Racism is alive a living in America today. But it’s especially troubling when this horrible human failing rears it’s ugly head in the halls of power, like politics and policing.
The New York Post reported today that an NYPD officer was accused of falsely arresting an innocent black man and later making racist remarks about the incident is planing to plead guilty to charges stemming from the case.
Michael Daragjati, an eight-year veteran arrested this fall by the FBI on civil rights violations after he was caught using the “N-word” on a wiretap, has been behind bars awaiting trial on a series of charges.
His attorney today told a Brooklyn federal magistrate judge that the suspended officer has decided against fighting the charges at trial.
“We have a plea already scheduled,” the attorney said.
But he insisted that the officer’s decision to arrest a black man on Staten Island last April was not prompted by racial animus.
“Race played no part in the decision he made in effectuating the arrest of the individual in question,” the lawyer said.
Daragjati is facing civil right charges for allegedly falsifying the arrest of the Staten Island man in the Stapleton neighborhood on the evening of April 15.
After the man complained about his treatment by the officer during a stop-and-frisk street search, Daragjati trumped up resisting arrest charges against the man and arrested him, Brooklyn federal prosecutors say.
Daragjati – who is white – was later overheard on a FBI wiretap saying that he had “fried another n—–,” officials said.
Brooklyn federal prosecutors also charged Daragjati with an unrelated extortion that they say was connected to his off-duty snowplow business.
The feds say the off-duty officer and a group of men confronted a person whom they suspected of stealing Daragjati’s snow plow, and then allegedly punched him and threatened him with a handgun.
Discussing the attack later, Daragjati said in a secretly-recorded conversation that the man had crawled under a parked truck in an effort to escape, but they pulled him out by his legs and the victim cried like a “bitch.”
Daragjati is also charged with wire fraud for an alleged scheme to file a false insurance claim on a truck.
The NYPD has suspended Daragjati without pay.
According to The New York Times today, obese teenagers in the USA are having weight loss surgery, a drastic step to lose weight that has up to very recently only been prescribed for very overweight adults. The issue, according to the report, is whether the surgery is effective and whether such a drastic procedure is advisable when performed on younger, not-fully-developed bodies.
The Times reported that 1 out of every 900 weight loss procedure result in the death of the patient, which no doubt would precipitate a medical malpractice lawsuit against the doctor who performed the procedure and/or the company, Allergan, which makes the stomach band.
Read any newspaper any day of the week in New York and you will see advertisements for products that purport to make you bigger, stronger, faster, healthier, less prone to diseases, see better, enhance your virility and on and on. Do any of these products actually work? Ask any doctor and they will in 99% of the cases, tell you no. It’s all lies. They are companies whose claims about their products are untrue play on wish thinking.
Ethical pharmaceutical products, or prescription drugs, cannot make such efficacy claims until after years and years of testing and double blind studies that back up manufacturer claims, and the approval of the FDA that a certain medicine works safely the way the maker claims it does.
Pharmaceutical companies have paid dearly over the years when the down side of their product isn’t discovered until after someone, or group of people is made sick by it. But my question is, are there any similar situations where manufacturers of these patently fake products harm people, or simply don’t work? Would these customers have the same legal recourse as those who’ve taken a prescription drug that didn’t work, or made them ill?
The New York Daily News reported today that the widow of a city cop killed by lung cancer after two months of toxic post-9/11 duty won a bitter four-year fight Tuesday to collect enhanced line-of-duty death benefits.
The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court ruled in favor of Nilda Macri, whose husband Frank was an iron-pumping, non-smoking housing officer known for his buff physique.
“I’m so happy he’s finally acknowledged,” said a teary Nilda Macri after the victory that could benefit other World Trade Center first responders battling cancer. I’m surprised we didn’t read a quote here from her New York personal injury lawyer. In fact, we never learned whether or not she had one. Which begs the question about these hearings. Aren’t the victims and/or their families in these situations entitled to legal representation?
The decision overturned rulings by the police Medical Board and the Police Pension Fund Board that Macri’s lethal cancer was pre-existing — despite a clean X-ray taken when the hero first responder was injured by debris from the falling towers on 9/11.
“There is no evidence to support the medical board’s conclusion …that Macri’s cancer was pre-existing,” the court said in a 10-page ruling. “Indeed, there is evidence that just the opposite was the case.”
Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association head Patrick Lynch said the appeals court ruling was crucial for other ailing first responders fighting the same benefits battle.
And it pointed up the need for the federal government to include cancer as a covered illness under the Zadroga bill, Lynch said.
“The shame of it is that the Macri family and others like them are being forced to fight for the support they clearly deserve,” said the union president.
Macri — a fitness fanatic nicknamed “Gym” for his frequent workouts — died in 2007 after a five-year struggle with lung cancer. He was 52.
The six-year NYPD veteran worked about 350 hours in the toxic dust and fumes, first at Ground Zero through Oct. 1, 2001, and then at Fresh Kills landfill from Nov. 1, 2001, through January 2002.
Seven months later, Macri was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer that soon attacked his brain, liver and lungs. Macri died just nine days short of the sixth anniversary of 9/11.
But his widow was shot down in October 2007 in her efforts to get her husband’s death declared eligible for line-of-duty combat benefits.
With help from the PBA, she challenged the pension rulings and finally scored a major victory with the appeals court ruling.
Keith Snow, senior counsel in the Pensions Division of the New York City Law Department, said officials were “reviewing the decision.”
Unless the city appeals, Nilda Macri will receive a tax-free pension of 75% of her husband’s salary instead of 50% minus the taxes.
The widow burst into tears at the thought that her late husband can now join the other 9/11 victims memorialized at Ground Zero.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am about that,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “… I’m happy he’s finally being honored.”
No good deed goes unpunished. When I read the following story today in The New York Daily News it brought back memories of a time when I became the victim of one of these urban pirates who seem to have an unfettered right to abuse a New Yorker’s civil rights.
The case in question today involved a Staten Island construction manager who says his effort to donate a holiday truckload of baby supplies to a family in need was spoiled by a grinch-like traffic agent who slapped him with a $60 ticket after telling him it was OK to stop and unload his truck.
It reminds me of the time I was driving across 84 street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I saw a woman with three young children in tow trying to make it up the steps to the front door of her apartment building. All of a sudden her packages began tumbling down the steps and her children started crying. I pulled over in the nearest empty space I could find. Got out of my car and went over to help the woman up with her bags. I wasn’t thinking about the temporary space I took for my car, which wasn’t a legal parking place that day. One of these ticket-writing creeps who saw everything that was happening to the woman, and what I was trying to do to help her, walked over to my car and started writing me a ticket. When I protested he ignored me as if I wasn’t even there. Then he jumped in his little wagon. And drove off.
Harlem merchants say proposed bike lanes will hurt their businesses, according to today’s New York Daily News.
“We aren’t against bike lanes, but we are against bike lanes in East Harlem,” say business owners and residents who fear the controversial bike lanes slated for First and Second Avenues from 96th St. to 125th Sts. could cause the neighborhood’s already sky-high asthma rates to soar.
Some business owners are also concerned parking will become increasingly difficult and make deliveries impossible.
Apart from complaining to media reporters, do residents and business owners have any legal recourse at their disposal to prevent the city from going ahead with the bike lanes?
Some residents argue that adding the lanes will cut into traffic and increase congestion and pollution.
The community board voted to support the new bike lanes at a September meeting. In November, the board rescinded their support for the project.
The community board’s approval is not needed for the bike lanes, but there will be another board vote early next year – and CB chair Matthew Washington told the Daily News he believes most board members will support the lanes.
“Businesses are already closing because of the bus lanes and now the want to add bike lanes,” complained one owner. ”How much more traffic and congestion can there be?”
“Why do they even want to add bike lanes here? There are no bikes.”
Allowing schools to sue the parents of a nut-bag kid who goes on a wilding spree in the classroom may be the only way to convince a heedless parent to take some responsibility for their child’s behavior in school.
The New York Daily News reported today that a 15-year-old girl was arrested after she doused fellow students and the principal of Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx with pepper spray.
The girl, whose name was not released, was charged with reckless endangerment after the incident.
It’s the third time in recent weeks that city students have pepper-sprayed their schools.
Nine people were taken to Lincoln Hospital with minor injuries.
If the New York City school system wasn’t doing it’s job to prevent students from coming down with any number of maladies picked up in the classroom, like the flu for example, parents would scream bloody murder and threaten to sue school principals for malpractice.
But, according to The New York Daily News, the tables have been turned on the city this season with regard to free vaccinations.
Turns out, according to the News, a rising number of parents in New York are opting out of school shots for their kids. And in eight states, more than 1 in 20 public school kindergartners do not get all the vaccines required for attendance.
That has health officials worried about possible new outbreaks of diseases that were all but stamped out.
The paper reported that more than half of the states have seen at least a slight rise in the rate of exemptions over the past five years. States with the highest exemption rates are in the West and Upper Midwest.
Oh how I wish it was possible to sue politicians for malpractice.
Virtually every media outlet in America reported today that the Congressional “super committee” confessed to being anything but super, admitting in a statement that it can’t reach a deal to help lower the staggering federal deficit.
“After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bi-partisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline,” its co-chairs said in a statement released late Monday afternoon.
The six Republicans and six Democrats on the panel were supposed to reach a bi-partisan plan to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next ten years.
But the committee bogged down over the usual partisan divide, and Monday’s announcement — made by press release instead of a press conference delivered directly to the American people — confirmed it will miss its deadline Wednesday.
This photo and article appeared in today’s online edition of The New York Daily News.
My question is this to any New York civil justice lawyer reading this blog: Under what circumstances would the young man in this photo be justified in filing a civil action against the NYPD and/or the City of New York for what appears to be a blatant case of police brutality and a violation of the constitutional rights of people to demonstrate against injustice in our society?
November 17th Occupy Wall Street Day of Action – New York City LIVE
The lockdown in Zuccotti Park appears to be over after the situation got chaotic and violent on Thursday afternoon. Occupy Wall Street protesters were penned in by the NYPD, who did not appear to let anyone in or out of the area, but they now seem to be flooding back in.
Some protesters are now marching from Zuccotti to Union Square.
Over 100 protesters have been arrested todayin standoffs with the police around the New York Stock Exchange and in Zuccotti Park.
