Capitol riot: Updated list of arrests in New York State (photos) - syracuse.com posted at 15:09:44 UTC
The man feds believe to be sanitation worker Dominick Madden at the Jan. 6 insurrection.Federal Bureau of Investigation
Capitol riot: Updated list of arrests in New York State (photos) - syracuse.com
A pair of best friends from Bay Ridge are taking on the city’s hunger crisis by hosting monthly performances that have already raised enough money to feed thousands of needy New Yorkers.
Nine-year-old Scarlett Diviney and 13-year-old Jolie Wasserman have each been performing since they were six years old — but now, as the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated needs across the city, the two have taken their talents to Facebook Live to fund different initiatives designed to help other children who are less fortunate.
“We started ‘Voices to End Hunger’ because the hunger problem was so bad,” said Scarlett of their online performance series. “COVID increased the hunger problem by 40 percent.”
Jolie agreed, adding that she was particularly alarmed by the high rate of food insecurity across the city.
“People were desperately in need for food and other supplies, so I thought we could do something to make a change,” she said.
The girls hosted their first virtual “cabaret” in August, during which they showcased their own singing as well as the talents of other performing friends they enlisted for the bill.
“Scarlett and I are performers in New York City, so we made a bunch of connections and friends over time,” said Jolie. “All of our friends love to sing also…and we thought it would be most efficient to start cabarets using all of our talents and friends’ talents.”
Scarlett and Jolie have hosted four cabarets to date — and have raised enough funds to provide 45,000 meals to hungry New Yorkers, give hundreds of Thanksgiving meals to patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and fulfill the needs of two schools with high populations of students experiencing homelessness.
For their fifth cabaret — a Valentine’s Day special on Feb. 12 — the duo plans to fundraise to provide meals for a La Jornada Food Pantry in Queens, which they chose based on its outsized need for support and because of their plans to benefit organizations in all of the city’s five boroughs.
“All the money is going to a food pantry in Queens, they feed 10,000 New Yorkers a week,” Scarlett said.
The young philanthropists said pitching in at a time of crisis has been fulfilling — a feeling they said hits home whenever they deliver a meal or donation, and see first-hand how much their work is appreciated.
“Scarlett and I feel really good that we are doing this because it makes us very happy to know that we are helping others in need,” said Jolie.
Voices to End Hunger will stream their Valentine’s Day Special Cabaret on Feb. 12 at 7 pm here.
Police and firefighters evacuated the Home Depot in Greenwood Heights on Friday morning after reports of a suspicious item in the store, which turned out to be a “hoax device,” according to the authorities.
The NYPD sent in their Bomb Squad and Emergency Service Units to the home improvement store at Hamilton Avenue near 17th Street and the Gowanus Canal at 8:15 am, according to a police spokeswoman.
Police and firefighters investigating the scene near the Gowanus Canal.Photo by Lloyd MitchellThe spokeswoman said that the Bomb Squad determined the item was a “hoax device” and brought it back to their lab, but declined to say what the object was.
First responders cordoned off the lot and workers looked on from outside the perimeter, photos of the scene show.
Workers and onlookers wait outside The Home Depot at Hamilton Avenue.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
image/jpeg Photo-Jan-22-9-35-42-AM-384x288.jpgFederal authorities stormed the home of a Sheepshead Bay sanitation worker and arrested the 43-year-old man for allegedly participating in the insurrection of the US Capitol building on Jan. 6.
Dominick Madden’s neighbors were startled to see swarms of federal agents raiding the civil service workers’ house on a sleepy stretch of Batchelder Street between Shore Parkway and Voorhies Avenue.
“This is the last block I thought I would see the FBI on,” a neighbor named Craig said.
“He probably went down to Washington DC and got caught up in the insurrection,” neighbor David Campbell suspected, correctly.
According to prosecutors, Madden had admitted to being on sick leave on Jan. 6 and for being away from home while absent from work. Surveillance footage obtained by the FBI shows Madden in a bright blue QAnon sweatshirt in various parts of the Capitol building, including the crypt and one of the Capitol wings. License plate reader data shows that Madden drove southbound on the I-295 on the day of the riot, and returned north the day after.
The man feds believe to be sanitation worker Dominick Madden at the Jan. 6 insurrection.Federal Bureau of InvestigationUsing Madden’s telephone number, which they obtained from the Department of Sanitation, investigators tracked down the southern Brooklynite’s account on Telegram — an encrypted messaging service increasingly popular in extremist circles.
The account’s profile picture was a side-by-side of one man who appeared to be Madden in a blue QAnon shirt and Mel Gibson in the movie “Braveheart.”
Dominick Madden’s Telegram profile picture.Federal Bureau of InvestigationA Brooklyn Paper file photo shows a man in a blue QAnon shirt who bears a striking resemblance to Madden at a contentious “Back the Blue” rally in Gerritsen Beach in August — which came a few months before his alleged participation in the Capitol riot that left Police Officer Brian Sicknick beaten to death with a fire extinguisher.
A man who appears to be Madden was photographed at a “Back the Blue” rally in Gerritsen Beach in August.File photo by Todd MaiselInvestigators with the City Department of Investigation informed their federal counterparts on Jan. 20 that they’d made contact with a Sanitation Department employee who said he could identify Madden based on a photo in a New York Post story about Madden being investigated. According to the feds, the employee told investigators that the man in the video “looks like Madden.”
Sanitation Department brass suspended Madden without pay following news of his involvement, according to a spokesperson.
“Mr. Madden has been suspended without pay since shortly after we learned of these allegations,” said Belinda Mager. “The Department of Sanitation takes this situation very seriously and is prepared to work with law enforcement in any way necessary.”
He is charged with knowingly entering and remaining in a restricted building and disorderly conduct in a restricted building, according to a criminal complaint.
Additional reporting by Lloyd Mitchell and Robert Pozarycki
image/jpeg D3C1145-384x256.jpgMermaids made a long-awaited return to the shores of Coney Island when a new mural featuring a sea-dwelling siren was unveiled along the Riegelmann Boardwalk.
The painting is the first mermaid mural to face the ocean directly from the beloved walkway, said Sheepshead Bay artist said.
“There hasn’t been a mermaid mural actually on the boardwalk,” said Mastrion, who clarified that there’s a mermaid painting on the side of Tom’s Restaurant and others that have faced side streets.
The painted mythical creature, located on the gates on Ruby’s Bar and Grill, will stand beside another mural depicting Coney Island’s original amusement district, currently in the works. The large-scale, carnival-themed mural will be painted in the style of an old photograph, said the artist.
“The scene is going to be a cityscape of old Coney Island to honor the amusement parks,” said Sheepshead Bay artist Danielle Mastrion. “It’s going to have elements of each park.”
The project is Mastrion’s latest endeavor to brighten up Brooklyn’s summertime refuge, which comes after several other painting projects — such as a large fish mural she painted on the boardwalk, a painting depicting the face of a woman in Luna Park, and several murals inside Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park.
Most recently, the area’s business-boosting Alliance for Coney Island hired Mastrion to paint the gates of storefronts along Surf Avenue. When she was working on the project, the owner of Ruby’s Bar and Grill approached her and asked if she could paint Ruby’s gates as well.
Artist Danielle Mastrion spray paints the mermaid mural on Ruby’s Bat and Grill.Robert Galletta“I said, ‘Wow, this woman’s really talented, maybe I’d be lucky enough to have her do something at Ruby’s,” said owner Michael Sorrell.
Sorrell and Mastrion decided on the mural of the amusement park cityscape together, but Mastrion chose to paint a mermaid on an adjacent gate on her own.
“I was pretty honored that he gave me creative freedom,” Mastrion said.
Sorrell also asked Mastrion to retouch some lettering artists Hawley Hussey and Naomie Ross painted on one of the gates more than 10 years ago that read, “Coney Island.”
Those letters were originally part of a bigger message reading “Save Coney Island” that Ruby’s commissioned in 2009, around the time that the owners of Luna Park threatened to close the 87-year-old establishment along with other boardwalk businesses.
Sorrell said he wanted to preserve that memory now that Coney Island is under threat again — this time, by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The “Coney Island” lettering was part of a different mural another artist painted 10 years ago when Ruby’s was threatened with eviction.Mark J Wolodarsky“Now we’re in a time when Coney Island is in flux, in disrepair. If you go into Coney Island, you’ll see that gates have graffiti on them,” he said. “[We wanted] to keep the spirit of Coney Island alive.”
The two murals, which will be completed within the next few weeks, will hopefully bring some light amid the difficult times, Sorrell added.
“We wanted to do something that will be a big draw to the history of Coney Island,” he said.
Tired of doling out directions to wandering visitors, the NYPD has successfully lobbied the city to install a more prominent sign directing pedestrians and cyclists to the entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge promenade.
“When you’re standing at the intersection of Adams and Tillary [streets] going onto the promenade, you can’t actually see the Brooklyn Bridge, and many people are stopping NYPD officers and asking them for directions,” Department of Transportation’s manager of the project, Mia Moffett, told Community Board 2’s Transportation Committee at a virtual meeting on Jan. 21. “So based on this feedback and these conditions we’ve started looking at installing an overhead gateway signage spanning the promenade here.”
The new sign will hover 14 feet above ground, with two designs currently being considered. Both options call for a 12-foot long directional insignia — but one design features a 2.5-foot wide sign with simple black-and-white text, while the other is 4-feet wide and has a graphic symbolizing the bridge’s iconic cables.
The agency will use either a vinyl wrap or a laser cutout, and the proposal will still need to go before the city’s Public Design Commission for approval in March, officials said.
Agency reps could not immediately say when the sign will be installed, or how much the project costs, and a follow-up request to DOT’s press office was not returned by press time.
Fed up: Cops stationed at the entrance have had enough of lost visitors asking them for directions to the Brooklyn Bridge walkway. So DOT is proposing one of these more prominent two sign designs.NYC DOTMembers of the civic panel liked the proposal, but added that the agency should consider a perpendicular marker as well, so that people walking along Tillary Street can see it too.
The civic meeting soon pivoted to discussions about why there was such a heavy police presence at the foot of the walkway in the first place, with a squad car stationed there daily, in addition to NYPD-marked cubes right behind the vehicle blocking the entrance and taking up space at the busy intersection.
“I would get that NYPD vehicle off of the space, because it makes an already crowded area more crowded and it serves no reasonable purpose,” said local Paul Schreiber.
DOT reps said that the police’s Counterterrorism Bureau wanted cops there following a 2017 attack, when a driver killed eight people on the bike path along the Hudson River in Manhattan.
“We’ve talked with Counterterrorism and NYPD feels the need to keep this car here in order to keep the bridge secure, unfortunately,” said Moffett.
But committee members pointed out that the city had already installed a retractable bollard before that incident further up the walkway where the path bends and narrows, adding that a recent widening of the promenade along Adams Street and the revamp of the median at the entrance were pitched by officials as replacing the need for a permanently-stationed police car.
“We were told in the discussion about the new mid-block crossing that the security that would accompany the protection of the promenade on either side of the walkway… would obviate the need for the police car,” said Jon Quint. “So where will there ever be a time when there doesn’t have to be a police car, I don’t hear that.”
DOT reps said the vehicle was still necessary to protect the stretch between the entrance and the bollard less than 800 feet away closer toward the bridge, while also trying to punt the hot topic to the Boys in Blue.
“I think that’s a question best served for NYPD to answer,” said local DOT liaison Emily Riquelme. “Tonight we came here to present on the signage, so any technical information that anyone on the board would like to ask, feel free to email me, but we weren’t prepared to come to speak on all these very technical issues that you guys are bringing up.”
Quint countered that part of making the entrance more appealing was addressing the need for New York’s Finest to be there every day.
“If you’re interested in making the walkway more available and more enticing and pleasurable, a police car that flashes its lights all day and night should be your concern as well as the aesthetics,” the civic guru said.
image/jpeg Brooklyn-Bridge-google-384x270.jpgA virtual public meeting about a proposed Brighton Beach homeless shelter quickly spiraled into vitriolic chaos as hundreds of attendees took to the chat box to denounce the project.
More than 10 participants got booted from the 450-person meeting and dozens more were muted for spewing hate about the homeless men who will likely move into the 170-bed shelter coming to 100 Neptune Ave.
“I have seen the condition of their living, which is not appropriate for middle class [sic], and I was wondering what does it mean for these people to go back to work, and they prefer to live off the government on handouts and get public assistance?” said a man who identified himself only as Joseph. Joseph was kicked off the call shortly after beginning his remarks.
The public meeting, hosted by Community Board 13, meant to give locals the opportunity to ask questions about the homeless shelter, which is set to be operational by the end of 2021. The shelter is one of the 90 community-based shelters that the city aims to build by the end of the year to combat homelessness.
Though the meeting was purely informational — since the Department of Homeless Services does not need community approval to build the facility — most attendees voiced their opposition to the new project. One common concern was the site’s potential for contamination after serving for years as a garage and auto body shop.
Though the city has already committed to conducting an Environmental Impact Statement of the site before moving its plans forward, one local environmentalist argued that remediation comes with a hefty price tag.
“In addition to the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tests that have to be done, there are environmental engineers and consultants that have to be paid,” said Ida Sanoff. “So how do you justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money that should be spent on the homeless on cleaning up a brownfield instead of using a green site, which would be a lot cheaper?”
A representative with the city’s Department of Homeless Services responded that the developer would pay for remediation, not the city.
“When [the Department of Social Services] takes over a property, all that remediation work that would have taken place and that would not be paid for by the city, it would be paid for by the developer,” said Matt Borden. Borden did not say who the developer was for the Neptune Avenue property, and DHS spokespeople did not respond to multiple requests for clarification.
Other attendees called into question the shelter’s service provider, CORE Services Group, pointing to the Brooklyn-based nonprofit’s more than 300 violations in 2019.
A majority of those violations came from CORE’s cluster sites — temporary apartment units in privately-owned buildings — which CORE closed down in October 2020. This past November, CORE had 60 open violations across its 17 locations in shelters and hotels, most of which were issued by the Department of Buildings.
Many attendees also worried that the shelter’s residents would loiter around the neighborhood. Though CORE representative Gordon Jackson argued that each shelter client has an individualized schedule that keeps them busy, local Councilman Chaim Deutsch said he’s heard otherwise — citing a recent visit to a CORE shelter during which one resident allegedly complained that he had no schedule.
“[The resident] told me, he says, ‘Employment services? I don’t have any of that,'” said Deutsch, who has repeatedly voiced opposition to the shelter. “He told me that there’s not a lot of activities. He said, ‘I don’t know — I walk in, I walk out, I come back. There’s nothing really to do.'”
Only one caller spoke in favor of the shelter, while most others decried the shelter’s potential for crime. Locals worried that the shelter’s residents could pose a threat to students at PS 771 and Bay Academy, located a couple blocks away, and that they could deface local Holocaust monuments.
Representatives from CORE and DHS became increasingly frustrated with the comments, and one called the claims “slanderous.”
“Folks that are living in the site are just individuals that are in between being housed, and at the end of the day, they’re trying to get back up on their feet,” said Borden with DHS. “I think a lot of times people make assumptions regarding crime and criminality and the kinds of concerns folks talked about in this call … and I think that’s quite slanderous to these folks.”
Things grew even more heated in the chat section, where attendees spoke about hiring a lawyer to fight the new shelter and hurled negative comments at anyone who spoke positively of the proposal.
“CORE Service group, its all BS, you can’t control 170 people with mental, AIDS, and other disorders,” wrote Mark Rappaport. “If this shelter ever built, the whole area in radius of 2 miles will be dead in short time and city gona loose more taxpayer [sic].”
Other commenters attacked the only woman to speak in favor of the project.
“Who in their right mind would be in support of this ?” asked Allen Kittell.
“Sick people like this girl who just spoke,” responded Sally Zarbailov, prompting two others to theorize that the city paid her to testify.
The two lawmakers on the call, Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz and Councilman Deutsch, said they opposed the plan because they believe the city should install permanent housing with social services, rather than shelters.
“As someone who has been in the affordable and homeless housing field for more than three decades, I’m telling you, this plan is a mistake and the city needs to withdraw it,” Cymbrowitz said. “Our city’s homeless deserve better, as does our community.”
Detectives are investigating the murder of a 46-year-old man whose bound body was found in the living room of his Brooklyn apartment on Friday morning.
Officers from the 77th Precinct responded to the residence on St. Marks Avenue near Rochester Avenue in Weeksville at about 10:40 am on Jan. 22 after receiving a 911 call about a robbery at the location.
Sources familiar with the investigation said that an unidentified individual at the residence discovered the dead man upon arriving at the home Friday morning and called police. The individual had apparently last spoken to the victim about 24 hours earlier, at around 10:30 am Thursday morning.
When the officers got to the scene Friday, they found the man unconscious, unresponsive and lying face down on the living room floor, with his arms tied behind his back and his ankles bound.
Responding EMS units pronounced the victim dead at the scene. Police have withheld his identity, pending family notification.
Cops said there were no obvious signs of physical trauma on the victim. His body was transported to the Medical Examiner’s office for an autopsy to determine the cause of death.
NYPD sources said the victim did not have a prior criminal record. So far, detectives have yet to obtain a description of possible suspects.
The investigation into the homicide remains ongoing, police sources said.
This story first appeared on AMNY.com.
image/jpeg D3C1223-384x256.jpgThe new COVID-19 vaccine hub that opened Saturday morning at Brooklyn’s William Reid House is more than just about protecting people from the deadly illness, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The state’s chief executive said t/he hub, along with others opening up at public housing complexes and churches across the state in the days and weeks to come, aims to ensure that everyone gets access to the life-saving shot regardless of their background.
COVID-19 hit Black and Latinx New Yorkers the hardest, Cuomo reminded; since the health crisis began last spring, Black residents who suffered from the virus died at twice the rate of white New Yorkers; Latino victims succumbed to the virus at 1.5 times the death rate among white patients.
The pandemic exposed the long-ignored systemic racism and discrimination in the health care system of New York and America, the governor noted.
“We’ve seen low tide in America and all the ugliness,” he said. “We saw racism, discrimination and inequality. That’s what we’ve seen on the bottom. It is undeniable.”
With the arrival of the COVID-19 vaccine, Cuomo said, the state is determined that such disparities do not prevent New Yorkers of color from getting protected from the deadly contagion, as the borough-wide test positivity rate hovers around 4.3 percent.
But setting up COVID-19 vaccine hubs where they are needed is only half the battle; the other half, Cuomo said, is convincing all who are skeptical about the vaccine to trust the science and get it.
“Our bigger problem is the acceptance, especially among the Black and Latino community, because they’re skeptical of a vaccine approved by the [previous] Trump administration,” Cuomo said.
Fears about vaccine skepticism prompted New York to set up a medical team to provide a secondary layer of oversight for the Pfizer and Moderna shots, which the team ultimately approved, along with the FDA, in December 2020.
“I believe in the vaccine,” he added Saturday. “There’s no politics here. My mother, my daughters and I would not let anyone take the vaccine unless I knew it was safe. It is safe. Take the vaccine. It will save lives, and it can save your life.”
The hubs are being set up in partnership with the nonprofit SOMOS Community Care, which has been on the front lines of the pandemic in communities of color from the start.
Photo by Lloyd MitchellSOMOS Founder Henry Muñoz believes the creation of COVID-19 vaccine hubs in housing complexes and churches will go a long way toward helping New York reach critical mass against the virus, and finally end the pandemic.
“We are opening up other vaccine sites at NYCHA and in churches and larger scale places where we know we can bring access to the people who need it the most, and who will listen to the trusted voices in their communities — the doctors and nurses who have always taken care of them,” Muñoz said. “We think we can have a real impact on the state’s efforts to vaccinate New York and to bring this vaccination of hope to people because it’s the only way we’ll be able to return to work, rebuild our businesses and make sure our children can go back to school or college.”
The hubs are being created with the distribution of vaccination kits, the first four of which are being distributed at NYCHA sites Saturday, according to central Brooklyn Congresswoman Yvette Clarke. More than 1,000 senior residents were expected to receive the first dose on Jan. 23.
The doses come at a time when the state is short on supply of the COVID-19 vaccine, basically administering the vaccines almost as quickly as they are received from the federal government. Clarke said additional vaccine hubs and kits will be opened and distributed as more vaccines are received.
“We now have a president and a vice president with the new administration who understand the dire need for a national testing strategy,” she added. “Their dedication to deliver 100 million shots in 100 days will cover 50 million people nationally. It is a critical step toward getting us past the COVID-19 crisis.
Both Clarke and fellow Brooklyn Congressman Hakeem Jeffries expressed confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine, and called on the public to get the shot when they can.
“We are urging everyone to trust science and get vaccinated,” Jeffries said. “COVID-19 will kill you, and we have seen that particularly with devastating consequence in Black communities, in low-income communities and in traditionally underserved communities. That is why the governor and we are here at this NYCHA location to make sure that the services are being brought to the people, as opposed to expecting the people to have to speak out with desperation and futility.”
This story first appeared on amNewYork.com.
image/jpeg dfsaasdf-384x256.jpgWe look at faith in America and vets serving vets.
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Voice of America – English
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“Russia and US Presidential Elections of 2016” – Google News
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