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Harlem Inferno Hurts 38

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, August 3, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

A raging fire tore through the top floor of a Harlem apartment building yesterday, forcing firefighters to use a tower ladder to rescue a man trapped by the flames.

Nearly 200 firefighters raced to the five-alarm blaze at 31 Tiemann Place, a street of low-rise residential buildings just west of 124th St. and Broadway.

Fire marshals described the fire as suspicious and said the cause was under investigation.

“The flames were leaping out, they must have been 15 feet high,” said Alvin Ponder, who lives across the street from the six-story brick building. “It’s only by the grace of God that there wasn’t a fatality up there.”

Thirty-eight people — including 35 firefighters — suffered mostly minor injuries in the 10:11 a.m. fire that took just more than two hours to bring under control. Fifteen firefighters were hospitalized, including five for burns and two for broken ankles.

More than 40 people, including four children, were left homeless by the blaze, said Julissa Viana, a Red Cross spokeswoman.

Saad Kadhim, 46, was about to open up his restaurant across the street when he saw flames and billowing gusts of smoke.

“I ran into the burning building and started knocking on doors, telling people to get out,” he said. “By the fifth floor, the smoke started to get very thick, and I had to run back out.”

Firefighter Ali Pasha reached the top of the building by ladder to rescue Arthur Whaley, 38, who was trapped inside his apartment.

“It was a wall of fire,” said Pasha, who brought Whaley down on the ladder.

Two other neighbors were also rescued after lower-floor residents were evacuated.

Original Story Date: 080397

August 3, 1997
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60 Rally for Slain Teen By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSunday, July 6, 1997

The Rev. Al Sharpton led about 60 marchers yesterday in peaceful protest of a grand jury decision that exonerated a white city cop in the shooting of a black Washington Heights teenager last April.

Roma Cedeno, mother of the slain youth, Kevin Cedeno, 16, spoke of her sadness at her son’s death.

“Nobody’s doing anything about it,” she said. “I’m not surprised at the decision at all. The mayor himself called it a ‘justifiable shooting’ within 24 hours after my son was killed. It all started from there.”

Protesters carried signs saying “Police Don’t Shoot White Males in the Back” and chanted “No Justice, No Peace.”

The rally, at McKenna Square, in front of the 33d Precinct at 165th St. and Amsterdam Ave., was the first of what would be weekly protests in front of the precinct, Sharpton said.

On Monday, a group of Washington Heights residents are expected to march around the square 16 times to mark Cedeno’s age at the time he was shot in the back by Police Officer Anthony Pellegrini.

Pellegrini and other officers were responding to a report of youths fighting and shots fired on April 6 when the shooting occurred. Cedeno and a group of friends had been drinking and fighting when they saw officers arriving. Cedeno’s friends, knowing he was on probation and that he had a machete in his possession, urged him to run.

Pellegrini testified before a grand jury that he shot at the youth after mistaking the 23-inch machete for a shotgun.

Last week, a Manhattan grand jury declined to indict Pellegrini.

Sharpton called the decision unacceptable.

“Just like we didn’t let a grand jury stop us with Bernard Goetz, we will not let a grand jury stop us on Kevin Cedeno,” he said. “Justice is a matter of our struggling until we win.”

Monique Kelly, 26, an administrative assistant at North General Hospital in Harlem and a resident of Washington Heights, said she came to protest because she has cousins, nephews and nieces about Cedeno’s age. “This could be anyone’s kid,” she said. “It makes you live in fear with the police officers who work here.”

Edward Hughes, 36, of Roselle, N.J., said he doesn’t believe the police version of the incident. “It is Kevin Cedeno today, it could be my son tomorrow.”

Captain Garry McCarthy, commander of the 33d Precinct, watched the rally, his arms folded while standing in front of the stationhouse. He later spoke with community activists to schedule a meeting.

“I’m looking to open a line of communication,” said McCarthy. “If we don’t communicate we’re never going to come together.”

July 6, 1997
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SLOWDOWN NOT THE TICKET; Rudy sez cops’ll be punished

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

January 25, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN Daily News Staff Writer

Mayor Giuliani yesterday escalated his contract fight with city cops, warning rank-and-file officers not to engage in a ticket slowdown — or else.

“If a police officer absolutely refuses to do his or her job, then that police officer will have to be disciplined,” he said. “But that isn’t for me to do. That is for the police commissioner.”

It was Giuliani’s first direct threat to street cops after a week of blasting union leaders for rejecting the package of wage and benefit hikes offered by the city Tuesday.

“My advice to police officers would be: Don’t push this too far, otherwise you are going to be in serious trouble,” he said.

Giuliani’s remarks, made at a Harlem mosque, came a day after thousands of chanting, sign-waving cops took their contract fight to the streets outside police stationhouses in all five boroughs.

Dennis Sheehan, a Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association spokesman, declined to comment on the mayor’s salvo.

Giuliani visited the mosque just four days after he was heckled, taunted and booed during a Martin Luther King Day celebration at a Harlem church.

It was Giuliani’s second visit to the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque, which hosted him a year ago in the wake of the fatal fire at Freddy’s Fashion Mart on 125th St. that killed eight people, including the arsonist.

Mayoral spokesman Colleen Roche said that yesterday’s trip had been planned “a couple of months ago.” The mosque’s leader, Imam Izak-El M. Pasha, is friendly with the administration.

Afterward, at a news conference on the first floor of the mosque, the mayor again blamed the PBA for lack of leadership and not doing a better job of presenting the city’s contract offer to the rank and file.

The city offered cops a five-year contract with no raises the first two years and increases totaling 15.8% in the final three years.

The city’s proposal to the PBA is 2.5% over what had been offered any other municipal union, the mayor said.

“I did that because I believe that the police officers deserve some special consideration for the risk that they take and for the job that they do,” Giuliani said.

“I can’t say yes to everything one group wants because that will take away from what other groups also deserve,” he said. “This is a fair program; it’s a balanced one. It’s a shame that there isn’t any leadership there at the PBA to explain this to the police officers.”

Giuliani said arrests are up compared to a year ago and that essential law enforcement work has not slowed down. Ticket-writing is a little trickier to gauge, and it will take about a week before the city can tell if cops are involved in a slowdown, he said.

Police Commissioner Howard Safir will monitor ticket-writing, the mayor said.

“If we have police officers that, over a period of several days, are so far off of what they should be doing, I’m sure they are going to be taking disciplinary actions,” Giuliani said.

January 25, 1997
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