few score of Crips.
Another gang investigator said that 90 percent of those now calling themselves gang members -- including those now committing violent acts in the name of Bloods and Latin Kings -- have no affiliation to established gangs and are merely acting out what they have read in newspaper accounts of the gangs. None of the Bloods in New York City have been found to have any ties to the gang's originators in Los Angeles.
While five instances of gang-related violence by teen-agers were reported last week -- four street slashings and the possible sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl by classmates at Martin Luther King Jr. High School on the Upper West Side -- there is little concrete evidence that the number of such incidents is increasing in the city. (Yesterday afternoon, a 31-year-old woman was struck on the face with a sharp object while riding a northbound subway train on the E line in Elmhurst, Queens, but the police said the incident was not gang-related.)
And the random violence that is occurring, police officers say, is often the work of a minority of the teen-agers, whose gang affiliation is tenuous at best. The hysteria has even affected the way crimes are described to reporters, with police crime sheets now displaying the phrase "NOT GANG RELATED," surrounded by asterisks, on accounts of slashings and beatings that could be misconstrued as gang initiations.
"I really don't think Bloods have overtaken the city by any means," Captain McCool said. He added that some of the new focus on gangs resulted from beefed-up gang intelligence units that had recently begun to calculate precisely how many crimes were being committed by youth gangs.
"No one should be walking around New York City thinking that gangs will come and attack them because that is just not the case," he said. "There is not a tremendous amount of gangs here."
Still, the gang culture has left its impression on some. Carol Johnson, a 35-year-old mother of three, knows firsthand what kind of children are attracted to the hype surrounding the Bloods.
Eight months ago, she watched her 17-year-old daughter, Stephanie, slowly drift into the arms of a young Bloods gang member named Ozy. Once an aspiring actress who was active in drama classes at Talent Unlimited High School in Manhattan, the headstrong girl soon began skipping school, rerouting school mail to an old address to cover up her absence. Later, Mrs. Johnson began noticing new trinkets in Stephanie's room, items she later learned had been shoplifted from Macy's by Stephanie and her new friends.
Three cigarette burns appeared on Stephanie's right shoulder, the triangular sign now popular among New York-based Bloods, and she complained to friends that she needed more short-sleeved shirts to show them off. Six months ago, when Stephanie began beating Mrs. Johnson's two younger children and bragging about it on the phone, Mrs. Johnson finally kicked her out of the house.
"Saturday was the first time I had seen her in four months," Mrs. Johnson said last week. They exchanged little more than a hello.
"I was glad to see that she was still alive but she knows that she can't stay in my house anymore," Mrs. Johnson said. "If she wants to jeopardize her life, that is her choice, but I'm not going to let her jeopardize anyone else's."
In interviews, dozens of gang members and nonaligned students expressed an overwhelming sense that danger lurked around every corner, even though most said that they had never been harassed or threatened by schoolmates who were in gangs, or had friends who had been attacked by gang members.
When asked why they were afraid, they said they had seen news reports of gang violence or had heard schoolmates brag about unconfirmed exploits.
Norman Daye, a 15-year-old student at Martin Luther King Jr. High School, said he recently stopped going out alone because he feared being attacked by gangs of youths, particularly several people in his school who call themselves Bloods.
Now he goes to the movies only if surrounded by his own crew. When entering the neighborhood skating rink near the 135th Street Bridge on the weekend, he and his friends try to act tough, even though he has never been harassed by gang members.
"We banded together because you can't be safe when you go outside anymore," he said, adding that a Blood once asked him to join that gang, but that he declined. "You always need someone to watch over your back because there are gangs all over the city and you never know where they might be."
At Franklin K. Lane High School in Queens, members of a crew of teen-agers who live on a block near the school have affiliated with the Netas street gang because they had read about Bloods coming into town and wanted to make sure that no one was slashed on their street.
Over the past couple of weeks they questioned strangers who were walking by and chased away people who did not appear to belong. They call it the neighborhood watch.
"If their crews show up, we've got to take them," said one young gang member who identified himself only as E.P. "It's called self-defense, and there's nothing wrong with that."


GRAPHIC: Photos: Members of the D.S.A. gang -- Shorty, wearing a cap, Caspar, standing, and Rico, right -- near Police Plaza in lower Manhattan. The boy at left was not identified. (Edward Keating/The New York Times)(pg. 37); Phantom, part of the D.S.A. gang, played with a knife as he talked about other young people who are calling themselves Bloods. He and other D.S.A. members had gathered near Police Plaza in lower Manhattan. (Edward Keating/The New York Times)(pg. 39)

Chart: "FOR THE RECORD: Less Crime, More Fear"
While concern is growing about gang violence in schools, the Board of Education says that serious crime has decreased 18% over the last year. (pg. 39)

The New York Times

September 21, 1997, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Siege of 163d Street: Police Take Over Drug-Ridden Block to Save It

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 41; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk; Second Front

LENGTH: 1359 words

Crossed arms and uneasy glances met Police Officer Miguel Adorno as he began his pitch. Women interrupted him and old men shook their heads. But such suspicion did not deter him as he urged residents of the drug-worn block to take a stand against the dealers and violence that for years have been its standard.
"We are here to help you and will stay as long as it takes, but you have to use this time to organize yourselves," said the young officer, trying to encourage them to form a tenants' association. "Alone, you will always be victims. But with numbers, you can save this block."
Officer Adorno's pitch was a crucial part of an intensive experiment undertaken by the 33d Precinct in Washington Heights in an effort to salvage some of the neighborhood's most blighted blocks. Under the program begun last month, police officers, themselves often the object of suspicion and fear on these streets, have injected themselves into the daily lives of the residents to an extraordinary degree.
The block-by-block effort, first introduced on 163d Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, began with an all-out drug sweep to clear out dealers and shutter stores used as drug markets. Then, the police set up barricades and stationed officers at each end of the block, 24 hours a day. They stop unfamiliar pedestrians and drivers, asking for identification and turning away anyone who does not live on the block or have a convincing reason to be there.
Besides acting as armed guards, officers scrubbed graffiti and cajoled landlords into providing paint for buildings and light posts. Others enlisted city agencies to replace street signs, board up abandoned structures or cart off garbage that had piled up on the street. Pay phones, once a magnet for drug dealers, were removed from the sidewalks, while tenants were given lessons in how to spot criminals and dissuade them from hanging out in their midst. (For instance, if you see a stranger, ask him why he is there and follow him to his destination.)
The police say they are prepared to stay for weeks or even months if necessary. But the ultimate goal is for residents to use the respite provided by the constant police presence to organize tenant groups, and ultimately a block association, which will keep up the fight once the officers pull out. If the plan works, residents will call the police should suspected criminals loiter in the neighborhood. Tenants will take turns patrolling their buildings and their block for illegal activity.
Capt. Garry F. McCarthy, who devised the program after taking command of the 33d Precinct three months ago, said the effort began with drug sweeps conducted by the Northern Manhattan Initiative, a narcotics task force organized by Police Commissioner Howard Safir.
Mr. Safir said the Washington Heights effort was the expansion of a crackdown last year on a block of 139th Street in Harlem. While the police in the past have barricaded other blocks for short periods following drug sweeps, officials and outside experts said they could not recall any efforts as long-term as this one that combined drug sweeps, barricades, cleanups and community organizing into a cohesive strategy.
The approach has raised concerns for civil libertarians about where to draw the line between strong law enforcement and an infringement on residents' rights. Norman Siegel, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the blockades and the recruitment of residents as what he termed informants raised "serious constitutional questions."
"You want effective law enforcement but you don't want it at the expense of civil liberties," he said. "In a democratic society, no citizen should be required to show identification to walk down a public street."
But many residents interviewed said the occasional inconvenience was a price they were willing to pay if it meant they could sit on their stoops without fearing drug dealers. They said officers now greeted them as human beings instead of rushing down their street with car windows rolled up, stopping only to frisk them or accuse them of crimes. While the neighborhood has seen police brutality cases, none of the residents interviewed this week accused officers of misconduct.
"We've been afraid as long as we've been here," said Victor Matos, 22, who lives on 161st Street. "Even if they hassle us for identity cards, it's better now because we can walk down the street."
Last Sunday, more than 300 residents walked through a driving rain to attend a block meeting organized by Captain McCarthy. And the police say tenants in four buildings on the street have already formed tenant associations, while those in seven remaining buildings are voting for association officers or considering starting associations of their own.
Captain McCarthy said his officers were already expanding the program to 161st Street, where a sweep on Wednesday cleared out several storefront drug operations, as well as a prostitution ring and a gambling house. He said other blocks will soon follow.
"You can buy and bust till the cows come home and nothing will change on these blocks," he concluded. "But if you clean things up and get the community involved, give them a sense of hope and pride, there is a chance for long-term progress here."
A similar but less intensive program still under way in Jersey City suggests that such a strategy can have an effect. According to Anthony A. Braga, a research associate at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, over a 14-month period ending in August 1995, overall crime decreased by 16 percent in areas similarly targeted by the Jersey City Police Department, while crime jumped 42 percent in comparable spots left to traditional patrols. He said less than 20 percent of the rise could be attributed to criminals who fled the target areas.
Whether such success can be repeated in one of New York's grittiest neighborhoods remains to be seen. As in Jersey City, the glee felt by most residents is tempered by a fear that safe streets are a temporary luxury. Some note that the initiative has followed the intense criticism of the Police Department after a highly publicized brutality case in Brooklyn. Others worry that it is a temporary re-election ploy by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Nearly all are afraid of being singled out by drug dealers who they fear will return the moment the police barricades are taken down. A measure of that fear came when Officer Adorno asked the 45 residents attending his meeting at one building on 163d Street whether they wanted to elect officers for a tenant association. A minute passed as neighbors eyed one another to see who would respond first, then a few mumbled yes, and finally there was a loud chorus.
Among them was Jennifer Jahorie, 18, who said she had never been able to play outside while growing up on the block because of the violence on the street, and had made only one friend in her building before the police secured the area and began urging residents to meet one another. Though her father had walked out of the meeting, she said things were different now, and she wanted them to stay that way.
"Before you were afraid to meet people," she said. "Now everyone comes out on the street together. If we organize and keep an eye out for each other, the drug dealers will stay away."
Others were more skeptical, but even those who thought the exercise might be futile said they were willing to give it a try. Saying that the rules in his neighborhood have always been "money and bodily harm," T. Houston, a 45-year-old hospital worker, noted that at least half of those in the building had not attended the 7:30 P.M. meeting. Then he talked about how bad the neighborhood had been, booming his voice so that any friends of the drug dealers who had once plied their trade on his block would know what he was saying.
"We are all afraid, but we'll do it, even if it's just five or six of us in this building," he said, clutching his wife, Ana. "We'll do it because it's a start, and we've got to start somewhere if this hell we've lived through is ever going to end."

The New York Times

September 14, 1997, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

New York Gangs Mimic California Original

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 37; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk; Second Front

LENGTH: 1560 words

The Bloods of Lenox Avenue were milling about, drinking beer and smoking on a quiet Harlem night. One of them, William, pulled up his sleeve to reveal a triangle of three dots that had been burned into his right shoulder with a cigarette. Then his friend Chelsea pulled up his shirt and bared his shoulder, with three similar scars.
The two young men clasped hands and hugged as other gang members and hangers-on snickered and looked up and down the street for strangers. The dots, the men said, are a symbol of brotherhood.
"This is what it's all about: unity and power," said William, 25, as young children looped about on bicycles nearby and laughed in their games. "It's about being a part of something, helping out your brother when he's hungry or needs a place to sleep. Red, being a Blood, is our light, and it keeps us together. What's so wrong with that?"
William and Chelsea, who would not give their last names, are part of what the police say is a growing phenomenon in the city: young New Yorkers taking on the symbols, colors and initiation rites of Los Angeles' notorious street gang, the Bloods.
The police say they know of more than 600 people organized into at least 16 subsets of the gang in New York City. And a recent spate of random slashings on the subways -- a common gang crime -- and the mass arrests two weeks ago of more than 150 suspected gang members have underscored fears that the California gang has expanded into New York.
But interviews with police investigators and self-described gang members across the city tell a more complicated story.
Gang members on one block are just as likely to fight fellow Bloods in another part of the city as they are to battle rival gangs, like the Crips.
Some are young teen-agers who claim a gang of one, while others have joined with friends to start their own Bloods gangs on blocks where they have lived their entire lives. Many have gone to jail as members of one gang and come out as members of another.
The New York City police say no gang members here appear to have been recruited or taught by an O.G., or Original Gangster, the term used to describe the standard bearers who formed the gang more than two decades ago in Compton, Calif., and the Watts area of Los Angeles.
Instead, police investigators and gang members say that the Bloods in New York are mimicking their California counterparts, whose life style has been mythologized in rap lyrics and movies, and whose name carries a ready-made cachet in the blighted areas of Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Rockaway.
"This is not a case where the Crip or Blood travel agency sent these guys down here and told them to start a gang," said Jeffrey Fagan, a gang expert and the director of Columbia University's Center for Violence Research and Prevention. "These guys are imitating gang culture because it provides instant status and reputation in communities where reputation and status have very exaggerated -- and often life or death -- meaning."
What has worried the police is the tendency among some of those calling themselves Bloods not only to emulate gang culture that has pervaded other cities, but also to adapt new and often violent rituals to their groups.
Often, those with no affiliation to the Bloods mimic the gang members' activities, the police say.
Many people calling themselves Bloods in New York burn three dots into their arms to show their allegiance, though few seem to know that the triangular pattern comes from an old Hispanic gang symbol meaning "la vida loca," or the crazy life. In another ritual with Hispanic gang roots, the police say many gang members also make new recruits withstand a 30-second beating before being admitted to the gang, while Bloods members in Queens have popularized the home-grown initiation rite of slashing a stranger in the subway -- the New York version of Los Angeles' drive-by shooting.
Police investigators say that suspected Bloods members have committed at least half of the 135 gang-related slashings in the city in the last two years and a host of other crimes, from robbery to selling guns and drugs.
In Los Angeles, there are reported to be more than 5,000 Bloods and 15,000 Crips, many of them the children of gang members. Two weeks ago, fearful that New York City was about to follow that path, Police Commissioner Howard Safir announced with great fanfare the arrest of 167 suspected Bloods and their associates.
Inspector Jose Cordero, head of the Police Department's anti-gang effort, said the arrests were made before the beginning of the school year to hinder the gang's efforts to recruit schoolchildren.
But officers say now that only half of those arrested are known gang members, and a listing of the charges against them shows that fewer than 50 faced violence-related charges, like selling guns to undercover officers, committing strong-arm robberies or carrying weapons. In fact, fewer than a dozen were carrying knives or other sharp instruments that could be used in slashings. The rest were taken in because they had not appeared in court to face old charges or because they were selling drugs.
One was released after charges against him were dropped, and investigators said that all but about 50 others had already made bail and were back on the streets.
The slashing of unsuspecting strangers across the face, usually with a box-cutter, is a Bloods signature that the police say has become increasingly popular. Of the gang-related slashings reported to the police in the last 20 months, investigators say about 30 have been traced to would-be Bloods. Many other victims have been slashed during robberies by assailants who claimed affiliation with the Bloods.
On Tuesday, the police said, an 11-year-old boy in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn slashed a classmate at school with the blade from a pencil sharpener after the boy turned down his offer to join his fledgling Bloods group. At the time, the slasher had yet to recruit a member.
In August, a 14-year-old boy who the police said was trying to curry favor with three friends who had started a Bloods street gang slashed a homeless man in St. Nicholas Park in Harlem. And in February, Dianshu Jiang, 54, and his 25-year-old son, Chang, were slashed in their Chinese restaurant in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Mr. Jiang had made the mistake of asking a teen-ager to pay 25 cents for extra noodles in a takeout order.
"My father began to follow the boy out of the restaurant because he took the noodles and put them in his pocket," said Mr. Jiang's daughter, who did not wish to give her name. "Then another boy came in and without saying anything, one of them took out a knife and began slashing."
The two suspects, both believed to be Bloods, are now in custody in the city's jail system, as are about 600 other Bloods, the police said.
Prison officials trace the gang's origin to less than a dozen inmates with New York City roots, who were segregated from the general population at Rikers Island after stabbing, slashing or beating up other inmates.
Around 1993, the officials said, members of several black street gangs, like the Jamaica Posse, Smoke and Black Gorilla Family, first began to bond together as Bloods. Their leader, who prison officials say is in jail on murder and assault charges stemming from crimes he committed before becoming a Blood, gained the nickname O.G. Mack -- Original Gangsta Mack -- after forming the Nine Trey Gangstas with a core of six members and leading them on a slashing spree on Rikers Island that year.
The victims were usually members of the system's two largest existing gangs, the Latin Kings and the Netas, which for years had controlled the use of phones and commissaries in the jails and harassed other nonaligned inmates.
The violent push for jail privileges drew other prisoners, many of them Hispanic and white, to join the Bloods, and membership ballooned, the officials said. The gang now accounts for more than one-third of the 1,600 known gang members in the jail system on a given day. Slashings, which have always been common in prisons, began to skyrocket, with city jail officials reporting an average of 140 a month through 1995.
The number has dropped to an average of 33 a month this year, largely because of an initiative to spot and separate gang members from one another. But the Bloods gang has continued to flourish and disperse its message of unity.
Gang members often scrawl their codes of conduct on notebook paper, then wander about seeking new recruits. Sometimes they hand out photocopies and quiz prospective members on Bloods trivia.
Individual Bloods revise the history to suit their own theories of the gang's origins, but all preach a common message of connection and respect in a fearful and often violent world.
A young Harlem man, an aspiring rap performer who gave his name only as Osbranurious, said he took the gang's message to heart when he was befriended by a Blood in prison.
"Society claims we are notorious thugs and killers but we are not. We're a family of survivors," he said one recent night on a Harlem street corner, shortly after police officers stopped him for routine questioning. "This man taught me that we are proud young black men living in the American ghetto, Harlem princes trying to rise up and refusing to be beaten down."

GRAPHIC: Photos: Three dots are a Bloods gang symbol. (Lenore Victoria Davis for The New York Times)(pg. 37); On Lenox Avenue between 118th and 119th Streets, writing on a trash bin seems to boast of a link to the Bloods. But local groups apparently have no formal connection with the Los Angeles gang, the police say. (Chang W. Lee/The New York Times)(pg. 40)

The New York Times

September 1, 1997, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Transit Patrols On 7 Line Cut Night Crimes

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1064 words

For nearly four months, police officers on overnight patrols on the No. 7 subway line in Queens have focused on deterring two types of crimes: token booth robberies and thefts by pickpockets who prey silently on riders as they sleep.
The results have been so striking -- a 71 percent drop in grand larcenies and not a single robbed token booth between May 12 and Aug. 11 -- that police and transit officials say they will soon expand the operation to the No. 6 line and possibly the entire system.
"These types of crimes aren't random, they're planned," said Inspector Thomas Lawless, who oversees all the police officers assigned to patrol the subways in Queens. "So we figured we could stop them if we did some planning ourselves. The 7 train seemed a good place to start."
The program, Operation Awake, concentrates on reducing crime from 10 P.M. to 6 A.M. during the week and from 10 P.M. to 8 A.M. on Saturdays and Sundays. During these periods, shifts for token booth workers have been staggered so an officer is present whenever a clerk retrieves money from the subway's turnstiles. And trains have been shortened to 6 cars, from the usual 11, so that they are easier to patrol.
Officers also run sting operations to catch what they call "lush workers" -- stealthy thieves who often seek victims who are in an alcoholic stupor. The officers keep dossiers on repeat offenders and pass out leaflets in English and Spanish warning riders not to nod off.
"Subways Are NOT for Sleeping," it reads. "Doze in your seat and you might end up missing more than your stop."
The message is meant for weary riders like William Romero, 35, a porter who was headed to work on the 7 train around 11 P.M. on a recent Thursday. Despite the bright fluorescent lights and the whine and rumble of the train, Mr. Romero slept, his stomach heaving steadily, a light snore under his breath.
Call it grand larceny or a sleep tax, but Mr. Romero has come to accept that his pocket will occasionally be drained by one of the quick-fingered thieves who work the subways while their victims sleep.
"They're brazen and quick," he said, poking his finger into his pants pocket to explain to a reporter, who had just awakened him, how he awoke once on the 9 train to find a small slit where the lining should have been and his money missing. "But what can I do?" he said. "It's too noisy at my apartment during the day when I should be getting my rest."
But on the 7, Mr. Romero had reason to sleep easier. From May 12, when Operation Awake began, to Aug. 11, the latest date for which data are available, crime on that line in Queens has declined 60 percent from the same period last year, the police said. On all subway lines in the borough, they said, crime has fallen 15 percent in that period.
During that time, there have been only two reports of "lush rolls" on the 7 train in Queens, compared with 16 in the same period last year. On the other six lines in Queens, the police have reported 17 such robberies, and in the city over all, there have been 233 since January.
And while no token booth workers have been robbed in 7 line stations since the program began, citywide there have been 11 successful robberies this year.
While the police acknowledge that some lush workers have simply moved their operations to other lines, they say the practice of demanding identification to keep tabs on repeat offenders and more aggressive prosecutions have deterred many robbers.
The Transit Authority and the Police Department have been discussing expanding the program to the rest of the system, with officials saying it is likely to begin soon on the Lexington Avenue No. 6 line. "The program has been a big success," said Joseph E. Hofmann, senior vice president of subways for the Transit Authority. "Everyone is pleased with it, crime is down and the employees feel safer, so we're looking at ways to reschedule workers, shorten trains and take it to other lines."
If that happens, it may spell hard times for some of the city's most resilient underground criminals. Lush workers have been a fixture in New York City for more than a century, starting out on the elevated lines in the late 1800's and finding more fertile ground as the city's subway system opened in 1904.
Children as young as 5 or 6 were said to learn the trade, along with pickpocketing and purse-snatching, in institutions much like that run by the character Fagin in "Oliver Twist." The author William S. Burroughs told of trying his hand at it when he was a young drug addict wandering Manhattan in the late 1940's.
Today, officers patrolling the 7 line speak of the specialization these criminals exhibit, with many of them known by the tools they use and the victims they pick. Some work alone, while others use an accomplice as a lookout or to provide a diversion. Box cutters and double-edged razors are favorite tools, and in expert hands can slice a pocket silently and leave the skin untouched, the police said.
"Sometimes, you'll see two or three of them just waiting for a sitting duck," said Officer Ian Ward, 37, as he patrolled a train on the line, gently tapping sleeping passengers. "Some of them are so good that when they make the cut, the money just falls into their hand and the victim never knows what hit him."
"If they're drunk or really tired, they may ride back and forth down the line two or three times before waking up and reporting the crime," he added. "By that time, the guy who did it is long gone."
Not all commuters have appreciated the officers' effort. Some of them have grumbled that it is their right to doze on the train and take their chances, while others, like an elderly woman gently tapped by Officer Ward, have vocally disagreed with the officer's form of subtlety. "Don't be so fresh," she growled. "I'm old enough to be your grandmother."
Lush workers resting during their down time have also complained, said Mr. Ward's fellow officer, Larry Chianese, recalling how he once got a "collar" just by rousing a sleeping man awake.
"He was acting weird, so I asked him for his ID," said Officer Chianese, adding that the identification card turned out to belong to a napping victim who had been robbed five days before.
"This guy was the robber just sleeping on the job," he said with a laugh. "Every once in a while, they play right into our hands."

GRAPHIC: Photo: An officer checking for sleeping subway passengers on the No. 7 line in Queens. The effort, part of Operation Awake, has cut pickpocketing. (Tom Dallal for The New York Times)(pg. B3)

Man Who Taped Police Is Arrested on Old Charges

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 842 words

For most of the morning yesterday, James Schillaci, a limousine driver and amateur photographer, was appearing on New York City television stations, denouncing the police for what he says is a ticket trap. But the appearances brought him more than celebrity: They brought the police to his door in the early afternoon, a warrant and handcuffs in hand. By 3:15 P.M., he was again a free man, but with a second accusation about the police: harassment.
Mr. Schillaci, who had videotaped police officers triggering a red light on Fordham Road outside the Bronx Zoo, was arrested on a 13-year-old warrant for alleged traffic violations, the police said.
Mr. Schillaci, 49 -- whose story about the light-tripping police activity was also plastered on the front page of The Daily News yesterday with the headline "Gotcha!" -- was arrested at his Bronx home by police officers who said he had skipped out on a 1984 warrant for speeding in an unregistered car, with a suspended license and no insurance. But the charges were dropped several hours later by a Criminal Court judge who said that the warrant was too old to enforce, said Joe DePlasco, a spokesman for the Public Advocate.
The television interviews with Mr. Schillaci, who said he began videotaping the officers after he received a ticket for running a red light on the road in May, drew the attention of several officers, the police said. The interviews were based on a videotape and several photographs that Mr. Schillaci had given to Mr. DePlasco, who released the videotape to news programs. In it, the police were seen repeatedly driving a patrol car over a motion sensor in the zoo's driveway so that a flashing yellow traffic light there turned red.
The police said that after seeing the interviews, they decided to check Mr. Schillaci for past offenses.
The arrest infuriated Mr. Schillaci, who said after his release that the police were harassing him for uncovering what he said was "a scam and a scandal," adding from his home, "They are trying to make my life difficult because I have succeeded in publicizing what they are doing here."
Though the 1984 charges were dropped, Mr. Schillaci still faces the charge that he ran the light on Fordham Road, between Southern Boulevard and Bronx Park East.
The police said the ticket was justified and that they would continue to manipulate the light as a way of slowing drivers down.
"Traffic violations and speeding here have caused this stretch of road to become extremely dangerous, with approximately 50 accidents being recorded in the area this year," Lt. Stephen Biegel, a Police Department spokesman, said. "The department's enforcement activities are intended to increase the safety there for pedestrians and motorists traveling along that road."
Mr. DePlasco, speaking on behalf of the Public Advocate, Mark Green, agreed that the road might be dangerous, but said that there were other ways to increase safety there, including adding signs alerting drivers to an approaching signal and placing a regular, three-color stoplight, without a sensor, at the zoo entrance.
But the Department of Transportation has sided with the police. The Commissioner, Christopher R. Lynn, said that if people driving around the corner were traveling within the city's speed limit of 30 miles per hour, they would have plenty of time to stop. The light gives four seconds of delay before changing from yellow to red, he said. "It doesn't matter weather the sensor is triggered by a police car or a mother leaving the zoo with her family," Mr. Lynn said yesterday. "Drivers can easily stop when the light changes, and we feel this is a completely appropriate action for the police to take."
Mr. DePlasco has vowed to help Mr. Schillaci fight his case against what he claims is less a safety issue than one of driver entrapment. Since Mr. Schillaci came forward with his accusations, Mr. DePlasco said that his office has received a dozen complaints from motorists who received the $125 tickets after cruising through the light between the hours of 6 A.M. and 8 A.M., when officers sit in the driveway before the zoo opens.
One such motorist, Gina Deluise, 64, said that she was ticketed while on her way to visit her grandchildren. The light changed too quickly to stop, she said, adding that she then rolled through it and was immediately set upon by a police car that had been hiding behind a tree at the zoo entrance. She plans to fight to get the ticket removed from her record, she said, adding that the fine took a chunk out of her sole income, a $718 monthly Social Security check.
"I had to pull the shoestrings pretty tight that month, and it ruined my driving record," Mrs. Deluise said, adding that she had never before received a moving violation.
"When I heard about what they were doing there I thought it was a disgrace," she said. "This is all about meeting a ticket quota, and I would think the city made enough money catching people who are doing harm not to go out and intentionally trap people to get more."

August 13, 1997, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Man Accused of Forcing Four Girls to Be Prostitutes

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 923 words

They were young girls trying to act grown-up, neighbors said, laughing and talking as they hung out on the steps of the house in East New York, Brooklyn, and there was little to distinguish them from other youngsters in the area.
But the police say the girls -- one of whom was 11 -- were runaways who had been lured into working as prostitutes by a man living in the house, a man who also raped them and beat them if their earnings fell short.
The man, Lynwood Stewart, 23, was arrested Monday afternoon in front of the house at 161 Norwood Avenue and charged with rape, sodomy, assault, promoting prostitution and child endangerment.
Besides the 11-year-old, the other girls were 13, 14 and 17, according to Officer Cheryl Cox, a department spokeswoman.
The arrest and the police account of a teen-age prostitution ring surprised many residents on the quiet street of two-family homes.
"I couldn't believe it," Letta Walker, 26, a child therapist who lives across the street, said yesterday as she kept a watchful eye on her own children. "Maybe their shorts were a little short or their skirts a little high, but I never really took note because they looked like ordinary children having fun."
The allegations came to light, the police said, after the mother of the 11-year-old, who had apparently run away and been missing for seven days, spotted the girl about 7 P.M. Sunday on the corner of Williams Street and Livonia Avenue. When her mother asked where she had been, the police said, the 11-year-old replied that she had been living with Mr. Stewart in his apartment.
The mother called the police, who picked up the girl and drove her to the 75th Precinct station house. On the way, the police said, the girl explained what had happened to her.
Officers searched for Mr. Stewart, who was already wanted for a parole violation on weapons and drugs charges, and arrested him on Monday afternoon in front of the house. Inside his small basement apartment, the police said, they found three girls sitting on his double bed and the floor strewn with platform shoes and miniskirts.
Each girl told a tale of abuse and forced prostitution, the police said. The 13- and 14-year-olds said that Mr. Stewart raped them before sending them out and beat them when they did not return with enough money, the police said. The 17-year-old said she was also beaten.
The police said Mr. Stewart had burned one of the girls with a cigarette for not bringing back enough money. He required them to earn $1,000 on weekday nights and $2,000 on the weekends, the police said.
For the most part, it appeared that Mr. Stewart kept a low profile in the neighborhood, rarely venturing out during the day, paying his $125 rent in cash and always abiding by his landlady's requests.
The landlady, who gave her name as E. Persaud and who lives on the first floor of the house with her husband and two children, said yesterday that Mr. Stewart had moved into one of two small basement apartments in May with a woman who said her name was Foxy.
Mrs. Persaud said she had no problems with either tenant until about a month and a half ago, after she saw another woman coming out of the apartment. When she questioned Mr. Stewart, he told her that she would now be living with him and that Foxy had left, said Mrs. Persaud.
Then, when Mrs. Persaud and her family returned after being away for a month, they saw a young girl at the house. But on Monday, before they had a chance to ask about the new girl, Mr. Stewart came to the landlady and complained that someone had broken into his apartment -- apparently the police officers who were looking for him. He was arrested a few hours later.
Mrs. Persaud and other neighbors said that, in retrospect, there were signs that something was amiss. Mr. Stewart often rented minivans on the weekend, then drove off for the evening with his roommate and another woman, said Mrs. Persaud and others. There were also many nights when stretch limousines or other expensive cars would drive up and pick up girls who appeared to be visiting, the girls emerging from the back of the house in tight skirts and long wigs.
"I once asked my husband where they were getting all those expensive cars," said Mrs. Persaud. "But they were never noisy, and when I would see the girls get into the cars while I took out the garbage, I didn't think too much of it."
Other neighbors talked of seeing an increasing number of girls dropped off at the house during the month when the Persaud family was out of town.
One man, Jose Alvarez, 50, said that in the early morning hours one day about a week ago, a girl pulled herself out of a stretch limousine in front of the house and was met by Mr. Stewart's fist. "He just smacked her when she got out, then smacked her again and started yelling," said Mr. Alvarez.
Makeup and wigs disguised the ages of the girls, he said. "It was hard to tell because of the way they dressed and the wigs they wore," he said, shaking his head. "We thought they all worked in a bar or something."
Inside the apartment yesterday, business cards littered the bed, some from escort services and some apparently from customers. In a small box in the corner rested pictures of Mr. Stewart in a white stretch limousine with some of the girls. Under the pictures, a small spiral binder owned by a girl who called herself Passion outlined her thoughts. "I want to go outside in the rain and shed these tears," she wrote toward the end. "Just to let out these feelings, maybe."

Designing a War Against Crime

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 13NJ; Page 1; Column 1; New Jersey Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 2999 words

DATELINE: JERSEY CITY

The corner of Armstrong Avenue and Martin Luther King Drive is conspicuous these days, mainly because of what is absent.
On the sidewalk, where clusters of drug dealers once did business, there is only a sturdy brown trash can. Down the street, burned-out buildings have been razed, some replaced with bright prefabricated town houses. Boom boxes for the most part no longer boom. And nighttime shootings, when they occur, usually occur at least a couple of blocks away.
"Now my kids can come out and play," said Carolyn Young, who lives across from a fenced-in lot that once was a crack house. "The bums aren't hanging out and it's quiet at night."
"Before, there was drug activity everywhere," she said, scooting her boys, aged 5 and 12, down the street.
Like many other areas of the city, this section, part of what the police designate as the southern district, was far more forbidding before the decade began. Gang members ruled the corners, drunks took up park benches and thieves preyed on commuters and old ladies walking home from the bank. Typical of police methods of the time, officers remained sealed in their cars waiting for crime to happen, and they seldom got to know anyone in the community except the people they repeatedly arrested.
But in 1990, motivated by overwhelming drug crime and with a chance to get Federal grants to combat it, the Jersey City Police Department decided it was time for a fresh approach. The police force bought its first computer system and hired researchers in an experiment to literally create a map of crime in selected parts of the city. The result has been a dramatic drop-off in criminal activity in the targeted neighborhoods, and a new sense that the streets are safer and the bad guys are on the run.
Once, crime fighting was based on educated assumptions, not empirical evidence, knowledge that was carried in the minds of individual officers.
That had to change, the department concluded, and with it the mindset of a traditional police force whose members had long been accustomed to responding to crimes after the fact.
As the researchers gauged the moves of criminals and the countermoves of the police, officers slowly began to emerge from their cars and onto the streets, quantifying who was doing what to whom and why. The result was a flowing picture of crime -- captured on computer spread sheets. It is called problem-oriented policing -- tailoring specific responses to each type of crime and location.
Drug dealers watched as city workers fenced in their favorite hangout or tore down the abandoned building where they stashed their drugs. Panhandlers and public drinkers began showing up at their preferred meeting sites to find that the police had removed the benches. And husbands who repeatedly beat their wives found that 911 brought not only officers but also counselors.
The results were extraordinary, the police say. According to a 14-month study that ended in August 1995, the new techniques decreased overall crime in target areas by 16 percent while crime jumped 42 percent in comparable spots left to traditional patrols.
A snapshot of the entire city showed nearly 700 fewer violent crimes in 1996 than in 1993, and more than a thousand fewer nonviolent crimes, the police said.
"For 100 years we have been using police methods that have never really been studied," said Deputy Chief Frank Gajewski. "And essentially, we were making arrests but no gains."
"Now we are trying to treat the causes behind the crime and study what works and what doesn't," he added, noting that the city had overcome the notoriety, gained in 1989, of being No 2, behind Oakland, Calif., on the list of large cities with major drug problems. At the time, Jersey City recorded 2,754 drug arrests per 100,000 residents (the population was then about 220,000). Last year, Chief Gajewski said, the number was 1,621. "This philosophy is new for us and something a lot of the country is still ignoring. But, so far, it has worked wonders here."

THE PLAN
'X' Marks the Spot
Jersey City, once a gritty but thriving railway and waterfront town, has seen its tax base diminish as manufacturing jobs disappeared in the last 25 years. But there have been signs of hope for the 235,000 residents who make up a multi-ethnic mix of immigrants, old-timers and young professionals. Pockets of gentrification have reclaimed old row houses and a new waterfront financial center has brought 10,000 jobs to the city. Still, the very poor southern and western sections of town account for roughly half of all crime, as well as the majority of drug activity and violence.
The mapping program has allowed the police to direct their response more precisely, with a few computer keystrokes pinpointing centers of car theft, drug selling, robbery, burglary and arson, among others crimes, as well as differentiating between variations of the same crimes. Most communities don't have this ability and even New York City's own mapping system postdates that in Jersey City, according to Anthony A. Braga, a research associate at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who has studied Jersey City's experiment. He said the Jersey City system is so advanced that the police can pinpoint "hot spots" down to a single corner.
Since research has shown that 6 percent of the city's streets are home to 30 percent of its crime, being able to focus on these areas with tailored solutions can greatly increase overall quality of life through redeployment of officers rather than with the huge expense of new hiring, he said.
The idea was first proposed in 1979 by Herman Goldstein, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, who wrote in the journal Crime and Delinquency that communities would be better served if police departments stopped merely reacting to crime calls and began looking at the underlying reasons why crime was drawn to certain areas.
He called this problem-oriented policing, a philosophy that later underwent fine-tuning in studies conducted in Minneapolis and Kansas City during the 1980's and then was applied more broadly in New York City and Jersey City.
Jersey City became involved after criminologists at Rutgers University offered to help the Police Department compete for several experimental grants being administered by the National Institute of Justice, a branch of the Justice Department that has helped to finance policing studies.
The city was successful, getting a $837,423 grant to develop a drug-market analysis program in 1990. This computer database is now used to map all types of crimes throughout the city. Several other grants followed from a variety of agencies. While some helped to pay for more officers, many furthered the change of philosophy in the department, allowing studies in preventing crime in housing projects, targeting violent places and reducing domestic violence.
Though the department has yet to train its entire force in problem-oriented policing and the use of computer mapping, Chief Gajewski said he believed that in a few years all 859 officers in the city's four precincts and three substations would be trained to study and identify the root causes of crime in their districts, then take steps to battle it.
Crime continues to be a boilerplate issue around the country, and is at the heart of an increasingly shrill mayoral campaign here. Jerramiah T. Healy, a Democrat and former judge, who is trying to unseat Mayor Bret Schundler, a Republican, in Tuesday's election, has taken out full-page ads in The Jersey Journal asserting that crime is the worst it has been in years. The Mayor has counterattacked, calling the allegations baseless and misleading.
Chief Gajewski said he was hopeful that his policing model would not fall victim to politics. He added that it has already survived one mayoral change and several police chiefs.
The structure of the department is being altered to respond to the new model, with specific officers assigned to neighborhoods and linked with city workers (from departments like housing or sanitation, for example) and community representatives to tackle not just criminals but the trash or dilapidation that often attract them. At the same time, radio cars are freed to respond to emergencies. And lesser burdens, like calls to report accidents for insurance forms, which have tended to take hours of police time, will soon be taken over by civilians hired by the department.
In the end, Chief Gajewski said, the department's new philosophy and assignment of officers to specific locales and tasks will save not only time but money. He also hopes that more areas will see the changes that the side streets off Armstrong and Martin Luther King have come to expect.

A CORNER
Trash, Drugs, Ruins
One of 12 violent-crime "hot spots" in the south district to benefit from problem-oriented policing is the area around Armstrong Avenue and Martin Luther King Drive. In the policing experiment, underwritten by the National Institute of Justice, the intersection has become an island of relative tranquillity in a general sea of decay, where crumbling facades and iron-barred stores are separated by vacant lots, and aimless young men rule the night.
Managing it turned out to be relatively simple.
Officers assigned there began videotaping the area, making a record of where trash had built up, what buildings were abandoned and where the men congregated. They also left business cards in residents' mailboxes so people could not only complain but also offer information without being seen by the drug dealers and loiterers who had taken over the intersection.
The residents called, pointing out their major concerns, telling where drug dealers were stashing their drugs and which buildings were attracting crime.
Officers began arresting the dealers, as well as searching out the people who owned the abandoned buildings and warning local liquor stores not to sell to obviously intoxicated people. Signs were pasted on corners telling drug dealers that the area was under constant video surveillance -- although it often wasn't -- and officers would sometimes ride past drug spots holding video cameras, usually without any film.
Young children, who were blamed for setting up basketball hoops in the middle of the street and playing loud music until early in the morning were offered a deal: Keep the street clean and keep it quiet after dark, and the hoops won't be confiscated. Some drug dealers also began keeping brooms nearby to sweep up, a thin hope that the police would walk on by if their corner stayed tidy.
Discussing the way the department sought to control the drug problem, Lieut. William Costigan explained that each dealer usually has a set location, often for years. They have regular customers, regular hours and regular hiding places. When you disrupt their corner and tear down their operating centers, both clients and dealers get confused and unsettled, and doing business becomes a highly speculative proposition.
"If you have a favorite restaurant, you go there," Lieutenant Costigan said. "And it's the same way with dealers. If you get good drugs one place you come back," he said, warning off a loitering user with the advice that "this corner's been shut down, homey."
"We didn't just arrest the dealers here, we hounded them," Lieutenant Costigan said with a smile. "People would call in and say, 'He just stashed his stuff here or money here,' and we'd pick it up. We'd arrest his subordinates and pull out a camera whenever we saw him on the street. When you're losing hundreds of dollars a day to us, you get discouraged."
By the end of the program last year, three of the six abandoned buildings near the corner had been knocked down and the property fenced, while the others were placed on a list to be razed. Code enforcement officers were sent to one particularly trouble-prone apartment building and the owner was given three months to correct 32 violations. Eighty-nine drug arrests were also made and the roughly 30 loiterers who once made the four-corner intersection their base were reduced to about 5.
Tapping the garbage can that now holds a permanent spot on this corner, Lieutenant Costigan counted the number of loiterers in the area with a smile. "It used to be that you never saw a mother with her children come by here," he said, moving out of the way so several groups could pass. "There were too many people hanging out drinking and selling even to get by, and there was always a loud radio and bottles in the street. Now people can get to the store and the nearest drug corner is four blocks away.
"I'm not saying that we solved the problem here," he said, "but we've certainly disrupted it. And with their favorite places torn down, I don't think it will ever be as popular as it was."
Residents tend to agree, though they fear the police may one day let up or become lax about the outreach or the patrols that have made their block suddenly safe. "The police cracked down a lot but if they let up, those people will be right back," said Tyia Smith, a 25-year-old postal worker, as she lugged a bag of groceries from Sister and Brother, a corner grocery store where workers once seldom ventured out from behind a huge Plexiglas shield.
"I feel safe inside," added Lillian Tillman, 54, who was new to the neighborhood. "It's quiet but I don't know."

THE COPS
Overcoming Doubt
Officers were once as skeptical of the program's effectiveness as residents are now of its future. Persuading young officers that the old ways must give way to the new continues to be an obstacle.
"It's gotten better but I remember when we started this thing in 1990 that many officers had this attitude of 'whatever you're going to try, it ain't gonna work'," explained Chief Gajewski. "They didn't even know what we were going to try but there was a lot of resistance to change."
Lieutenant Costigan was one of those resisting. A 16-year law enforcement veteran, he had become a firm believer that the only way to manage a tide of crime was by increasing arrests and he had little interest in taking time out for anything else. "I was against it, mainly because it was new," he said sheepishly. "I just didn't see anything changing."
Then he began hearing from residents, and the words weren't the usual complaints, but praise. Some days, he said, they would thank him for arranging to fence-in a vacant lot or tear down an abandoned building that served as a drug hangout. Other times it was just for coming to their community meeting or walking on their street instead of riding through in his car.
They didn't know anything about crime mapping or police philosophy but it became clear things were beginning to change in their neighborhood. And for once, for the better.
"Some of it didn't have a direct effect on crime but really increased the quality of life in an area," Lieutenant Costigan said. "I changed when I figured out that I was going home knowing I had done something concrete for these people, that I was making a difference."
"Every time I got a crack house razed or made an apartment building put up security lights, I was putting rent money back in the hands of an old lady who used to get robbed on the way to the bank," he said. "I wasn't just locking people up anymore, I was protecting and serving. It was a good feeling a lot of us had lost on the street."
The criminals also began to look at the police a different way, said Officer James Waiters, who has been living and working as a neighborhood policeman in south Jersey City for the past three years.
"When I first became a policeman, it was horrible," he said. "They would sell drugs right in front of you and just run away when you told them to halt."
"I'm not a big man," said the wiry 34-year-old officer. "But now the bad guys give respect because they know they can't hide. You get a real pump keeping them down."
That was just what Officer Waiters was doing on April 25, the night he and other neighborhood police officers led a posse of his fellow officers, county prosecutors and Federal drug enforcement agents through what was said to be the largest drug raid in the city's history. Called Operation Joint Venture, it resulted in 450 arrests and $69,000 in confiscated drugs and money.
While this was old-style policing, Officer Waiters credited its success to problem-oriented policing in the south district -- where the idea began and where the raid was conducted -- the new cooperation of residents in offering information and the wealth of data on the dealers that had been dutifully collected, then fed into the department's computer.
Officer Waiters lived among some of those who were arrested, less than a block from one, on speaking terms with most. Some felt betrayed later under the moonlight when he showed up at their doors, a slew of fellow officers cutting off their exits, a warrant for their arrest curled in his hand.
"I know nearly all these guys because I went to high school here," said Officer Waiters, writing up some paperwork on a dealer known as Fat Cat, as he talked of the importance of sweeping things clean before the summer drug-selling season began and Fat Cat complained that Officer Waiters should have told him what was up.
To stay effective, the officer said, he would have to be back out grooming the streets the next morning, even as Fat Cat and others cooled their heels in jail. There would be crack houses to raze, phone calls from neighbors to return, blocks to walk and advice to give.
"We've got good families out here but then we also got whole families who deal," he said. "It's the easy money, the fast money, making more in a day than a working man does in a week. You can't change that overnight, but things are getting better. And every day I'm out there with the people, it's making that money come a little harder and the good people's lives a little easier. I've never been so popular in my life."

LOAD-DATE: May 11, 1997

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: NEW STRATEGIES Officers outside a house at an early morning drug raid, above, that brought in 450 suspects, a vast operation that began with more intensive day-to-day policing by officers like William Costigan, below, who have learned to manage neighborhood crime block by block. (Chang W. Lee/The New York Times; [below] G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times)(pg. 1); Deputy Chief Frank Gajewski, standing, and Emmanuel P. Barthe, a crime analyst, at police headquarters, with computer analyses used in problem-oriented policing. (Dith Pran/The New York Times); Officers inside an apartment house last month, questioning a woman about her roommate. He was not there when the police and Federal agents arrived during a drug sweep. (Chang W. Lee/The New York Times)(pg. 10)

Chart/Map: "AT A GLANCE: Jersey City" lists the demographics, including income and unemployment rates. (Source: All data are from 1990 Census except unemployment figures which are 1996 New Jersey Department of Labor data)(pg. 10)

Graph: "Zeroing In" shows results to a 14-month study in 1994-95 that showed Jersey City police lowered crime through a program of computer mapping and neigborhood interention. (Source: Dr. Anthony A. Braga, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University)(pg. 1)

N.J. LAW;
Unresolved HIV Debate: Should Addicts Get Free Needles?

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 13NJ; Page 6; Column 2; New Jersey Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1028 words

DATELINE: NEWARK

Diana McCague recalls many scenes from her days passing out needles on the streets of New Jersey, the laughs she received when first setting up on a corner, the sudden press for her services that followed with each passing day.
But one scene sticks in her mind. A boy rode up on a bicycle with a story about his mother, a former heroin addict who was wasting away in an AIDS ward. "I guess you weren't out here then," she recalls him saying before riding off. "I guess you weren't out here to save her life."
Ms. McCague, who began handing out needles in 1994, has not been to that corner in a long time, not since her arrest last year on a disorderly persons charge for handing out clean needles. The only needles she now feels comfortable providing are those laid out as a prop on her lawyer's mahogany conference table as she readies for the trial.
In New Jersey, where unclean hypodermic needles are the single largest cause of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the issue of whether addicts should be provided clean ones remains unresolved, as it is in many other states. And the case of Ms. McCague and another volunteer who was arrested, has further fueled the debate, which pits a wealth of public health data supporting such exchanges against the political resistance of Governor Whitman.
AIDS advocates, health professionals and some legislators have lobbied for much of the past decade for a more aggressive stance against the spread of the disease, advocating sometimes unpopular measures -- like needle exchanges -- that seem to show results on the street but that fail in the political arena.
A strong majority of the Governor's Advisory Council on AIDS voted last year to recommend that the state amend its laws to allow needle exchanges and the sale of syringes without a prescription. State Senator Wynona M. Lipman, whose district includes the hard-hit Newark area, has sponsored two bills that would do just that. But for nearly a year they have remained in the Senate Health committee, she said, adding that there was little political will to push them forward.
"All the experts have come to the conclusion that needles are the biggest cause of AIDS and that to stop the virus we need to give addicts access to clean needles," Senator Lipman said. "But politicians don't want to go out on a limb and I doubt my bills will ever get out of committee. If they do, I expect them to be soundly voted down."
Political timidity is not the only thing holding back change. From the Governor on down, many legislators, members of the clergy and law enforcement officials counter that the state cannot get into the practice of appearing to permit or abet illegal drug activity, no matter the health benefits.
"We are aware of the data supporting these measures," said Dr. Leah Ziskin, the deputy commissioner of the state's Department of Health and Senior Services, who cast one of the five dissenting votes on the 29-member Advisory Council on AIDS. "However, we view this not purely as a health issue.
"There are law enforcement issues at stake, perception issue and messages that the government gives out by condoning something like giving out needles and syringes," she said.
New Jersey is not alone in defending its ban. Only eight states -- Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Alaska, South Carolina and Iowa, as well as the District of Columbia -- either exempt syringe exchanges from drug paraphernalia laws or do not have such statutes.
Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut go one step further, allowing pharmacists to sell syringes without a prescription, but such states are the exceptions Throughout the country, a tangle of local and state regulations as well as a Federal prohibition on the transport of drug paraphernalia across state lines prevent needle exchanges from operating legally.
There is also a ban on Federal funding of needle exchanges, even though studies by the National Institutes for Health and the Centers for Disease Control, the General Accounting Office and many other organizations found that providing addicts with clean needles did not increase drug use and could drastically reduce the spread of the virus, not only among addicts, but also their sex partners and children.
Driven by these facts, AIDS activists like Ms. McCague have increasingly flouted the law and opened needle exchanges in states that do not permit them, buying syringes with donations and using volunteers to pass them out. While there are 46 needle exchanges operating legally in the United States, counts done last year found 65 more operating illegally.
Some, like Ms. McCague's organization, the Chai Project (from the Hebrew word for life), have done so publicly and have been tolerated to a point. But it is a tenuous existence.
Though her organization had been handing out needles on the same corners for two and a half years and several news accounts have been published about their activities, Ms. McCague and a colleague, Thomas Scozzare, were not arrested until April 18, two weeks after Governor Whitman disregarded her AIDS advisory committee's recommendation to legalize such establishments.
Their case appears to be only the second in the state. Although the charge, a disorderly persons offense, is in Municipal Court, the defendants' lawyers are trying to maneuver it into a higher court to challenge the law. They argue that needle exchanges do not "actually cause or threaten the harm or evil sought to be prevented by the law."
Legal experts say this is unlikely to work because these laws leave little room for interpretation. But with little chance that the Legislature will redraw the statute itself, Ms. McCague has little choice. Win or lose -- the penalty is six months in jail or a $1,000 fine or both -- she is likely to be back on the street handing out needles.
"My philosophy is that if something needs to be done and you can do it, you do," said Ms. McCague, who estimates that she and other volunteers passed out more than 35,000 syringes during the two and a half years that preceded her arrest. "I perceive what I have done as a moral obligation."

The New York Times

April 5, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Owner of Elaine's Is Charged With Scratching Patron in Fight

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 33; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 612 words

Attracting the well-heeled and the creative, it is a place where the literati can sit and admire their works framed on the wall, while the glitterati can just sit and be admired.
That was what a patron, Jim Sorrels, expected when he went to Elaine's, the famous Upper East Side watering hole, early yesterday. What he ended up with, he said, was a slap in the face from the restaurant's owner, who was later arrested.
"I couldn't believe it," Mr. Sorrels said yesterday. "I had always thought this was a classy place."
According to the police, Elaine Kaufman, the restaurant's 69-year-old grande dame, slapped Mr. Sorrels, 49, after an argument at the bar around 12:30 A.M. The police arrested Ms. Kaufman on assault charges. She was held in custody for more than an hour at the 19th Precinct.
The police said Mr. Sorrels, who yesterday showed reporters long scratches that he says Ms. Kaufman left on his right cheek, was treated at Metropolitan Hospital.
The police said that they did not know how the argument started, but according to Mr. Sorrels, it began shortly after he and his date, Linda Arnold, went to the bar after dinner at a restaurant across the street from Elaine's, which is on Second Avenue at 88th Street.
Mr. Sorrels, who is originally from Memphis, said things turned ugly shortly after he ordered a gin and tonic. The problem, he said, was that Ms. Arnold, who is originally from Arkansas, was driving that night and declined to have a drink. That brought a comment from Ms. Kaufman, he said. "She asked if the problem was that I didn't have enough money," he said. "Then she called us 'white trash.' "
Mr. Sorrels said that Ms. Kaufman ended her lecture by saying, "that there were other Southerners in the back who could afford to pay for dinner," adding, "In fact, I bet you $50 that you can't even afford to buy another drink."
On the way out, Mr. Sorrels said, he complained to Ms. Kaufman. "I leaned over to where she was sitting and I told her she was acting like a pig," he said. According to Mr. Sorrels, she responded with a quick scratch across his face. He said he noticed he was bleeding and decided to call the police. "I thought it was the right thing to do," he said. "This was a humiliating experience."
Ms. Kaufman's account is somewhat different. While admitting that she asked the couple why they were only having one drink between them, she denies ever calling Mr. Sorrels and Ms. Arnold "white trash."
"I said two people should have two drinks, which is a normal thing," she explained. "And when his date said she wasn't drinking, I said, 'have a soda.' I don't talk like he's saying. I'm a New Yorker and that's not a New York expression. I might have said other things but that's his language."
She also discounts Mr. Sorrels' version of the scrimmage that followed, saying that he came back into the restaurant, walked up to the table where she was sitting, "stepped on my foot and leaned into my face."
"I slapped him to get him out of my face," she said. "What would you do? I'm supposed to accept all these things in my own restaurant? I was at his mercy and it's pretty frightening when someone gets in your face like that. He could have had a knife or something. I've seen it before."
The next thing she remembered was the police and the paramedics. "I've never seen an ambulance come so fast," she said.
Michael Racanelli, the restaurant's 44-year-old maitre d'hotel, recalled seeing Mr. Sorrels walk over to Ms. Kaufman and begin yelling at her. "I saw him raise his hands," Mr. Racanelli said. "I thought he was going to hit her. She put her hands up as if to protect herself from him."

LOAD-DATE: April 5, 1998

The New York Times

December 16, 1996, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Internet Sex-Assault Suspect Enjoyed Macabre and Mythical

BYLINE: By DAN BARRY with KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1747 words

Oliver Jovanovic immersed himself in the world of the fantastic. When not working well after midnight on his doctoral studies in the laboratories of Columbia University, he was refining a mythical domain he had helped to create, a domain he hoped would be visited one day by the millions of people who enjoy role-playing games.
But plans for marketing his make-believe world have been set aside as Mr. Jovanovic grapples with criminal charges most real: accusations that his first date with a 20-year-old Barnard College student last month turned into a 20-hour session of torment during which he bound, gagged and sexually abused her.
Mr. Jovanovic, 30, was released from prison on $350,000 bail on Thursday and is waiting for the Manhattan District Attorney's office to finish presenting its case to a grand jury. Meanwhile, the lawyers for a client who almost always wears black are exploring areas of gray.
They say that well-publicized details of the case are essentially irrelevant, from the prominence of his parents to his considerable intellect, to the manner in which he met the woman: in an Internet "chat room," a kind of virtual-reality mixer. Rather, they say, it is a matter of conflicting interpretations of a sexual encounter between two people, a common but nevertheless unsettling case of "he said, she said."
Prosecutors say that Mr. Jovanovic bound the woman with strips of cloth, burned her with candle wax, sexually abused her with a martial-arts baton and threatened to dismember her. They say that as night turned to day, and day turned to night, there was talk of corpses and the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer before the woman managed to escape.
The charges have stunned Mr. Jovanovic, said Alan R. Kaufman, one of his lawyers. "He denies the allegations made against him," he said. "He didn't force anybody to do anything."
Mr. Kaufman pointed out that the woman did not notify the police for almost two weeks after the date. He also said that following the date, the woman initiated E-mail correspondence with Mr. Jovanovic, and that several messages were exchanged.
"We believe that a review of the E-mail would be consistent with our position that nothing illegal or nonconsensual happened," he said. "My understanding is her E-mail is very revealing, in what she's interested in doing and acknowledging what she has done in the past."
The use of E-mail is no longer remarkable in criminal cases, said Gerald B. Lefcourt, the president-elect of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "It could be voice mail, fax or anything else for that matter, and it would still just be communication we are looking at here."
However, the E-mail correspondence, coupled with the delay in reporting the incident, could pose problems for prosecutors, Mr. Lefcourt said. "If she says after the alleged attack that, 'I had a wonderful time,' this could be used powerfully by the defense," he said.
But Veronica Reed Ryback, the director of the Rape Crisis Center intervention program at Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said that delays in reporting rapes are not uncommon, particularly when a woman is assaulted by an acquaintance. Nor is it unusual for victims to continue contact with their assailants, she said.
"This may be part of the victim's desire to minimize the thought that it was a rape," Ms. Ryback said. "Denial is really the cornerstone for all rape victims early on. They often try to contact that person either to reinforce the denial or to somehow minimize what happened."
Ms. Ryback also said that E-mail had become yet another tool by which predators could insinuate themselves into the lives of even the most cautious. "She may very well have thought that she had gotten to know him over the computer," she said. "It is another way of having a false sense of security. The problem with using the computer is the victim doesn't get to see how these people react in their normal lives, and to see how they behave."
The young woman, who could not be reached for comment, has been described by a friend as someone who thought Mr. Jovanovic was nice and "someone who would be a friend."
The case naturally has placed Mr. Jovanovic in the spotlight, an unfamiliar position for a man some friends describe as almost apologetically shy, one who seems more at ease meeting strangers on the Internet than on the street.
His childhood was shaped in part by the standing of his parents in New York's cultural circles. His mother, Sabina, is a first violinist with the New York City Ballet; his father, Svetozar, is a chess teacher at the Dalton School who ranks among the nation's top scholastic coaches.
Fred Waitzkin, the father of the chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, remembers Oliver Jovanovic and his younger brother, Adrian, as well-mannered young men who helped their father supervise various chess tournaments over the years. "They both were very devoted to their boys," Mr. Waitzkin said. "He would brag about them all the time, about how good they were doing in school."
Oliver Jovanovic graduated from the University of Chicago, then began pursuing a doctoral degree in microbiology at Columbia. Colleagues say he has developed an innovative computer program he hopes to market with the help of his brother, who lives in Seattle.
He seemed to work constantly, showing up at the laboratory after noon and working into the early morning. With this schedule, there were fewer conflicts over equipment, friends say, fewer people asking for the assistance that he obligingly provided. "He never said no," recalled Judy Masucci, a colleague who graduated in May.
Mr. Jovanovic could be reticent even with acquaintances. Jennifer Stern recalled meeting him several times in their apartment complex in Washington Heights. He would talk reluctantly, she said, with his head bowed and eyes peering up.
"He was just a nice guy, nerdy actually," Ms. Stern said.
But other friends said that Mr. Jovanovic could be outgoing and forthright. He spearheaded a drive to force the campus police to release crime statistics and recruited a female martial-arts expert to teach self-defense to women on campus. He also dated regularly.
Ms. Stern said she had talked recently to one of Mr. Jovanovic's former girlfriends. "She said they were no longer together and that they had gone their own ways, but that they remained friends," she said.
Mr. Jovanovic often presented a persona decidedly different from the stereotype of a socially and sartorially challenged computer maven. Friends say he appreciated the ironic, the macabre and the fantastic, whether it was films like Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange" or the photographic artwork of Joel-Peter Witkin, whose subjects include dead animals and hermaphrodites. And he almost always wore black.
"It was part of his appreciation for art and the art scene," Ms. Masucci said. "For him to wear a white shirt was just too uncommon an event not to really take notice."
For the last several years, Mr. Jovanovic and a partner have been trying to develop a new version of a role-playing game called RuneQuest. The game, which is more than 20 years old, often centers on the mythical land of Glorantha, home to kings and trolls, wizards and dragons. Industry experts say the game has millions of followers, some of whom are constantly seeking to refine its rules and characters.
A. Eric Dott, chairman of Avalon Hill, a Baltimore concern that holds the license to RuneQuest, said that Mr. Jovanovic and his partners had approached the company with a proposal. "He would always initiate the calls and he would talk for three and four hours at a time, with recommendations and changes," Mr. Dott said. "He was always full of ideas."
He said Mr. Jovanovic once attended a small convention in Maryland where he gave a lecture on his proposal. But the new version has never been published, Mr. Dott said, because its developers have repeatedly missed deadlines. Missed deadlines are common, he said, because devotees of the game are constantly consulting with one another about proposed refinements.
"We had invested a lot of artwork," he said. "Then the next thing we know, this thing popped up in the paper."
"This thing" began, prosecutors say, when Mr. Jovanovic struck up a friendship over the Internet with the Barnard College student, who eventually agreed to meet him for dinner on Nov. 22. She then accompanied him back to his studio apartment, where they watched a video called "Meet the Feebles," a satire of Jim Henson's Muppets in which animal characters abuse drugs, contract venereal disease and engage in general violence. The 1989 movie was the work of the New Zealand film maker Peter Jackson, who later directed the critically acclaimed "Heavenly Creatures."
Mr. Jovanovic declined to comment for this article; his lawyers would not specify what happened next other than to describe it as consensual. Prosecutors have said that Mr. Jovanovic used "instruments of torture" as he held the woman against her will for close to a full day. According to a friend of the victim, Mr. Jovanovic untied the woman to give her a lesson in martial arts so that she could defend herself against attackers. That is how she escaped, the friend said.
Two weeks later, Mr. Jovanovic was arrested. In executing a search warrant, the police seized several items from his apartment, including a martial-arts baton, the "Meet the Feebles" video and a book of Mr. Witkin's that he is said to have bought at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. They are also getting records of his computer use from America Online.
Mr. Kaufman, Mr. Jovanovic's lawyer, said that prosecutors had leaked some details about what was seized to portray his client in a poor light. "It's being used to inflame the public passion, to suggest that someone has some unusual tastes, meaning he's done something wrong," he said. "I think it's wrong."
The police also confiscated Mr. Jovanovic's computer, which contains several years' worth of research for the dissertation he was scheduled to deliver later this week. But that appointment has been postponed; the doctoral student has taken a leave of absence from Columbia.
Meanwhile, across the street at the Barnard campus, notices offering 10 tips to avoid "cyber date rape" have been taped to dormitory walls. Among them: "Don't believe everything you read when chatting on line: anyone can be anyone or say anything."

The New York Times

February 5, 1999, Friday, Late Edition - Final

3 of the Officers Were Involved in Shootings in the Last 2 Years

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 5; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 516 words



Three of the four plainclothes officers who shot a Bronx man to death early yesterday had been involved in other shootings, one of which is still under investigation, the police said.

All four officers -- Edward McMellon, 26, Sean Carroll, 35, Kenneth Boss, 27, and Richard Murphy, 26 -- have been placed on administrative duty, a standard department procedure, while the police investigate the shooting of Amadou Diallo, 22, in the vestibule of his Soundview apartment building. The officers, all assigned to the Bronx Street Crimes Unit, an elite and often dangerous assignment, had been looking for a suspect in a series of rapes, the police said. It remained unclear last night why the officers shot at Mr. Diallo, who died in a fusillade of 41 bullets.


Officer Boss, who has been on the police force for seven years, is under investigation in the October 1997 fatal shooting of a man who the police said was menacing people with a shotgun in front of an apartment building on Sheffield Avenue in East New York, Brooklyn.

According to the police, Officer Boss shot the man, Pat Baily, after Mr. Baily fled into a nearby apartment building. Although it remains unclear whether Mr. Baily was holding a weapon when he was shot, a shotgun was found next to his body, the police said. Mr. Baily died of his injuries at Brookdale Hospital Medical Center.

The shooting is under investigation by the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, which is trying to "determine whether there are issues that need to be resolved by a grand jury," said Patrick B. Clark, the spokesman for the office.

Officer McMellon, a five-year police veteran, was cleared after shooting and wounding a man in East New York, Brooklyn, last June. The police said the man had a loaded 9-millimeter handgun.

Officer Carroll, who has also been on the force for five years, was found to have been justified in firing his gun last August on Wilson Avenue in the Bronx. He said that he had fired at a suspect after hearing a bullet pass over his head. Neither a suspect nor any weapons were recovered.

Officer Murphy, like more than 90 percent of all officers on the force, has not been involved in any shootings. In his four years as a police officer, he has never had a complaint against him lodged with the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

Officer McMellon has received five complaints, while Officers Boss and Carroll each have received three, said a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official said that none of the complaints, which ranged from accusations of excessive force to abuse of authority and racial insensitivity, had been substantiated.

Officer Carroll was the only one of the group to have two years experience in the Street Crimes unit, whose members are often asked to search out crimes in progress and to get guns off the street.

Since they joined the unit in October, Officer Murphy has made eight felony arrests, seven of them for gun possession, and Officer Boss has made five gun-possession arrests, one for auto theft and one for narcotics possession.

The New York Times

February 27, 1999, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

3 Officers in Diallo Case Ask for Delay in Inquest

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 735 words



Asserting that an "inflammatory atmosphere" has influenced and intimidated grand jurors, lawyers for three of the four officers involved in the shooting death of Amadou Diallo have asked a Bronx judge to delay the inquest and move it to a secret location.

The request, filed yesterday morning, comes as demonstrations continue almost daily outside State Supreme Court in the Bronx, which is only a block from where the grand jury is impaneled in the Criminal Courthouse. Those rallies, and the news attention they garner, have prejudiced the jurors against their clients, the lawyers say.


"We waited to make this motion to see if the drumbeat would continue," said Stephen Worth, a police union lawyer representing Officer Edward McMellon, one of the four officers involved in the shooting. "As it has continued unabated, we felt we had no alternative but to try to stop the process at this time."

Steven Reed, a spokesman for the Bronx District Attorney, Robert Johnson, said his office was preparing a response that would be filed Monday with Acting Justice Robert G. Seewald of State Supreme Court, who impaneled the grand jury. Mr. Worth declined to specify what the motion would say. Mr. Worth's motion will be decided Tuesday.

Legal experts said that such motions were fairly unusual in criminal cases, even among those with heightened media attention. They also said the motion was unlikely to succeed, though it would begin to lay the groundwork for appeals if the four officers were later convicted. If indicted, the officers could face charges from second-degree murder to criminally negligent homicide.

Randolph Jonakait, a criminal-law professor at New York University Law School, said that he had never heard of such a motion involving a grand jury. Gerald Lynch, a criminal-law professor at Columbia Law School, added, "A cynic would say the whole point was to build a record for later on."

Mr. Lynch said that a defendant might have a credible claim if his lawyer could prove that "a lynch mob was outside the door telling the grand jury that they're in trouble if they don't do the right thing" but that it would have to be "a very extreme situation" for a judge to diverge from the normal system of justice.

Although the lawyers hired to represent Officer Richard Murphy and Officer Kenneth Boss have joined in Mr. Worth's filing, Marvyn M. Kornberg, the lawyer for Officer Sean Carroll, has declined to become a party to it.

Saying that he expected the four officers to be indicted no matter how or where the grand jury was impaneled, Mr. Kornberg reasoned that if the judge granted Mr. Worth's motion, the defense lawyers in the case would have a hard time later arguing that the situation outside the courthouse had "tainted the grand jury."

He added, "And I want to make sure that if there is an indictment, that I can later argue that it was tainted by pretrial publicity."

Mr. Kornberg, the only lawyer hired independently of the police union, is also the only lawyer who has yet to work out a joint defense agreement with the others. Although he said he had not been asked, he had some reservations about joining the group because "my first interest is to my client and I don't know what a joint defense agreement means to them."

Such agreements usually allow lawyers to sit down together and discuss the case against their clients without having to fear that the conversations will later be subpoenaed by the prosecution. There is the possibility that any agreement among the four officers could break down. They were not regular partners who had spent years together on the street. And since they are the only known witnesses to the incident, they could differ over who saw what at the time of the killing, how many shots each fired and who fired first.

The plainclothes officers fired 41 times at Mr. Diallo, 22, an unarmed street peddler, as he stood in the vestibule of his apartment building in the Soundview section of the Bronx on the night of Feb. 4. Some of the officers, through their lawyers, have said they believed that Mr. Diallo was reaching for a weapon. He was hit by 19 bullets.

Yesterday, Police Commissioner Howard Safir announced that he had met with members of the United African Congress, a national group that represents African immigrants, to work out ways to improve relations between the Police Department and minority residents.

The New York Times

March 4, 1999, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Sharpton Among 28 Arrested in Rally on Diallo Killing

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 831 words



Twenty-eight people, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, were arrested yesterday when a noon rally by more than a thousand people against the police shooting of Amadou Diallo blocked traffic on Wall Street.

The protest, which came almost a month after the Feb. 4 shooting, showed that public anger over Mr. Diallo's killing has not dissipated and that the case has begun to attract a more varied group of participants. Some had taken the day off from work yesterday, and others joined during their lunch hours.


"This is the first protest I've ever been to because this has gone on for far too long," said Carolyn Cooper, 45, a Citibank employee who said she took the day off. "It shouldn't be illegal to be out on the street if you're a black man or a black woman. We're here on Wall Street because, unfortunately, you have to hurt people in their pocketbook."

Mr. Sharpton said during the rally that he was planning to get arrested and called for others to commit acts of civil disobedience. He and 10 protesters then sat in the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street and blocked traffic. Seventeen others blocked the doors and marched inside the offices of Merrill Lynch at 225 Liberty Avenue in the World Financial Center.

All 28 were arrested because they refused to move, Police Commissioner Howard Safir said at police headquarters. All were given summonses for criminal trespass or disorderly conduct and released, the police said.

Asked what he thought of Mr. Sharpton's call for civil disobedience, Commissioner Safir replied, "The Rev. Sharpton apparently just wants to get his picture in the paper."

Protests of the Feb. 4 shooting have occurred almost daily since Mr. Diallo, an unarmed street peddler and immigrant from Guinea, was killed by four plainclothes officers in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building. A Bronx grand jury is now considering whether to indict the officers: Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon, Richard Murphy and Kenneth Boss. Police officials have said the officers thought Mr. Diallo was reaching for a gun. They fired 41 shots, 19 of which hit him.

If indicted, they could face charges ranging from criminally negligent homicide to second-degree murder.

In addition to the almost daily protests throughout the city, at least once protesters have driven past the officers' homes in a silent procession.

Yesterday, as the demonstration got under way on Wall Street, a 52-year-old employee of Fordham University was arrested for making threatening phone calls to the home of Officer Carroll in Babylon, in Suffolk County. The suspect, Eric J. Johnson, of 333 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn, was charged with two counts of aggravated harassment and was released on bail, Suffolk County police officials said.

As many of the earlier protests have done, yesterday's in the financial district brought out a cross-section of people holding signs critical of the city and Police Department leadership.

"This shooting was a wake-up call for the city and I'm here to support the cause," said Hueroth Underwood, a 64-year-old Pentecostal minister from Harlem, reflecting the attitude of many questioned at the rally.

"I was with the Reverend King during some of his marches and I marched with these people on City Hall," he continued, adding that he considered it his duty as an American to do so. "Any time there is a threat to the civil liberties of a group of people, and people don't rally to their cause, another Hitler can rise," he said.

Other participants spoke of more personal motives. Vilma Baston, 36, said she came to the protest from Long Island because "next time it could be one of my sons."

Holding onto her 16-year-old, Jonathan, she said the Diallo shooting made her realize that she would have to teach him "how to respond if confronted by the police, how he should move slowly so he doesn't come home with a bullet in him."

At one point during the rally, Mr. Sharpton mounted a rickety ladder to address the crowd. After saying he had come to Wall Street to raise "the issue of justice," he began to call for a new level of commitment from those gathered before him.

"They said when Amadou Diallo was murdered, we'd be mad for two or three days," he said. "Well, Mr. Mayor, tomorrow it'll be four weeks and we're here by the thousands. And we're not going to stop until those four policemen face justice."

"It's been 30 days since the shooting, so we're going to go into phase two," he added. "If you won't lock up these policemen, some of us are willing to act nonviolently and go to jail until these men are locked up."

At that, Mr. Sharpton stepped down and sat in the middle of Broadway and Wall Street. After about 10 minutes, the police took him away.

Later, at his headquarters at Madison Avenue and 125th Street, Mr. Sharpton said he would distribute sign-up sheets in churches, for people to volunteer to be arrested in demonstrations. "We're going to be Giuliani's worst nightmare," he said.

The New York Times

August 1, 1998, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Fraud Charges for Suspects in Disappearance

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 798 words



Prosecutors charged a mother-and-son team with credit card fraud yesterday, a move that will help insure that the suspects remain held in New York while their possible role in the disappearance of an Upper East Side widow is investigated.

The charges against the pair, Sante and Kenneth Kimes, are unrelated to the case of the woman, Irene Silverman, but prosecutors said they considered the Kimeses the lead suspects in her Aug. 6 disappearance.


The Kimeses were arrested the same day on a warrant from Utah, where they are accused of passing a bad check. Court hearings were to have begun next week that could have sent the pair to Utah to face that charge or freed them on bail.

Yesterday's indictment, which charges the Kimeses with 17 counts of credit card fraud, is the first formal charge against the pair in New York, but the Manhattan District Attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said they were likely to face many more as the police and prosecutors continue to delve into the Kimeses' past and search for Mrs. Silverman.

"There are many allegations here, and we're going through them in a methodical manner," he said at a news conference. "We would expect there would be additional indictments."

"As we get evidence in additional crimes, we'll present it to the grand jury," he added.

The Kimeses became suspects in Mrs. Silverman's disappearance because they were carrying her identification when they were arrested on the Utah warrant. Kenneth Kimes, 23, had been renting a $6,500-a-month suite in Mrs. Silverman's mansion on East 65th Street and had been seen arguing with her shortly before her disappearance. And in the days that followed, detectives discovered an assortment of documents linking the Kimeses to a scheme to buy Mrs. Silverman's house for less than one-tenth of its value.

Two notaries public told the police that the Kimeses had brought them to the mansion several days before Mrs. Silverman's disappearance and that they were present when the Kimeses asked her to sign over the property. They said she balked at the suggestion.

Last year, Kenneth Kimes was convicted in Florida on robbery and assault charges. Sante Kimes, 63, has a history of committing petty crimes. In 1985, she was convicted of stealing a $6,500 mink coat from a piano bar at the Mayflower, a fashionable hotel in Washington.

The Kimeses are also suspects in the March 14 death of their former business partner, David J. Kazdin, who was found shot in the head and dumped in a trash bin in Los Angeles. And the authorities in the Bahamas are interested in questioning the pair about the disappearance of a Middle Eastern bank auditor.

The New York credit card fraud charges stem from a buying spree the Kimeses are accused of going on after fraudulently obtaining a credit card in the name of a Florida businessman, Max Schorr, whom prosecutors said they did not know.

According to prosecutors, the Kimeses applied for the credit card using Mr. Schorr's birth date and Social Security number. They then had the card sent to one of their addresses in New York City and began to charge expensive dinners and toiletry items on it between June 16 and June 21, prosecutors said.

The charges, prosecutors said, included dinners at the Park Lane Hotel, where Mr. Kimes spent $125 on one occasion and $175 on another. Mrs. Kimes racked up $113 in charges for soaps and other toiletry items at a Chanel boutique in Manhattan, prosecutors added.

The Kimeses have made several unsuccessful requests for bail on the Utah charges, and have a bail request pending in the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court. While that court was unlikely to grant the request, prosecutors said, such a move could have happened as early as Tuesday.

Now, however, that possibility is foreclosed by the new charges in New York City, which will result in a new bail hearing in State Supreme Court, prosecutors said. They said the charges would also help to forestall the possibility that they would be extradited to Utah. That issue is set to be discussed in criminal court on Thursday.

Lawyers for the Kimeses said the charges were intended only to prevent their clients from winning next week's bail hearing. "They were brought for the sole purpose of holding the Kimeses in a form of preventative detention," said Mel A. Sachs, one of two lawyers hired by the Kimeses.

"There hasn't been any blood," Mr. Sachs said. "There hasn't been any hairs. There hasn't been any fiber. There hasn't been a single thing to link them to the disappearance of Mrs. Silverman. There is no evidence against our clients."

Mr. Morgenthau denied that the charges were a ruse. "If my credit card, if my name was forged," he said, "I would not consider that a flimsy charge. I would take that very seriously."

The New York Times

August 1, 1997, Friday, Late Edition - Final

BOMBS IN BROOKLYN: THE SCENE;
Amid Hovering Helicopters, a Quick Evacuation of Residents

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 4; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 884 words

The fear came with a 4 A.M. knock on the door of Lucrecia Ortiz's second-floor apartment, a loud rapping of a police club meant to rouse the sleepy so they could immediately head to safer quarters. Overhead, helicopters hovered, loudly signaling a disturbance on the street below.
Ms. Ortiz, 16, ran to the window of her apartment at 234 Fourth Avenue and saw flashing red lights. Then she heard her mother, Rosa Morales, tell the family to hurry outside.
"A policeman was standing there at our door telling us to get out of the building because it was in immediate danger," Ms. Ortiz said.
The police officer did not elaborate. Ms. Ortiz did not know what she would learn later -- that the authorities said they found the makings of bombs in an apartment nearby. "We left our doors open and ran," Ms. Ortiz said. "We didn't know where to go or what to do, but we ran."
Other police officers did tell residents that there was a bomb, or a possible explosion.
Outside, in the darkness of an early morning, Ms. Ortiz and her family saw scores of their neighbors in this Park Slope, Brooklyn, community rubbing ever-widening eyes as they were packed into police vans and carted off to a nearby Y.W.C.A.
Few of the residents who were spirited away in the middle of the night knew what was happening, but the rumor was of a bomb. Speculation centered on a quiet group of men from the Middle East who lived in the neighborhood in a ramshackle two-story house just up the block at 248 Fourth Avenue.
While the police rushed most residents down their stairs and into the street, one Pakistani national who lived on the top floor of the raided building said that he and three other Pakistanis living there had been handled more roughly. All four were taken into custody for questioning and then released.
"They treated me like a suspect and put me in jail," said Masood Mughal, 47. "They asked me my nationality and wouldn't tell me why I was there. I am a peaceful man. I've never heard of such a thing. They took me in only because I am a Muslim."
In the early morning, as many of the approximately 90 men, women and children who had been evacuated from their homes clustered at the Brooklyn Y.W.C.A. at Fourth Avenue and Carroll Street, local residents swapped stories about these neighbors they saw daily but barely knew, how their friendliness now seemed perfunctory and how little slights could have been a sign of much more.
Some, like Gordon Turner, were getting angry. He and his wife, Mary, lived just to the right of the suspects' building where city police officers found components of one or more pipe bombs, according to Federal law enforcement officials. "I was shocked at first, but the more I've thought about it, the more irritated I've become," said Mr. Turner, a 54-year-old limousine driver. "I mean, somebody could have been hurt."
The presence of hundreds of police, F.B.I. agents, specialists from the bomb squad and the Terrorist Tactical Force created havoc all day around Carroll Street and Fourth Avenue, where an 18-block area was cordoned off by yellow police tape and other barriers until 1 P.M. yesterday. Around 2 P.M., residents were allowed to go to their homes.
All day, agents rushed around questioning everyone from homeless men to shop owners, while traffic officers directed drivers to detour their cars and foot patrols kept back a throng of the curious.
Nearly every business in the neighborhood was closed by the authorities for safety reasons -- the same reason they evacuated area residents. Abula Habibi, 32, a restaurateur from Yemen, gazed at his shuttered diner, Deli Around the Clock, from across the street. He had just opened eight months ago and had a hefty rent to pay.
"I can't believe it," he said, adding that he also fretted about anti-Arab sentiment the bomb scare might create. "Muslims are not supposed to do things like this because it is against our religion and whoever does this is both wrong and disgusting," he said.
Then there were those who wondered if the police would come for them. Francisco Plasencia, the owner of Park Slope Hardware, said a young Arab man bought three six-volt lantern-size batteries and six feet of wire from one of his clerks last week.
"As soon as I heard that, I thought they might find a price sticker from my store on one of their bombs," he said, adding that when people buy these trinkets, "We assume they're going to use it for legal purposes."
With little else to do, Mr. Turner sipped cold coffee in the Y.W.C.A., discussing these mysterious neighbors with a friend, Wayne. Wayne had recalled that during the year they lived in the building, they seldom said hello to him; Mr. Turner countered that they seldom said a word. "At first, I didn't even know we had neighbors," Mr. Turner said. "That's how quiet they were."
He and many others were ready to return home by daylight, having grabbed the first clothes they saw resting on a chair or hanging from a door when they fled. Ms. Ortiz sat nearby, coaxing Oreos into the mouths of her two young upstairs neighbors, Violet Adorno, 10, and Jasmine Adorno, 4. She was dreaming about her bed.
"When I get to go home, the first thing I'm going to do is take a really long shower," she said. "Then I'm going right back to sleep."

The New York Times

July 27, 1997, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

N.J. LAW;
Trying to Keep Addicts Alive By Offering Clean Needles for Used

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section 13NJ; Page 7; Column 1; New Jersey Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 868 words

DATELINE: UNION

It was the man on the corner who drew the addicts out of their apartment complex and into the rain -- Nancy, Joe, Jose, Mito and Junior, scurrying across the street with smiles on their faces and a parcel of used syringes in hand.
Frank B., a 28-year-old social worker, gave each a hug, as he has done almost every Friday night for the past two years. He took their package, placed the syringes in a specially designed disposal bucket and laid out new works -- needles, cotton wipes, bleach and cookers -- for everyone there. The five retreated to their room, and their rituals.
"I'm here to help them keep from getting AIDS, not judge them," said Frank, who declined to give his last name because such needle exchanges are illegal in New Jersey. "Society treats them like dirt, like they were disposable. I'm just trying to keep them alive."
Frank is one of dozens of people across New Jersey who risk jail time to take clean needles to heroin addicts -- whose use of dirty needles is the origin of two-thirds of the state's 40,000 HIV cases. Two others, Diana McCague and Thomas Scozzare, go to trial tomorrow for running a similar program in New Brunswick. They each face six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Frank's project is modeled after theirs, coming after a ripple of death had begun its run through his family and friends.
"I've lose two uncles and a cousin to AIDS and I've got another cousin who's about to die," Frank said, adding that his wife, who usually goes out on the needle exchanges with him, has lost several relatives as well.
"In between, we've lost dozens of friends," he said. "And they'd all still be alive if people hadn't shared a needle."
Frank has missed only two Friday visits since the couple began the exchange in August 1995. The last time was when his baby daughter, Brianna, died. The couple also lost their first child, Aria.
"If we stopped showing up they would lose respect for anyone who followed. I couldn't think about abandoning them now," he said, adding that Michele had stopped working the exchange recently because it is painful to see addicts who are pregnant themselves. "It's just hard to see them do this to their children," she explained. "It trips me up sometimes."
Their clients are people whose lives are bound by poverty and addiction. Nancy has just had a baby, whom the state says she will never see unless she pays the $250 fee to enter a methadone program. Joe and Junior, who are brothers, have 50 years of addiction between them. Jose started injecting a year and a half ago -- "I just couldn't get it up my nose anymore" -- while Mito, a former nurse in the Cuban Red Cross, has tried to quit the habit nearly every one of the 13 years he's had it.
None of them have a job. Mito is supported by his wife, while Joe, Junior and Jose spend their days panhandling and picking up trash in their bleak neighborhood to support a drug habit that averages $500 to $700 a week. Nancy, who is 28 years old and married to another addict, says she gets by with the help of "some old men."
They live near each other in sparsely furnished rooms, often pooling their used needles in the same hiding place to avoid having such paraphernalia around during police raids, and scouring the streets together to pick up other needles discarded by those yet to meet Frank. They say they don't trust each other because the drug doesn't permit it, but they all trust Frank.
"You see how we are, how we react to him when he comes," said Junior. "He's our friend."
Such trust took time to develop. When Frank and Michele started showing up on the street, most thought the couple was little more than a clever sting operation bent on making arrests. Then a cousin took them up on the offer of clean needles in exchange for the dirty. He told his addicted friends.
Now the exchange takes in an average of 130 used needles every Friday, giving out roughly the same number. (The needles are bought in units of 200 or more, then separated into smaller packages at Frank's home.) They are given out in bags that also contain instructions on how to clean them, plus condoms to help prevent addicts from contracting or spreading diseases like HIV and hepatitis.
"Our dream is to open a storefront, where we could also offer counseling, set up programs to help these people and have something for their kids," said Frank as another addict came by with a stash of dirty equipment. "Now every time a cop comes around, we have to be nervous because the law says we're no better than drug dealers."
It is estimated that such needle exchanges can reduce HIV infection by one-third in the communities they serve, safeguarding not only the lives of addicts but also their partners and children. According to the Federal Centers for Disease Control and others who track the epidemic, up to 80 percent of all pediatric AIDS cases can be traced to parents infected by needles.
Nancy said one of those children would likely be hers, had it not been for the clean needles Frank provides. "It takes something bigger than the drug to pull you away from the drug," she said. "I have that now and I'm going to kick it."
Her child's name, she said, is Destiny.

GRAPHIC: Photo: In exchange for used needles, addicts get a bag containing needles, cotton, wipes, bleach and cookers, and a condom. (Julio A. Ibarra Jr. for The New York Times)

Father Kills Two Children, Then Himself

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 723 words

An Iranian immigrant who was apparently distraught over the failure of his marriage killed his two young children yesterday and then hanged himself in a closet in their Brooklyn home, the police said.
The bodies of the man, Mohammad Talafourush, 51, and his two children were found by the police shortly after 10 A.M. in their Borough Park apartment. Both children, an 8-year-old girl, Amy, and a 10-year-old boy, Tufan, were found lying on a double bed, their bodies surrounded by flowers, said Deputy Chief William Taylor of the Brooklyn Detective Squad. He said it appeared they had been suffocated or poisoned. Mr. Talafourush hanged himself with a nylon cord.
The police said that Mr. Talafourush, described by neighbors as a devoted father, left a message with a psychiatrist Wednesday night or early yesterday saying that he planned to kill himself and his children at their home at 5114 Fort Hamilton Parkway. According to a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity, he said on the answering machine tape that "I can't take it anymore."
Avivit Pasternak, who works with her father at a nearby television and VCR repair shop, Michael's Repair Center, said that Mr. Talafourush came to the store recently and told her father that he had received divorce papers from his wife.
News of the deaths stunned residents on this quiet Borough Park street, where Mr. Talafourush was frequently seen taking his children for walks in the park and preparing for weekend trips to beaches in New Jersey. Though their school was only across the street, he always walked them there and brought them back himself every day, they said.
"I used to see them every day riding their bikes around and playing," said Efigenia Vasquez, who lives on the block. "We're going to miss them a lot."
The city's Administration for Children's Services said there had been no reports of abuse at the home.
The authorities learned about the killings after a woman, whom the police would not identify, ran into a neighborhood store, Kosher Groceries Inc., shortly before 10 A.M. yesterday, yelling for someone to call the police. "She said that there had been a suicide," said Susan Lebowitz, a store worker who knew Mr. Talafourush.
It was unclear yesterday whether that woman was the psychiatrist called by Mr. Talafourush, or what her relationship with the Talafourush family was.
Mr. Talafourush had come to New York more than a decade ago after fleeing persecution and imprisonment in Iran, they said, adding that he often talked of how his daughter from a previous marriage was gunned down in the streets, and of losing millions of dollars in property during the Iranian revolution.
He had been a political prisoner who was beaten so badly that he had severe lapses of memory, according to Bill Michaelson, a close friend for five years who said that Mr. Talafourush had overcome this, cancer and a speech problem to own an export business in Brooklyn. Even so, Mr. Talafourush often paid with food stamps, said Jacob Lebowitz, the owner of Kosher Groceries.
Mr. Michaelson said that Mr. Talafourush met his second wife, who was known in the neighborhood as Sharon, while in Tehran. Friends said that she left much of the child-rearing to Mr. Talafourush, who doted on Amy and Tufan during the day while she worked as a secretary.
Every day he would take them into the corner grocery to buy Laffy Taffy and other candies while he purchased cigarettes and talked, neighbors said.
About two years ago, neighbors said, his wife joined the Army. She is in South Korea, Mr. Michaelson said.
Leonard Galasso, the manager of A & M Video Magic, said that Mr. Talafourush told him about eight months ago that he and the children would soon join her there. "He said his wife was getting a big promotion, that he was proud and that they would soon be moving out of the country," said Mr. Falasso.
But after that, something apparently changed. Ms. Lebowitz of Kosher Groceries said that Mr. Talafourush sometimes seemed despondent and occasionally would come into the store and cry. Ms. Pasternak said that it was about this time that Mr. Talafourush came into her father's repair shop and said that he had received divorce papers.
The last time the children were seen alive was around 6 P.M. Wednesday, as they rode their bicycles home.

The New York Times

July 24, 1997, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Man Slain in Queens After Breaking Up Fight, Police Say

BYLINE: By KIT R. ROANE

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 511 words

An act of valor on a subway platform led to the death of a Queens teen-ager Tuesday night when he was tracked down by more than a dozen youths and shot in the chest, the police said.
The victim, Michael Valdes, 19, was shot in a playground at the Hammel Houses on Rockaway Beach Boulevard in Far Rockaway, apparently because he and a cousin had intervened earlier in an argument between a youth and a group of girls on the subway platform, Deputy Inspector Michael Collins, a police spokesman, said.
Mr. Valdes's cousin, Humberto Escobar, 18, was also in the playground at the time of the shooting, he said, and was slashed in the neck with a knife. Mr. Escobar was treated and released at Peninsula Hospital Center in Far Rockaway.
The police said they had filed murder and weapons charges against two suspects, Emmitt G. Stone, 17, and Darren Adams, 16, both of Far Rockaway.
Mr. Valdes had begun the evening by riding his mountain bike to see his girlfriend, Melinda, 16, said Nancy Fuentes, an aunt of both Mr. Valdes and Mr. Escobar. Ms. Fuentes said Mr. Valdes first introduced Melinda to the family several weeks ago at a July 4th celebration, but added that she didn't know the girl's last name.
"He was always talking about that girl," Ms. Fuentes added. "He really liked her and made sure we met her. They were always spending time together."
Ms. Fuentes said the two cousins often spent time together, seeing friends, playing basketball or watching their favorite team, the Chicago Bulls, on television.
At some point on Tuesday night, Mr. Valdes met up with Mr. Escobar, and they rode by the Beach 90th Street subway station and saw a group of girls they recognized from school in an argument with a youth, said a police official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The official said the girls were arguing with Mr. Adams. He said Mr. Adams had begun to intimidate the girls while they were on the A train, and that when he grabbed one of the girls shortly before the train pulled into the station, one of the girls sprayed him with tear gas.
The argument then spilled onto the platform, which is when Mr. Valdes and Mr. Escobar intervened and broke the fight up, the official said.
Inspector Collins said that Mr. Adams apparently got a group of youths together to retaliate.
He said the youths found Mr. Valdes and Mr. Escobar shortly before 11 P.M., talking to another group of girls by a red slide in the playground, which is surrounded on three sides by the many housing projects that dot the east end of Rockaway Beach.
The cousins were surrounded by the youths, who began to pound them with their fists, witnesses said.
Inspector Collins said that Mr. Escobar, who tried to defend himself with a screwdriver that he was carrying, was slashed across the throat with a knife.
He said Mr. Stone shot Mr. Valdes in the chest with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol.
Children returned to the playground today, riding their bicycles in rings around a large white chalk scrawl that said "R.I.P. Michael 1977-1997."