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Playground Site For Lab Irks Nabe By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Wednesday, May 2, 2001

A plan to build a high school science lab on an elementary school playground in Midwood is drawing fire from some parents.

The Board of Education wants to build the laboratory for Midwood High School students on a portion of the playground used by elementary school students.

“We are outraged, very angry,” said Alice Tillman-Dames, president of the Joint Parents Association at Public Schools 152 and 315, housed in the same building at 2310 Glenwood Road.

“The information came out in dribs and drabs. Nobody told us anything. We were never given a choice whether we want it or not. It’s a done deal.”

Midwood High is across Bedford Ave. from the yard.

But Margie Feinberg, a board spokeswoman, said plans for the $35 million to $40 million facility are only in the design phase, and will cover just a portion of the playground — 18,000 square feet of the 52,000 total.

“When the labs are built, there would still be 34,000 square feet left for a playground. It would be open space for the school as well as for the community.

“It is important to note that because the [state Board of] Regents are requiring a lab component in their exams, we need to provide science labs for students so that they can take the Regents exam and graduate,” Feinberg said.

Tillman-Dames said that answer is misleading because an annex to the elementary school and temporary transportable kindergarten classes take up portions of the yard.

“Pretty soon the children will have only the sidewalk to play on, and they will call that the playground,” she said.

This Saturday, parents plan to hold a community sit-in at the yard from 9:30 a.m. until noon.

Expected to attend is Councilman Lloyd Henry (D-Midwood), who got the Council to allocate $1.15 million to construct a playground with a reading garden as well as basketball, tennis and handball courts, water fountains and a play area for toddlers.

The plan was that the elementary schools would have use of them during the school day and the community at other times.

Community Board 14 Chairman Alvin Berk described the neighborhood as chock-full of competing needs, all of them legitimate.

“And that’s the problem,” he said. “The problem is, very simply, there’s a tremendous, tremendous lack of open space in Community District 14.”

Original Publication Date: 5/2/01

May 2, 2001
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Diallo Kin ‘Refuse to Lose Hope’ By PATRICE O’SHAUGHNESSY, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSunday, April 29, 2001

Amadou Diallo’s parents expressed anguish yesterday over the Police Department’s exoneration of the four cops who killed their son, and urged supporters to “refuse to lose hope.”

“Whoever said [the cops] have done nothing wrong, they are wrong,” said Diallo’s mother, Kadiatou. “I am saying to Mayor Giuliani the decision is wrong, I am saying to the police commissioner the decision is wrong … let’s make changes to prevent this from happening again.”

Amadou Diallo’s parents speak out at Al Sharpton’s Harlem headquarters.
Kadiatou and Saikou Diallo flanked the Rev. Al Sharpton at his Harlem headquarters to denounce Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik’s decision Friday to put the cops back on the job — without guns or badges, but without punishment — based on the findings of two police panels that deemed the fatal shooting of the unarmed man a mistake.

“They are letting the police go free to kill and kill,” Saikou Diallo said.

Sharpton announced plans to compile a record of incidents of racial profiling, arbitrary stop-and-frisks and other interaction between cops and minority groups to build a civil class-action suit against the NYPD.

He also said the black community will target an unnamed major corporation that supports the police union.

Sharpton derided Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen for approving one of the cops, Edward McMellon, as a firefighter candidate and promised to protest at FDNY headquarters in Brooklyn.

“This week we will prepare for a huge visit to the Fire Department,” Sharpton said.

Meanwhile, Giuliani reiterated support for Kerik’s decision.

“The reality of the Diallo case is that it was tragic and horrible,” the mayor said on John Gambling’s WABC radio show.

“A mixed jury of four blacks and eight whites concluded that. As did the Clinton Justice Department, when they decided not to pursue a civil rights case. And that’s what the police panel concluded.

“All these people can’t be wrong. … You have to willing to adjust your attitude in the face of reality.”

With Michael O. Allen

April 29, 2001
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Cyclones: Overnight Sensation By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSunday, April 29, 2001

The line of baseball fans began forming at 7:30 p.m. Friday, growing slowly but steadily, until by Saturday morning it nearly stretched around the mammoth Kings Plaza in Brooklyn.

As they waited, they talked of baseball, of Opening Days past, present and future — the next being the June 25 debut of the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets’ new farm team.

Greg Packer, 37, a highway crew worker for the Town of Huntington, L.I., was the first on line. For his trouble, he met Cyclones executive Jeff Wilpon, son of Fred Wilpon, co-owner of the New York Mets. He also got gifts: a Brooklyn Cyclones logo baseball, pennant, hat and T-shirt.

Not far behind were old Brooklyn Dodgers fans Ilene and Myles Seitz.

“He’s the real thing, a Brooklyn Dodgers fan from way back when,” Ilene said of her 63-year-old husband. “It’s his life. He loves it. He got me — not even trying — to love it.”

Born and raised in the East New York section of Brooklyn, the two moved out to White Plains six years ago, although Myles still works in Brooklyn.

“This brings baseball back to Brooklyn, which has been delayed for 43 years, and I welcome it back,” he said.

By early afternoon, more than 2,000 people had shown up. More than 125,000 tickets — about half of the season — were sold.

Several games in the 3,500-seat KeySpan Park, in the shadow of the old Coney Island parachute jump, were sellouts: Opening Day — and all games against the Staten Island Yankees.

April 29, 2001
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SCHOOL BARS ‘SATAN’ KID Officials say he vowed to kill his classmates By CAROLINA GONZALEZ and BRIAN KATES, Daily News Staff Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Wednesday, April 25, 2001

A 10-year-old gifted boy said to call himself “brother of Satan” who has terrorized two Brooklyn schools was barred from classes yesterday, officials said.

The fourth-grader was kept in seclusion yesterday after he allegedly threatened to kill classmates at Public School 236 in Mill Basin — reportedly the second time in a month he had made such a threat.

Schools Chancellor Harold Levy said only that the school district “is making arrangements for alternative instruction” for the boy. A high-placed school official said that the youngster most likely would not be allowed to return to PS 236.

The boy, described as bright and enrolled in the Eagle Program for gifted students, had no prior school disciplinary record, but apparently began to unravel in late March.

On March 28, he was booted from PS 207 in Marine Park after allegedly threatening to kill several children in his class. At that time, one parent said, the boy referred to himself as the “brother of Satan” and warned classmates “not to make me go home and get my father’s gun.”

The parent, whose daughter allegedly was among those threatened, said the boy told classmates that they are “going to be with him in hell.”

At least 50 parents at PS 207 signed a petition demanding that the boy be barred from class. When officers went to the boy’s house, they found a .357 Ruger handgun licensed to his father, police said.

The Daily News is withholding the youngster’s name because of his age. Contacted at their neatly tended Marine Park house, the boy’s parents refused to discuss the case.

It could not be determined whether school officials complied with federal regulations requiring that students who make such threats undergo a psychological evaluation.

Last Thursday, the boy was quietly transferred to PS 236. But his reputation apparently followed him. “Parents were warned through the grapevine that he had been transferred,” said parent Michael Cava.

The fourth-grader had been in his new school only one day when he again threatened to bring a gun to school and kill someone, parents said.

That same day someone circulated a flyer to parents, urging them to keep their kids out of school as long as the child was allowed to attend.

The flyer proclaimed that the 10-year-old had “created a ‘Hit-List’ of children he wanted to ‘Kill’! He described the weapon (gun) he would use for this massacre in great detail. … No one is safe!”

Saul Needle, president of School Board 22, called the flyer “irresponsible,” saying it “inflamed a tense and emotional situation.” The origin of the flyer wasn’t known.

As alarm spread among parents, 317 of the school’s 650 students missed classes on Monday. Yesterday, 100 were absent.

Outside PS 236 yesterday, fifth-grader A.J. Truisi said he had played football with the boy Friday. “He was actually really nice,” A.J. said. “He just got mad and didn’t know how to handle it.”

A.J.’s mother, Christine Truisi, said, “I think a lot of parents bashed a 10-year-old boy without knowing all the facts.”

Most parents, however, were demanding answers. They were fuming that neither District Superintendent John Comer nor Principal Mary Barton attended a meeting Monday night to discuss the issue.

“The depth and the level of frustration in the audience was palpable. Parents were demanding answers,” Needle said.

With Nancie L. Katz
and Michael O. Allen

April 25, 2001
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Tragedy for 2 B’klyn Families: Auto accidents claim 7 By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and PATRICE O’SHAUGHNESSY, Daily News Staff Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, April 22, 2001

The Stewarts and the Shetmans were two close-knit families living at opposite ends of Brooklyn who apparently never knew each other. One is African-American, the other Jewish immigrants from Ukraine.

Both families believed in being kind neighbors, keeping nice homes and rearing good children. And yesterday, both were left ravaged by car crashes that happened within two hours of each other on Friday night.

Victims of Friday’s tragic crash included Auber Stewart…

City cop Craig Stewart and his brother Cedric grieved in Crown Heights over the loss of their parents, sister, brother and aunt, who died when their minivan crashed into a bus at St. John’s Place and Brooklyn Ave. as they returned from a wake in Harlem.

In Gravesend, Aleksandr Shetman was devastated by the deaths of his only children, 15-year-old Inna and 10-year-old Svetlana, and the critical injuries to his wife, Rima. All three were mowed down when a careening Porsche mounted the curb as they walked on Ocean Parkway about 6:30 p.m..

The light-haired girls were walking with their mother and father after shopping. Inna was a student at Edward R. Murrow High School; Svetlana attended Public School 216.

Shetman, a Manhattan hotel employee who came to the United States about 10 years ago, lived with his wife and daughters and grandparents in a two-family house on E. Second St.

“They spoke Russian, so we would just say hello to each other, but they were very nice people,” said Frances Felice, who lives across the street. “They were such nice, pretty girls. I would see the mother take the little girl to school every day. I feel very sad for them.”

…and her daughter, Lorraine.

The accident occurred when Issac Chehebar, 20, of Avenue T, somehow lost control of a silver Porsche Carrera as he traveled north on Ocean Parkway and jumped the pedestrian median curb. The car struck and killed Inna instantly. Svetlana died yesterday at Coney Island Hospital. Their mother was in critical condition at Lutheran Medical Center.

Anthony Abbate Jr., 15, also was struck by the car and suffered a broken leg.

Chehebar, who tested negative for alcohol, was not immediately charged.

Meanwhile, neighbors of James Stewart, 75; his wife, Auber, 72; their daughter. Lorraine, 49, and son, Melvin, 52, stood stunned on President St., where, on sunny days, James and Auber were a fixture on the bench outside their renovated brick house.

A stoic Cedric Stewart emerged from the home to say the remaining family would “stick together and hang tough.” He described the Stewart clan as “a close-knit family, closer than most.”

Craig Stewart, 42, is an 18-year veteran officer assigned to Brooklyn Central Booking.

The Stewarts and an aunt, Zora Goins, 75, were killed at 8:20 p.m. Friday when the 1996 Dodge minivan Lorraine Stewart was driving sped through a red light and plowed into the side of a city bus.

Several people on the B45 bus suffered minor injuries, police said.

Accident investigators said Lorraine Stewart may have been racing to Kings County Hospital because her mother has a history of heart trouble and may have suffered an attack. An autopsy of Auber Stewart did not confirm that was the case, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner said.

There was no sign the van had mechanical failure, but none of the van’s occupants was wearing a seat belt, police said.

Nathan Perry, 44, who lives next door, called the Stewarts “a family from heaven. They are the type of neighbors you want living next door to you. They are close-knit.”

With Tom Raftery and Suzanne Rozdeba
April 22, 2001
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TB Sidelines B’klyn Teach by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Friday, April 20, 2001

Teachers at a Park Slope, Brooklyn, middle school learned yesterday that a colleague who had been out of school for over two weeks was hospitalized with tuberculosis.

Health Department spokeswoman Sandra Mullin confirmed that a member of the staff at Middle School 88 has active tuberculosis but said the risk to anyone else at the school is very low.

Mullin said students will be sent home today with a letter to their parents explaining the situation. People at the school who had contact with the staff will undergo TB screening.

TB infects about 8 million people a year worldwide, and kills 2 million a year.

Health Department officials say New York City’s infection rate of the disease has declined drastically in the past eight years.

April 20, 2001
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He’s Held in Mom’s Slaying By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and JOHN MARZULLI, Daily News Staff Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Saturday, April 14, 2001

Detectives were questioning a 20-year-old man suspected of stabbing his mother to death in an argument in their Brooklyn apartment, police said yesterday.

The son apparently had been given an ultimatum by his mother, Christine Thompson, 44, to “straighten out his act” or leave home, a police source said.

Neighbors in the building on Lincoln Place in Prospect Heights heard loud music, arguing and crashing objects coming from the victim’s fifth-floor apartment during the night and predawn hours.

Downstairs tenant Naoko Ozaki, 25, said she called the building superintendent when water began pouring from her ceiling about 8 a.m.

When the super, Cresencio Alvarez, went to check out the problem in Thompson’s apartment, he heard her screaming for help and called 911.

“The police kicked the door down,” Alvarez said. “I saw only the leg. She was lying in the hallway. The blood was everywhere — on the wall and on the floor. I saw bloody footprints.”

Thompson, a guard, was rushed to New York Methodist Hospital, where she was pronounced dead from stab wounds.

The son, who works at a Manhattan Kmart, showed up at the apartment about an hour after police arrived and was arrested before being questioned at the 77th Precinct stationhouse. A kitchen knife believed to be the murder weapon was recovered.

The pouring water came from a sink that apparently had been left running before the fight, police said.

Neighbor Raul Morales, 61, said the victim had trouble with her two sons.

“The big one is in jail now. The other one is a little bit out of his mind,” he said. “He looks at you with wide-open eyes, or he’s laughing like he’s crazy.”

Original Story Date: 04/14/01

April 14, 2001
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STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION Rare street hopes makeover will be worth all the hassle By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Monday, April 09, 2001

Residents of quiet 74th St., a few blocks from the Narrows in Bay Ridge, have been waking to the quaking of their homes lately as heavy machinery rolls in.

Repairs to step street at 74th St. and Colonial Road in Bay Ridge have delighted tenants, though they must endure intrusion of heavy machinery.

It is the start of a major project to replace the unusual step street linking Ridge Blvd. and Colonial Road at 74th St., as well as repair the street’s sewers and water mains.

“Let’s face it, it has to be done,” said Blanca Ortiz of 115 74th St.

But that doesn’t mean she enjoys it. “I’m in bed this morning and the bed, along with the house, was shaking,” Ortiz said.

She quickly called Janet Richichi, community construction liaison from the city Department of Design and Construction.

“I told her that I hope our houses don’t develop cracks because of the pounding,” Ortiz said. “She told me that she’d consulted with the engineers and that they’re not supposed to pound beyond a certain degree so as to not cause any damage.

“It’s an inconvenience, and the noise, but it has to be done.”

The consolation for the neighborhood is that its unusual public steps finally will be repaired.

Assemblywoman Joan Millman (D-Bay Ridge) secured the $300,000 that Community Board 10 officials told her in 1997 it would cost to fix the steps.

“In my enthusiasm and my naiveté about how these things work, I thought it was going to happen, like, right away,” Millman said.

When city officials inspected the project, they found that the sewers and water mains needed total reconstruction along with the stairway. It took the intervening four years to get the $786,000 estimated cost for the project into the budget, with the city Department of Environmental Protection picking up the tab for the remainder of the project.

City Design and Construction Department Deputy Commissioner Matthew Monahan said the street above and below the steps would have 600 new feet of curb, three fire hydrants and five catch basins to draw off rainwater, along with the new steps, sewer and water main, when the project is completed in July.

The repairs were long overdue, said Steve Harrison, chairman of Community Board 10. “The steps are unsafe,” he said.

“That they are fixing them is something that makes us ecstatic.”

Step streets are more common in the Bronx, but Brooklyn, being part of Long Island, is flatter. Harrison believes only two such street steps exist in the borough, the set under reconstruction and another set on 76th St.

Marylou Notaro of 145 74th St., who has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years, praised the city workers doing the job but said she was concerned about what would happen to a community garden on either side of the steps.

“About 10 years ago, we turned an area that was a dumping ground into a beautiful garden, and people from all around the neighborhood came to admire the roses and the tulips and the daffodils,” Notaro said.

“I’m hopeful that after the construction is done, we can restore the garden to the beautiful garden that it once was.”

April 9, 2001
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Thousands Protest: Demand Palestinians be given homeland By SUZANNE ROZDEBA and GREG GITTRICH, Daily News Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, April 08, 2001

Middle East tensions spilled out on the streets of Manhattan’s East Side yesterday as thousands of protesters rallied outside the Israeli Consulate to demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their homes in Israeli-occupied lands.

Waving posters with images of bloodied children and screaming words of protest in English and Arabic, Palestinian New Yorkers and supporters called on the U.S. to stop all funding to Israel and fight for the return of all refugees to their homeland.

Cops keep an eye on Palestinian rally outside Israeli Embassy in Manhattan.

“International law stipulates that we have the right to return,” said Arjan El-Fassed, co-founder of Al-Awda, the Palestinian coalition that called the protest.

“I don’t think U.S. taxpayers want to pay Israel to continue to kill children.”

The crowd, unofficially estimated at 5,000, began assembling outside the Israeli Consulate on 42nd St. and Second Ave. in the late morning and soon stretched more than three blocks.

Shortly before 2 p.m., the throng — packed with children and teenagers — marched to Union Square, where they listened to a passionate speech from Palestinian scholar Edward Said.

Protesters accuse the U.S. of sponsoring terrorism by funding Israel.

“This is a battle against an imperialist colonial power,” Said said, winning a roar from the crowd. “This is not Palestinian violence. This is Palestinian resistance.”

Many of the protesters, some of whom came from as far away as San Francisco, carried placards with anti-Israeli slogans including “USA: Stop Funding Israeli Terrorism,” “Down with Israel” and “Zionism = Racism.”

Before reaching Union Square, protesters wearing masks threw stones at a green cardboard representation of an Israeli tank.

Traffic was tied up along the route, but police reported no arrests, despite a few heated arguments between the demonstrators and a handful of Israeli supporters.

“The U.S. is just on the brink of understanding what is going on,” said Palestinian refugee Reen Abu Sbaih, 29. “People don’t see the human side of Palestinians. We want freedom. We want justice.”

The insistence that Palestinian refugees who fled Israel when it was created in 1948 be allowed to return is one of many longstanding issues that persistently stoke violence in the Middle East.

The refugees and their descendants are spread out in camps across the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

The Israeli Consulate was closed for the day, and its officials could not be reached. But Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn) blamed Palestinian leaders for the many failed attempts at peace in the Middle East.

Similar pro-Palestinian demonstrations were held yesterday in Canadian, Australian, Spanish and Palestinian cities.

With Michael O. Allen

April 8, 2001
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WOODLAND TO REPLACE LANDFILL Mother Nature getting back 400 acres of f ormer dumps By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSunday, December 3, 2000

Forget a tree. Soon, a forest will grow in Brooklyn.

In East New York, to be exact.

Atop the former dumps on Pennsylvania and Fountain Aves. now grow mugworts, fragmites, some switch grass here and there and the occasional ailanthus, the tree that grows in Brooklyn.

The greenery doesn’t hide the rusted hulks of tire rims, the orphan gravel piles and stray dogs.

Nor can it eliminate the PCBs, other toxic wastes and pollutants, construction debris and household trash buried up to 130 feet high across the landfills’ 400-acre expanse before the dumps closed in 1985.

But onto this patchy landscape, ringed by Jamaica Bay’s splendor, an unlikely collection of interests has conspired to bring, of all things, a forest.

Starting in June and over the next four years, Brooklyn will host an experiment in landfill restoration, said John McLaughlin, director of ecological services for the city Department of Environmental Protection and the man behind the forest design.

The city will denude this acreage of its poor excuse for vegetation, cover the land with an environmentally approved plastic liner to cap the old landfills, then ship or truck in more than 1.3 million cubic yards of sandy soil.

The new soil – from a foot to 4 feet in depth – will provide the base for the forest.

McLaughlin’s design calls for 20 species of trees – 18,000 in all – 25 species of shrubs – up to 23,000 of ’em – and 30 species of grass and wildflowers across the two landfills.

All will be plants that grew on the coastline before European settlement.

In place of the landfill stench that used to waft over East New York, the aroma of hollies, birch, cedar, hickory, maple, oak and pine trees should fill the air.

There also will be trails for hiking and bicycling, picnic areas and perches for bird watching.

The price is expected to be $221 million.

McLaughlin, 40, was born in Astoria, Queens, and raised in Brooklyn. While other kids wanted to grow up to be Presidents or ballplayers, McLaughlin knew from the time he was about 10 or 11 that he would devote his life to horticulture.

“My aunt had a house on Long Island, and every summer I would go out there and plant a vegetable garden and do the shrubs and the trees,” he said. “I loved it.”

He has lived in Brooklyn since his family moved to Greenpoint when he was 2 years old. Today, he’s married and lives in Bay Ridge.

He said the East New York forest is by far the biggest project of its kind ever tackled in New York City.

“It’s a legacy to leave on to future generations,” McLaughlin said. “I’ll never get to see the final picture of what it’ll look like because it’ll take many, many years for the trees to grow to real appreciable size. But, if I could leave it on to my children or somebody else’s children to see, then that’s a wonderful thing.”

The forest, said Leander Shelley, a community leader who served on the citizens advisory committee that oversaw the restoration of the landfills, is a dream come true.

“I grew up here in East New York in the 1950s,” said Shelley, 57. “I remember the odor and the stench from the landfill, all the garbage being processed out there and dump.

“Now, people will be able to interact with nature here, in a setting like Central Park.”

The parties in this environmental reclamation are the residents who suffered because these landfills were their neighbor, the city DEP, the National Park Service, which owns much of the land as part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

DEP will be responsible for monitoring gas emissions and maintaining the closed landfills for up to 30 years.

A century ago, Brooklyn did not reach as far as the spot where the landfill is located, McLaughlin said. The city’s growth led to the filling in of salt marshes in the area, first for human use, then for waste disposal that began in the 1950s and 1960s.

“We’ll just set the table, then have nature do the rest,” McLaughlin said. “We can’t duplicate it 100%. If you put [in] the scaffolding of the primary species, then through nature on its own, dispersal of seeds from wind or migrating birds, other species that go with that community would also come in.”

The hollies and other plants will provide food and nesting places for mammals and other wildlife such as hawks, owls and migratory songbirds.

“If they plant a forest that is available for people to use, it would be a beautiful spot to hike and look over Jamaica Bay,” said Steven Clemants, vice president of science at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. “With the height of that landfill and the view, it would be gorgeous. There’d be an amenities value to people.”

Shelley can’t wait.

I’ll be the first one walking up there when it opens up, or try to be, anyway,” he vowed.

GRAPHIC: TARA ENGBERG John McLaughlin (l.), director of ecological services for the Department of Environmental Protection, and Geoffrey Ryan stand on what used to be a trash dump. TARA ENGBERG Bird’s-eye view of 400-acre landfill that was shut in 1985 and is being converted to forest.

December 3, 2000
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