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City Urged to Scrap Homeless Shelter Plan By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

March 21, 2002

Opponents of a proposed 400-bed homeless shelter in Williamsburg rallied against the plan last night, calling on Mayor Bloomberg to cancel it.

“What they’re creating is a warehouse for homeless men,” said Jose Leon.

Opening the East Williamsburg Industrial Park facility, at an old factory at 89 Porter Ave., is the first half of a plan to close the 800-bed 30th Street men’s shelter at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. The city will build a second 400-bed facility in the Bronx.

The Giuliani administration signed a $180 million, 22-year contract with the Manhattan-based Doe Fund to operate the shelter, immediately drawing the ire of Brooklyn elected officials and community activists, who sued the city.

Marty Needelman, a lawyer with Brooklyn Legal Services, said the city used subterfuge to avoid input from the community. But the city maintained the plan did not require review because, in part, the Doe Fund is a nongovernmental firm buying a building from a private seller.

“It’s a bad precedent,” Needelman said. “If the city can get away with avoiding the land-review process through this technicality on a $180-million project, then they can do that on a lot of other projects and undermine one of the critical features of the City Charter.”

Lower courts have ruled against the project opponents, but they have filed notice that they intend to appeal.

Even the Coalition for the Homeless — which fights to get the city to live up to its obligations to provide shelter, housing and services for the homeless — is opposed to the project.

“It’s an incredibly shortsighted and poor policy,” Patrick Markee, a senior policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless, said of the plan. “Our position has been that that money would be much better spent to open permanent housing for the rising number of homeless men.”

But George McDonald, founder of The Doe Fund, which finds work and provides treatment for homeless men, said the coalition should be working with The Doe Fund, not fighting it, on this project.

“This is a replacement facility, not a new shelter,” McDonald said. “In a system like we have in New York City, you have to have tranistional facilities. You can’t take somebody right off the street and put them in permanent housing.”

But Assemblyman Vito Lopez (D-Williamsburg) asked why it has to be Williamsburg, which has a waste-transfer station that processes 40% of the city’s trash daily and a 200-bed homeless shelter in nearby Greenpoint.

He said he had heard a bio-tech medical research facility is being installed in place of the Manhattan homeless shelter that would be closed down.

“Instead of giving us the homeless shelter, give us the bio-tech research facility,” Lopez said. “It would be a very positive thing for our community because it would create hundreds of jobs.”

Linda Gibbs, commissioner of the city Homeless Services Department, said the project is a necessary service.

“It is not a matter of making a choice between providing permanent housing, or a homeless shelter,” she said. The city has an obligation to provide shelter for anyone who needs it.”

March 21, 2002
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SUBWAY VOTE POSTPONED A Transit Authority committee has postponed a vote on proposed subway By MICHAEL O. ALLEN

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

May 16, 2001

Transit Authority committee has postponed a vote on proposed subway service changes, including the controversial plan to shorten the G line.

New York City Transit and Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials will instead consider a new proposal that community groups opposed to the TA plan offered on Monday, leaders of the groups said yesterday.

The TA meeting, originally scheduled for tomorrow, will instead be held May 24.

The subway service changes had initially been on the agenda of the MTA board in March, but were taken off the table at the request of Gov. Pataki, and have been under discussion ever since.

John Leon, a consultant to the Noble Street Block Association in Greenpoint, which has led the fight over G train service, said the group had submitted a plan proposing the G train remain as it is, and the F train continue to use the 53rd St. tunnel between Queens and Manhattan.

“This should make the Queens riders happy and, of course, it would make Greenpoint-North Brooklyn G riders happy as well because their train would continue to go to Continental Ave.-Forest Hills,” Leon said. The MTA has proposed ending the G line at Court Square in Long Island City.

Tina Chan, transportation chairwoman for the Queens Civic Congress, said the communities’ proposal — which would have the new V line go through the new 63rd St. tunnel instead of switching the F to the 63rd St. tunnel— answers all of the agency’s concerns while keeping vital subway services to Queens.

“The F train needs to service quite a few important stations on the west side of Queens, such as the Queensboro Plaza, Court Square, and there are quite a few important facilities along the line such as Citibank, LaGuardia College, the School Construction Authority,” she said.

“Most important is that a lot of F train commuters transfer to the No. 6 train at the 53rd and Lexington Ave. station,” she said.

“If you reroute the F train to the 63rd St. tunnel, people would lose that transfer. In order for them to transfer, they are going have to walk out of the station from 63rd St., walk about four blocks to the 59th St. station. We feel that’s just not a viable transfer at all.”

Present at the meeting Monday where the proposals were presented were MTA Executive Director Marc Shaw, TA President Lawrence Reuter, and other TA and MTA staff.

Representatives of the Straphangers Campaign and the Regional Planning Association, an independent planning group, helped the opponents draft the alternate plan.

“The MTA representatives looked at it very objectively and the TA president said he would check it out,” Leon said. “He wasn’t as enthusiastic so we have to wait to see what his ultimate decision is.”

Tom Kelly, spokesman for the MTA, said the community groups made “suggestions” rather than a proposal at Monday’s meetings.

The TA will continue meeting with community groups and listening to their suggestions, he said.

May 16, 2001
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Finding MIA’s Kin Stumps U.S. Army By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, May 13, 2001

The United States government believes that Charles Arce of Brooklyn kept faith with his country. He went to Korea with the Army more than half a century ago and almost certainly died there.

Now, his country would like to keep faith with his memory and his family. But it isn’t easy to do so many years later.

One trail of Charles Arce’s family petered out at a Brooklyn Bridge entrance, where the family’s 41-43 Sands St. residence is now a parking lot.

Similarly, the 130 Fulton St. residence of Ramon Arce, an uncle listed with the Army as Charles’ beneficiary, no longer exists.

Visits to three other Brooklyn locations where his family lived before Arce enlisted with the Army to fight in Korea proved just as futile.

It has been more than 50 years since Pfc. Charles Arce, seven weeks short of his 20th birthday, went missing in action and was presumed killed in the brutal battle of Unsan in the early months of the Korean War.

As arduous and painstaking as the task of finding and recovering the remains of nearly 8,200 American servicemen missing in action from the Korean War has been, finding their living relatives is proving just as difficult, said Therese Fisher, director of genealogy at The American History Company.

The Army hired the company, which does genealogical research and publishes history books, to track down the relatives as part of the overall outreach of the U.S. Department of Defense to contact them.

Access to North Korea has improved in recent years and joint American and Korean teams have been recovering remains of servicemen in areas where American units fought during the war.

But finding relatives is another matter, said Maj. Horace Bowden, operations officer for the Repatriation and Family Affairs Division of the U.S. Army Casualty and Memorial Affairs Operation Center.

“After 50 years, the trail has gone pretty dark,” Bowden said.

The Army’s database has about 2,500 families. The identification process includes using mitochondrial DNA, meaning samples collected from the mother’s side of a serviceman’s family, to identify recovered remains.

Some of those remains may belong to Charles Arce, but the Army needs to make contact with his relations to verify that.

“Just because we’re looking for Charles Arce’s family doesn’t mean we have a set of bones, or remains that we believe to be his,” Bowden cautioned.

Army spokeswoman Shari Lawrence said the work of recovering remains and trying to connect them to family is extremely important.

“It’s a commitment we make to our soldiers that, if they’re injured or killed, that we will bring them home as quickly as possible,” Lawrence said. “It’s an obligation we have … whenever we know where they are and we can identify them as Americans, we will bring them home.”

Arce’s mother and father, Pedro and Dolores, came to Brooklyn from Puerto Rico in 1920. Born in Brooklyn on Dec. 21, 1930, Arce enlisted in the Army on Sept. 8, 1948. He soon found himself on the Korean peninsula as the Cold War turned hot when North Korea’s Stalinist government mounted an invasion of South Korea in June 1950.

The United States, heading the United Nations forces, jumped in to head off the aggression.

China, wary of U.S. forces so near its territory, sent human-wave attacks to aid the North Koreans. In fact, Chinese soldiers routed Arce’s 8th Calvary Regiment and the 1st Calvary Division on Nov. 1, 1950.

Arce was declared missing in action the next day. Very few American soldiers survived the battle over the next few days.

“It appears no one ever saw him killed,” Fisher said.

Arce was automatically promoted to the rank of corporal in 1953, but then was declared dead on Dec. 31 that year.

Complicating the search is a disastrous 1972 fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, part of the National Archives, that destroyed about 80% of personnel files of anyone discharged from the Army between Nov. 1, 1912 and Jan. 1, 1960. The Army wasn’t even able to provide a photograph of Arce.

Fisher, whose company boasts a 100% success rate finding families of servicemen so far, said the missing records are crucial. She is left to trying to track down the family the old-fashioned way — using the telephone book. She has called most people named Arce in Brooklyn without luck.

Anyone with information about Arce or his family should call the Army at (800) 892-2490. For anyone with information about relatives of other MIA servicemen, the Navy’s number is (800) 443-9298; Air Force is (800) 531-5501 and the Marine Corps is (800) 847-1597. Families of American civilians missing in combat should contact the State Department at (202) 647-6769.

Original Story Date: 05/13/01

May 13, 2001
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HIGH-TECH BOOST FOR COLLEGE Kingsboro gets 425G By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, May 6, 2001

Kingsborough Community College students will soon be learning in the “smart” high-technology classrooms of the future.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn, Queens) secured the initial $425,000 in a federal appropriation for the equipment — high-resolution plasma screens — and recently went to the campus for a demonstration.

“This essentially allows the boundaries of the classroom to be extended beyond the four walls to the Internet, to distance learning, or just about anything a creative professor would possibly want,” Weiner said.

Three 52-inch screens should be installed this year, school officials said.

They hope to eventually have a total of 30 screens, if the school gets the $2.25 million it wants for the program.

Prof. Delores Friedman, who teaches early childhood education, demonstrated how the technology can be used to enhance the instruction of kindergarten teachers.

With cameras operated by remote, a kindergarten class session can be observed, filmed and archived so the teacher can return to it later and analyze the session, using it as a learning tool, for instance.

“We can observe unobtrusively the kind of discoveries that children make,” Friedman said.

“Things we learn theoretically about children we can now see come alive on the screen. This opens up so many possibilities.”

Although meant to be used primarily for students in the early education program at the school, the screens will have wide application for students in any subject area.

Biology Prof. Maria Ortiz, for instance, demonstrated cell division and 3-D DNA animation on the screen.

“The type of dynamic process that goes on in biology is most effective when you can actually show the student the process as it is occurring,” she said.

Provost Stuart Suss, who teaches history, said the equipment will enhance instruction of modern students who respond to visual presentations.

“If I was teaching about World War I and I wanted to demonstrate to my students what gas warfare was like, there are videos that dramatically and accurately portray that,” he said.

“This gives me another tool for teaching the subject matter.”

Original Story Date: 05/6/01

May 6, 2001
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Teach Them to Be The Bravest — Green By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and MICHAEL R. BLOOD, Daily News Staff Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Friday, May 04, 2001

Public Advocate Mark Green urged the city yesterday to establish educational programs for firefighting at two high schools and two community colleges to increase the number of minority group members in the FDNY.

In a city where minority groups now represent the majority of the population, the Fire Department remains overwhelmingly white and male.

Mark Green at yesterday’s press conference on minorities in the FDNY

In a letter to Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, Green, a Democratic mayoral hopeful, released statistics showing that blacks and Latinos make up 7% of the FDNY, as compared with 40% in Los Angeles’ fire department, 29% in Chicago and 30% in Philadelphia.

In 1999, blacks and Latinos accounted for 22% of those who took the firefighter exam and 18% of those who passed.

Green also said more needs to be done to increase the number of women in the department.

Currently, women represent less than 1% of the FDNY workforce.

The city “needs to create a pipeline of qualified minority and women applicants,” he said.

“The best way to permanently change the applicant pool is … to create at least two citywide high schools for fire sciences and a minimum of two fire science programs at CUNY,” Green added.

Mayor Giuliani’s office had no comment. In another development yesterday, about 30 demonstrators rallied outside FDNY headquarters in downtown Brooklyn to oppose firefighter candidate Police Officer Edward McMellon.

A handful of Muslim firefighters and their supporters oppose the possible hiring of McMellon because he was one of four cops who gunned down unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo in his Bronx vestibule in February 1999.

“Why does the fire commissioner want to hire McMellon to become a firefighter and save lives after he took my son’s life?” Diallo’s father, Saikou, said at the rally.

The group also demanded that the department hire a Muslim chaplain. FDNY Islamic Society President Kevin James noted that the agency has two Jewish, two Protestant and three Catholic chaplains, but no Muslims.

May 4, 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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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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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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