MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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New York Daily News

Rudy Rips INS Green Card Deal By MICHAEL O. ALLEN Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, March 23, 1997

Mayor Giuliani yesterday criticized immigration officials for going “in the wrong direction” by suddenly deciding to accept green card applications only by mail.

“People are in a sense of real fear,” Giuliani said, referring to the panic that set in last week after the Immigration and Naturalization Service cut off the line of applicants trying to apply for green cards in person at the agency’s offices.

“Instead of trying to cut back on what the immigration service is doing, the INS should be putting more resources into trying to help people,” Giuliani said. “They are putting a tremendous amount of pressure on people.”

INS spokeswoman Eyleen Schmidt said she could not comment on the criticism.

Citing building security concerns, immigration officials cut off the lines after hundreds of immigrants began camping out overnight hoping to get green cards that would enable them to stay in the U.S.

The lines started building with the approach of the April 1 effective date of tougher new immigration laws. Many undocumented immigrants feared they had to file for legal status by April 1 or risk being deported.

But in a notice issued Friday, immigration officials said the deadline is actually Sept. 30.

Clinton administration officials have asked Congress to postpone the deadline.

The INS notice said there was “no advantage” gained by trying to marry a U.S. citizen or legal resident by April 1 — a tactic that has resulted in crowds of immigrants at city marriage license offices.

“We understand that there is tremendous confusion with the significant changes in the immigration law,” Schmidt said. “We’ve been working hard . . . to let people know that they can go to any INS office in the U.S. after April 1 and apply to adjust their status, to become legal residents of this country.”

The agency also added extra staff to answer calls to a toll-free information number: (800) 375-5283.

Giuliani, who has focused on immigration as he seeks reelection this year, said the federal agency isn’t doing enough.

“The INS has to recognize that the Federal Immigration Reform Act and some of the measures in the Welfare Reform Act have produced enormous problems for people that are not going to be solved by turning them away, or not allowing them to come to the INS offices,” the mayor said.

Original Story Date: 032397

March 23, 1997
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SOMETHING BLUE AT CITY WEDDINGS Cops check immigrants By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Monday, March 17, 1997

The city clerk yesterday said law enforcement agents will continue to check for fraud among immigrants seeking to get married even as critics said the officers’ presence intimidates brides and grooms.

City Clerk Carlos Cuevas requested police support last month when city marriage offices overflowed with couples hoping to wed before immigration reforms go into effect April 1.

Yesterday, he said he will follow guidelines issued by city Corporation Counsel Paul Crotty, which allow immigrants to get married without valid visas but also support the use of cops.

In a letter Friday to First Deputy City Clerk Raymond Teatum, Crotty put to rest immigrants’ fears they needed valid visas to marry in the city. Any form of identification will do, Crotty said.

But the corporation counsel raised the specter of city employees turning immigrants away if they deem the marriage a sham.

“You are entitled to be vigilant of the use of false documents,” he said.

“The involvement of the Police Department and other law enforcement authorities in this effort is entirely appropriate and should be continued,” he wrote.

Cuevas said yesterday he had not yet seen Crotty’s letter. He said that cops from the police anti-fraud unit, along with Immigration and Naturalization officers, will continue to look over documents that people present for identification.

“Anyone that is proper and is not doing anything against the law should certainly not be intimidated by police. It is not my purpose,” he said.

But Norman Siegel, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called on Cuevas to remove the officers.

He said they are “a chilling and intimidating presence” to immigrants.

“How is the clerk going to know when two people come up to the desk that this is a sham marriage or not? You won’t know that until months later,” Siegel said.

Mayor Giuliani said Friday that the city clerk’s office has the right and the responsibility to make sure it is not being used to perpetrate a fraud.

Giuliani said a marriage is obviously a sham when the same person shows up with 10 different couples.

That person, more than likely, is a marriage broker taking advantage of desperate immigrants, the mayor said.

“If somebody is paying a broker for a marriage, $5,000, $10,000, that’s not something you should encourage or allow to have happen,” Giuliani said.

Cuevas said his only concern now is how to speed up the line at a time when his office’s caseload has quadrupled while he contends with an antiquated computer system and a budget that has been cut 41% over three years.

March 17, 1997
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Don’t Monkey With Man; O’Connor sez clones mean armies of drones By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullFriday, March 14, 1997

Cardinal O’Connor presented an apocalyptic vision of cloning yesterday, warning about a world that might use armies of drones to fight wars or become slaves.

“If you just say they are expendable, we can just keep reproducing them, give them a gun, whatever might be the weapon of the day, and send them out. If they get killed, they get killed,” O’Connor said.

Earlier, O’Connor told lawmakers that though he would urge scientists not to cross the ethical line and clone human beings, he said they should not to be too hasty to ban research completely.

Much of the genetic research necessary for human cloning also is necessary for the cure of diseases as well as other scientific advances, the archbishop of New York said at a hearing of the state Senate Investigations Committee in Manhattan.

Scientists, ethicists and other clergy were invited to testify before the hearing, chaired by State Sen. Roy Goodman (R-Manhattan).

“The most fundamental change is that you could have something, whatever you are going to call it, without any parentage, without any social context, without anyone assuming responsibility or accountability,” O’Connor said of human clones.

He recommended that the Legislature allow scientific research that stops just short trying to create a human being.

Asked where he would draw the line, he replied, “I’m not a scientist and only a scientist could say okay, you do this in the Petrie dish or in the test tube or whatever may be and you can go as far as you have to go in genetic research without trying to manufacture a human being, but I don’t know what that point would be.”

O’Connor’s remarks added to the debate unleashed by the announcement last month that a Scottish doctor had successfully cloned a sheep, the now famous Dolly, the first mammal ever cloned from an adult.

That news was quickly followed by a report that American researchers had produced two clones of a rhesus monkey.

President Clinton subsequently put a temporary ban on the use of government money for any research into human cloning.

State Sen. John Marchi (R-S.I.) recently introduced legislation that would make the cloning of human beings a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Scientists such as Nobelist Joshua Lederberg of Rockefeller University testified that a ban would be clumsy, heavy-handed and unenforceable, while others said that research in this area is sorely needed.

March 14, 1997
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Visiting Irish Rugby Player Drops the Bowl Near Goal By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments
Thursday, March 13, 1997

An Irish rugby team traveled thousands of miles with a precious $ 2,000 hand-crafted crystal rose bowl for Mayor Giuliani but it was ruined when a player dropped it 30 feet short of its destination.

The good-will gift which survived a worldwide obstacle course of customs and airport security checkpoints, plus bumpy New York City streets fell to the floor as it was being placed into a City Hall metal detector.

Its base shattered into “10 million pieces,” one player said.

“I was tripped,” groused player Arthur Campbell, who was carrying the bowl. He fingered the culprit as the City Hall security officer who ordered him to put the box containing the gift through the detector.

The team with players from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland will play two games this weekend for charities and attend the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Mayoral spokeswoman Colleen Roche said Giuliani was unaware of the bowl debacle, even as he posed with Campbell who was holding what remained of the bowl for photographs.

But there were other gifts in the offing a plaque and letter from the lord mayor of Belfast, and a decanter of powerful Black Bush Irish Whiskey.

“It’s rocket fuel,” George Martin, another team member, told Giuliani of the whiskey. “I suggest one little thimble at a time, first thing in the morning when you get up.”

March 13, 1997
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They Rent & Rave To Ax Hikes By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Wednesday, March 12, 1997

Facing an unprecedented loss of state rent protections, hundreds of tenants packed a municipal hearing yesterday and called on the City Council to preserve the regulations.

Carrying signs and shouting at landlord advocates, the tenants demanded that the Council meet an April 1 deadline for reauthorizing laws that restrict the size of rent hikes for more than 1 million city apartments.

Walter Gambin, 52, an upper West Side tenant, said renters are being pinched from all sides, including by politicians serving the interests of landlords. “They’ve got a lot,” Gambin said of the landlords. “We don’t. Why do they want to take more from us?”

The tenants jeered as Richard Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress, defended state Senate plans to let the rent laws expire in three months.

Anderson said government rent regulations have depressed the city housing market to the point where developers have shied from constructing rental buildings.

The hearing, where one tenant was tossed out of City Hall for rowdiness, marked the latest skirmish in an emotionally charged battle over rent laws.

At yesterday’s hearing, the tenants demanded that the Council certify a recent survey that found the rental vacancy rate in the five boroughs remains below 5%, the official measure of a housing emergency.

The Council has until April 1 to vote on the issue.

Council members are expected to approve the politically sensitive emergency designation by an overwhelming margin, and Mayor Giuliani–facing reelection this year–is expected to sign it.

The focus then will shift to Albany, where State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Rensselaer), a long-time foe of government rent regulations, has threatened to end the rent-protection system.

Bruno’s threat has taken on heightened importance because the GOP-controlled state Senate can simply let the rent laws expire June 15, despite opposition from the Democratic-run Assembly.

Gearing up for the battle, tenants yesterday warned City Council members not to reverse their long-standing support for the rent laws. Some advocates showed up at the hearing with lists showing honor and dishonor rolls of Council members who in the past have voted to curb the protections.

“I don’t think City Council members running for reelection want to get caught on the side of landlords,” said Jenny Laurie of the Metropolitan Council on Housing, a tenant group.

Copyright 1997 Daily News, L.P.

March 12, 1997
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Foes Trash City Over Exporting

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

March 06, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and JOEL SIEGEL, Daily News Staff Writers

Mayor Giuliani’s plan to close Fresh Kills landfill and export the city’s trash has prompted howls of outrage — and some eager welcomes — from activists and officials in communities that might get tons of banana peels and dirty diapers.

The city should solve its garbage problem at home and not foist its trash on communities such as Dunmore, Pa., whose landfill is being eyed by sanitation officials, said Dan Scheffler of the Sierra Club of Northeast Pennsylvania.

“It’s ironic that Mayor Giuliani doesn’t want guns imported to New York City, but he doesn’t mind exporting the city’s garbage,” said Lynn Landes of Zero Waste, a Pennsylvania environmental group.

But mayors in two nearby cities with huge trash-burning plants — Newark and Bridgeport — said they would accept New York’s garbage with open arms.

“It’s what the plant is here for,” said Chris Duby, spokesman for Mayor Joseph Ganim of Bridgeport, home to an incinerator whose owners have submitted a bid to burn tons of New York City trash.

The anger and anticipation came in reaction to the planned closing of the massive Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island by the end of 2001. The Sanitation Department recently announced it has received six bids from companies to ship garbage produced in the Bronx out of state for burning or dumping.

Three of the bids call for burning the garbage in Newark, Bridgeport or Hempstead, L.I. The others would dump the trash in Virginia or Pennsylvania landfills.

“We the people in the Ironbound will not benefit from New York City’s trash being burned here,” said June Kruszewski of the Ironbound Community Corp., a group based near Newark’s incinerator. “We don’t like it. We did not want the incinerator to begin with.”

Pennsylvania state Rep. David Argall said Schuylkill County residents feel they may be unfairly dumped on. “You can imagine the frustration my constituents feel,” he said.

But in Newark and Bridgeport, officials had the opposite reaction. Both cities receive huge payments for having the trash plants within their borders. And both signed agreements that all but bar them from restricting the flow of garbage from outside areas.

In addition, Newark and Essex County, N.J., officials said they need garbage for the American Ref-Fuel Co.

If the plant fails to receive enough garbage to operate at an efficient capacity, Essex County must dig into its own treasury to pay off investors who bought bonds that financed the plant, said Newark Business Manager Glenn Grant.

Original Story Date: 03/06/97

March 6, 1997
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Don’t Pass The Ammunition; Mayor holds off on new bullets

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

March 5, 1997

by BOB LIFF, MICHAEL O. ALLEN and JOHN MARZULLI, Daily News Staff Writers

Mayor Giuliani put the brakes on the police plan to arm cops with controversial hollow-point bullets yesterday — demanding to see studies on the expanding rounds before approving the change.

Giuliani summoned Police Commissioner Howard Safir and his top brass to City Hall to brief him on the switch, which would replace the full metal jacket police bullet with a round that expands on impact and is less likely to ricochet.

The mayor said he believes the bullets would be safer for cops and civilians, but insisted he needs more time to study the sensitive issue.

“I asked them to see all the studies so that I can review them personally,” he said after meeting with police brass. “They went over some of them with me. They are going to get me more because I want to look into this issue carefully.”

“It is not a done deal until I finally approve it,” Giuliani said as City Council members prepared to grill Safir on the switch to hollow-points at a previously scheduled public safety hearing today.

Civil rights advocates have long criticized the snub-nose bullets, which create gruesome wounds but are more likely to stop a suspect. Elected city officials said yesterday they also want to hear more about the changeover before throwing their support behind it.

“Right now we in the Council have more questions than answers,” said Speaker Peter Vallone, (D-Queens).

Councilman Enoch Williams (D-Brooklyn) called the hollow-points “a license to kill.”

“It means that if someone makes a mistake out there . . . a youngster 15, 16 years old that maybe does something the police officer doesn’t like . . . and he shoots, that kid is finished,” Williams said.

“It should be disturbing to all elected leaders and citizens that the NYPD could just introduce these bullets without any briefing or public hearing about the implications,” said Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition.

Police officials argue that hollow-points do not ricochet and rarely pass through walls or the body of an intended target — lessening the risk to bystanders from stray bullets.

New York is virtually alone among major police departments and law enforcement agencies in using full metal jacket bullets.

Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Lou Matarazzo applauded the change, saying the advantages of the hollow-points “outweigh the risks” to cops and civilians.

Giuliani said he understands the potential benefits for police. He said the decision on hollow-points was made by then-Commissioner William Bratton before he resigned in April. The mayor said he did not disagree “at the time” with Bratton’s decision.

But Bratton told the Daily News he “did not recall” signing off on the new bullets before he left, although he would have approved the hollow-points.

Bratton, who had a stormy relationship with Giuliani during his last months as commissioner, said he believes the mayor was angry that Safir made the announcement Monday.

“The mayor doesn’t like media surprises, so he’ll hold off on it for a while to reinforce that he doesn’t like being surprised,” Bratton said.

Critics of the bullets have also said they pose a danger to cops who accidentally shoot themselves or their partners.

Since 1981, 51 officers have been wounded by so-called friendly fire.

March 5, 1997
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City Hall Protesters Rally for Rent Control

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

February 27, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

Hundreds of placard-waving tenants rallied outside City Hall yesterday to denounce landlords and politicians and demand renewal of threatened state rent protection.

The tenants, worried that state lawmakers will allow the laws on more than a million city apartments to expire in June, applauded as housing advocates accused State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Rensselaer), Gov. Pataki, Mayor Giuliani and other officials of favoring landlords.

“Landlords have claimed for years that rent control and rent stabilization have made it impossible for them to make what they call reasonable or adequate profit. This is sheer baloney,” Bob Grossman of SRO Tenants United told the crowd at City Hall Park.

The rally was the first major protest by Showdown ’97, a coalition of tenant organizations fighting Bruno’s threat to let the state rent laws expire on June 15. The laws regulate how much landlords can charge for lease renewals and vacated apartments.

Bruno has called for a two-year transition to a free-market rent system. Only elderly, disabled and low-income tenants would keep rent protections under Bruno’s plan.

But the Democratic-controlled Assembly and several Republican lawmakers from New York City districts are battling to extend the current laws.

The tenants called on other state lawmakers to support the fight. Carrying sheets and placards that read “Keep Rent Protection,” the crowd of about 750 joined in chants of “Tenants united will never be defeated.”

Bruno spokesman John McArdle scoffed at charges that the majority leader is beholden to landlord groups, who have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Senate Republicans. He said Bruno “has been calling for rent decontrols for the last 10 years” on the ground that the laws perpetuate an unfair system.

Jack Freund, a spokesman for the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents most of the 25,000 owners of the more than 1 million rent-stabilized housing units in the city, criticized the tenant activists.

“Rent regulations have been a disaster for New York City’s economy and its renters. It’s time to phase out the system in a responsible manner,” Freund said.

But Jenny Laurie, director of the Metropolitan Council on Housing, said that “landlords are full of crap” for battling to strip tenants of their rights under the law.

February 27, 1997
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PUSH TO LIFT TATTOO BAN; City Council votes for body art

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

February 26, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

New Yorkers may soon be able to get openly what they’ve been getting illegally for 35 years — tattoos.

The City Council yesterday passed a law that would lift the official though little-enforced 1962 ban on tattooing.

Councilwoman Kathryn Freed (D-Manhattan), who sponsored the law, said it was absurd for the city to continue pretending that the increasingly popular trend of body art did not exist.

“This way we actually put in regulations so that the artists are protected, and the public at large is protected,” Freed said. “People are going to do it, so you might as well regulate it to safeguard the public.”

The city enacted the ban amid fear that the needles used in tattooing could trigger a hepatitis epidemic. Despite the law, tattoo parlors have continued to operate and city health officials have looked the other way.

The City Council measure, which requires mayoral approval, would replace the ban with a new licensing system.

Before setting up shop, tattoo artists would be required to take a city Health Department course on infectious disease prevention. They would also have to pass a Health Department exam before they would qualify for a license. The license, good for two years, would cost $100.

Tattoo artists found guilty of operating illegally would face fines ranging from $300 to $1,000.

Tattoo artists at the Council meeting, where the proposed licensing system passed by a 38-to-7 vote, said they were happy to gain municipal legitimacy. But some contended that the licensing system would not safeguard the tattoo-craving public.

East Village tattoo artist Tom Murphy complained that the law will not require inspections of tattooing parlors to make sure that they use sanitary and safe body-decorating procedures.

The city Health Department, while endorsing the move to lift the ban, opposed mandatory inspections. Health officials said inspections would be too expensive and time consuming at a time when the city faces more serious health threats.

Health Department spokesman Fred Winters said agency officials would also prefer regulating the tattoo industry through the health code instead of through an amendment of city administrative laws.

Mayor Giuliani said he would consider all sides in the debate before deciding whether to sign the law.

Original Story Date: 022697

February 26, 1997
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STING HAS SHARP EDGE; 43 of 73 stores sell box cutters to kids

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

February 23, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

Kids working undercover bought box cutters in stationery and hardware stores across the city in open violation of a law barring sales of the dangerous blades to youngsters, officials said yesterday.

The Department of Consumer Affairs sent the kids into 73 stores in a four-day sting last week to buy the box cutters — tragically, weapons of choice in the city’s schools.

“The results are troubling,” said Consumer Affairs Commissioner Jose Maldonado.

Forty-three of the stores sold the cutters without checking their customers’ identification — and 14 of them were openly displaying the blades, also in violation of the law.

The guilty stores include giant chain stores like K-Mart and F.W. Woolworth as well as small neighborhood stores, officials said.

Willie Meistelman, a manager at Barneys Hardware Store on Sixth Ave. in Manhattan, complained that the Consumer Affairs operation was a setup because his underage customers were all accompanied by adults.

“It’s the adults who bought the box cutters,” he said.

Local Law 80, enacted two years ago, makes it a misdemeanor for merchants to sell box cutters to minors or display them openly and for students to carry them on city school grounds.

But the law has proved difficult to enforce. Police could only move in if they received a complaint about a violation at a specific location, and Consumer Affairs, which licenses and inspects many of the stores, had no power to cite them for violations.

That began to change last year after the Daily News found box cutters in open display at Rite Aid stores. Embarrassed, the chain pulled the blades from its shelves across the city.

Mayor Giuliani then ordered a crackdown — and Staples, the national office supplies chain, was one of the stores found to be selling the cutters alongside school supplies.

Consumer Affairs was also given the power to inspect specifically for violations of the box cutter law, with the ability to fine stores up to $500 for each violation and even revoke a store’s license, Maldonado said.

As a result of last year’s crackdown, Staples and Rite Aid stores were on the list of 30 “good stores” that Consumer Affairs released yesterday.

February 23, 1997
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