Carmen Sosa, mother of suspected terrorist Jose Pimentel, speaks to the media outside her apartment on West 137th Street (Photo by Lucy Pawle)

Fighting back tears, Carmen Sosa apologized today for her son’s alleged actions. “I didn’t raise him that way,” she said of Jose Pimentel, 27, arrested Saturday on terrorism charges. “He changed.”

Speaking in the hallway outside the apartment they shared on West 137^th Street, where he was arrested, Sosa said she was “very disappointed in my son.”  Police said Pimentel, an unemployed U.S. citizen of Dominican origin and apparently influenced by the jihadi writings of Anwar al-Awlaki, was plotting to bomb U.S. military personnel, police cars and precinct houses and uptown post offices.

Sosa explained that Pimentel began reading the Koran in 2001 and said his increasing radicalization had prompted her, two years ago, to move him back to New York from Schenectady, N.Y., where he had been living at her other home.  “I brought him here because I didn’t like the way he was acting,” she said.

Shock and disbelief were the primary uptown reactions to Saturday’s arrest.

Harlem and Washington Heights neighbors who knew Pimentel, reportedly under police surveillance since 2009, said he spent his days sitting alone outside the apartment building, smoking cigarettes.

“He seemed nice,” said Simon Islam, 36, who moved into the building five months ago with his wife and daughters. “He used to talk to everyone when they came in and out the building, but he was very quiet. He just used to smoke,” Islam said.

Juan Rey, whose mother lives in the building, described Pimentel as “a nice guy who used to open the door for people when they were carrying their groceries.”

David Rodriguez, who’d known Pimentel for a year, said he “never saw the look of terrorism in him.” Expressing astonishment at the arrest, he said Pimentel “could have blown the whole building up and no one would have known“ that he was the bomber. “His own grandmother wouldn’t know.” He described Pimentel as a regular guy in sweatpants and sweaters. “I never saw him praying; he wore regular clothes,” Rodriguez said. “I just can’t believe it.”

Pimentel sometimes welcomed Islam with “As-Salamu Alaykum” – a traditional Muslim greeting – and had explained to him how he’d converted to Islam from Catholicism. “He said he converted six or seven years ago,” Islam said. “Once I was drinking here with friends and cousins, and he pointed and said, ‘No, no. It’s not good.’”

But around the corner at Nadal1Deli, employee Mohammed “Alex” Alohdd pointed out that Pimentel didn’t fast during Ramadan. “He called himself a Muslim, but he wasn’t a proper Muslim,” Alohddi said. “I’ve known him for three years but I didn’t like him that much. I just didn’t feel good with him. He used to ask people outside for cigarettes.”

Senator Adriano Espaillat, Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez and Assemblyman Guillermo Morales at a press conference outside the 34th Precinct on Monday (Photo by Lucy Pawle)

At the Islamic Cultural Center of New York on East 96th Street, where Pimentel visited, according to his mother, Imam Omar Abu Namous echoed Aloddi’s sentiments. “These circumstances, that he used to come to this mosque, are only coincidences, and have no relationship whatsoever with his activities,” the imam said. He hadn’t  heard of the arrest and didn’t recognize Pimentel’s name, but said that if Pimentel had confided in a fellow parishioner, “they would have informed me and I would have informed the government.”

Emphasizing his opposition to fundamentalist ideology, the imam described the Islamic Cultural Center as fostering peace. He worried that Pimentel’s arrest would spark Islamophobia. “People have a deep misunderstanding about Islam,” Abu Namous.

At the Home Depot in the Bronx where Pimentel allegedly bought the components to make pipe bombs, an employee who identified himself only as Carlito said that staff are trained to spot suspicious customers. “We look for certain products and if they’re buying them in one cart, it raises a red flag,” he said. But the supplies that Pimentel used – PVC piping, bleach and chlorine among others – are inexpensive, everyday items, Carlito said. “Nothing like this has happened at this store, not that I know of,” said Carlito.

At Hamilton Grange Station, a post office on West 146^th Street, sales and services employee Michelle Williams couldn’t believe what had happened. “I’m a little scared and I was surprised that it was in this neighborhood,” she said, “I didn’t think they would target post offices.”

Local politicians were swift to praise the police department’s actions. At a press conference outside the 34^th Precinct, State Senator Adriano Espaillat talked of the dangers that young people face online. “It shows the Internet should be policed,” he said. He denied that terrorists were specifically recruiting Hispanics, but added, “This is outrageous and we must be vigilant.”

City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez said that if found guilty, Pimentel “should be condemned by the full force of the law.” Though most families work hard to raise children “with strong values, for them be able to contribute to our city,” he said, “we need to work tight and we need to work hard,” to prevent such incidents from recurring.

At Pimentel’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court last night, his attorney Joseph Zablocki said he believed the case against his client is not “nearly as strong as people believe.”

Terror Suspect Jose Pimentel (NYPD/DNAinfo)

A Washington Heights man was arrested yesterday on terrorism charges. Jose Pimentel, 27, was charged with plotting to detonate bombs in New York, targeting police patrol cars and post offices in upper Manhattan and U.S. armed forces members returning from abroad, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced Sunday evening.

Under surveillance since 2009, Pimentel was arrested in his West 147th Street apartment at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday when police feared that a device might soon explode.  “We thought it was best to act quickly and take him into custody,” Kelly said at a news conference. Pimentel had also been living on West 137^th Street with his mother and uncle, according to DNAinfo.com, but was allegedly assembling the bombs at the other apartment.

Pimentel, who also used the name Muhammad Yusuf, was an unemployed “lone wolf” who harbored an anti-American grudge but acted alone, Bloomberg said. He represents “the exact kind of threat FBI Director Robert Mueller warned about, as American military and intelligence agencies have eroded Al Quaeda’s ability to launch large-scale attacks,” said the mayor.

A follower of radical cleric Anwar al-Awalki, Pimentel began his plot in August but became more energized after al-Awalki’s death in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen in September, the commissioner said. “Based on statements of people who observed him, his actions became a lot more intense after September 30^th,” making his friends “nervous,” Kelly said.

On his website TrueIslam1, Pimentel identified himself with terrorist organizations and radical jihadism, Bloomberg said. A search of the website shows links to articles titled “Why Allah Decrees Wars and Catastrophes” and “Make A Bomb in The Kitchen of Your Mom’s Home.”

Pimentel learnt to build bombs from “Inspire,” Al-Qaeda’s online magazine, and planned to test their effectiveness “by planting them in mailboxes and detonating them,” Kelly said. Buying the necessary ingredients from Home Depot and other stores, Pimentel made sure not to buy too many purchases at once or in one store, Kelly said, to “avoid raising red flags.”

Pimentel said that once his campaign began, “the public would know there were mujahidin in the city ready to wage jihad,” Kelly reported.

Mayor Bloomberg said the arrest “protected us from something that could have killed a lot of people,”

A native of the Dominican Republic and a United States citizen, Pimentel spent most of his life in Manhattan, but had recently returned from Schenectady, New York, where he lived with his wife from whom he is now separated or divorced, said Kelly.

This is the 14th attempted terrorist attack in New York since 2001, Bloomberg said.  The city keeps 1000 police officers working on counterterrorism daily.

Calling New York “an iconic city,” the mayor went on to describe it as “a city that people would want to take away our freedoms gravitate to and focus on.”

Pimentel, charged under state laws, faces 15 years to life in prison if he’s found guilty, with a maximum sentence of 25 years to life, according to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr.

John Collado's family and friends led the march from Post Avenue to the 34th Precinct. (Photo by Paul Smith)

Heart-shaped balloons reading “John Collado In Our Hearts Always” floated above the crowd marching from Post Avenue in Inwood to the 34^th Precinct this afternoon.  Collado, the 43-year-old father of five, died in September following an altercation with a plainclothes police detective.

Collado’s family and friends, who led the march of about 100 people, chanted and carried candles and memorial pictures. They demonstrated to commemorate Collado, they said, and to question the circumstances of his death, currently under investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

On September 6, Collado intervened as police tried to arrest his neighbor, Rangel Batista, outside their apartment building at 17 Post Avenue. Police, family and witness accounts of the incident vary, disputing whether the officer identified himself. Collado was shot in the abdomen by the officer and died the following day in Harlem Hospital.

The family’s attorney, Patrick Brackley, identifies the officer as Timothy Connelly. The New York Police Department would not confirm the officer’s name because of the ongoing investigation.

The family also says that members were denied access to Collado before his death. His niece, Banayz Taveras, a nurse trainee, was arrested at the scene when she attempted to help him. She was charged with resisting arrest and interfering with governmental administration, Brackley says. Police also prevented the family from seeing Collado in Harlem Hospital.

Collado lived in Inwood all his life and was well known in the community. Married three times, he was unable to work in recent years due to back problems. Following his death, media reports cast Collado as “a former pro wrestler,” with sources suggesting he held the officer in a chokehold. Collado’s family and friends deny this, explaining he hadn’t wrestled since he was a teenager. “My brother was not a pro wrestler,” said Maria Collado-Wright. “I just want to make sure his name is clear.”

Collado was arrested eight years ago on drug-related charges, Brackley said, and after conviction, given probation. But Pablo Collado, his older brother, insists, “He was not a criminal in any way.”

Collado-Wright describes her younger brother as “always helping someone. He didn’t want anything in return. He did things with a sense of humor, always with a smile and he was really devoted to his children.” She spoke of him as a police supporter who’d once enrolled at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in hopes of joining the force.

Friends set up two Facebook groups following the incident: “Justice For John Collado” and “Standing Up For A Cause, Now Is The Time.” Combined, they have more than 400 members. Mike Jimenez, a childhood friend, emerged as a spokesman and planned the first demonstration, held 10 days after Collado’s death.

Officers assisted at today’s march, managing traffic. Speaking before the event, Deputy Inspector Barry Buzzetti of the 34^th Precinct said participants “have every right to express their concerns and we’ll accommodate that.” He added that the police are in constant communication and are “entirely sympathetic” with the family.

Collado-Wright said the precinct has “opened their doors to us the best they can,” but later added that Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Paul Browne “haven’t spoken to the family,” or replied to their letters.

“This is the last straw,” said Jimenez. “I grew up here with a lot of people who are now drug dealers. A lot of them have been shot and killed and it hurts me. But with John, this guy is so straight up. He’s about the community and keeping the peace.”

Jimenez is wary of associating Collado’s supporters with anti-police sentiment.  Although Occupy Wall Street protesters and anti-police brutality groups have expressed interest in the cause, “when they contact me, I tell them that we don’t want to make it into an issue of police brutality,” he said.  “This is about John Collado.”

Jimenez plans to continue organizing demonstrations. “We’re going to keep coming at them until there is a resolution that is acceptable to the community.”

Meanwhile, the Collados struggle to adjust to life without John. “He was the heart of the family,” said Collado-Wright. “He always kept us together.” His mother, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, is frequently hospitalized. Now, Collado-Wright travels from New Jersey to look after her.

Collado-Wright wants closure for her family – but that’s not her only goal. “We don’t want the community to forget what happened to John because it could easily happen to anyone,” she said, listing questions the family wants answered: “They would never send a cop alone. What was that cop doing there? The other person, why wasn’t he charged?” She also asks why restrictions were imposed on the family while Collado was hospitalized.

“That’s what hurts the most,” she said. ”We couldn’t say say goodbye.”

Cornel West embraces a fellow protester who volunteers to commit civil disobedience at a Harlem police station. (Photo by Nat Rudarakanchana)

Police arrested about 30 people protesting in front of a Harlem police station against the department’s stop and frisk policy yesterday afternoon, in what organizers called an act of civil disobedience.

Among those arrested: controversial author and Princeton professor Cornel West, Revolutionary Communist Party spokesman Carl Dix and Riverside Church’s interim senior minister Rev. Stephen Phelps.

After an hour-long rally, protestors marched from the State Office Building on 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard to the nearby 28^th precinct police station, chanting “Cease and desist, stop stop and frisk” and “We say no to the new Jim Crow; stop and frisk has got to go.”

Jason Harper, a police community affairs officer on duty at the scene, estimated that around 200 people gathered in front of the station.

“The demonstrators were likely arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, blocking pedestrian movement and disobeying lawful orders,” said Harper, who works for the 26^th precinct. A police spokesman, however, later said that charges were yet to be determined.

Harper said those arrested could face up to 15 days in jail, but added that he had never heard of those practicing civil disobedience being jailed for very long. Protestors would likely face a court appearance, he said, and could be sentenced to two to three days’ community service.

Many protestors came from Harlem and surrounding neighborhoods, but a large contingent from the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park participated too. Yesterday night the group’s general assembly voted to endorse the event.

“It’s a good mix of people here,” said Vance Brown, 25, a tutor and Harlem resident, who noted the protest’s diversity. “We’re in this together as victims.”

“This action today is beautiful. It’s about rising up, and not showing fear to police brutality and wrongdoing,” he said. “If we keep up this momentum in the long term, we can change stop and frisk.”

Coty Crayton, a Bronx resident raised in the nearby Grant Houses public housing complex, felt more pessimistic.

“This won’t change much,” he said. “But it’s possible that it may make people more aware, and keep this issue on the agenda.”

According to New York Civil Liberties Union analyses available on its website, the NYPD have stopped and frisked over 360,000 New Yorkers in the first half of this year alone, or roughly 2,000 people a day. The analyses also found that more than 80 percent of those stopped are black or Latino, and that over 85 percent are totally innocent at the time of the search, according to the police department’s own reports.

“We stand here in front of the police department in a spirit of love,” said West shortly before his arrest. “We love everybody, but we zero in on our disproportionately-targeted black and brown bothers.”

“We’d go to jail for you,” he said. Addressing the police, he concluded, “If you gotta take us to jail, get ready to take us to jail,” to widespread applause.

Organizers also introduced several New Yorkers who felt victimized by stop and frisk policies, including local DJ Magnificent Zulu Wisdom, who said he had been arrested at the 28^th precinct more than 50 times.

Speakers at the rally variously denounced stop and frisk practices as “unjust,” “unconstitutional,” “illegal,” “racist,” and “wrong.”

Later, during a brief scuffle involving a Democracy Now! photographer, police unexpectedly arrested Noche Diaz, a Revolutionary Communist Party supporter. Protestors booed loudly, shouting, “This is what a police state looks like.”

A legal observer with the nonprofit National Lawyers Guild said that most of the march went smoothly and that he hadn’t observed any illegal police conduct. But he added that the incident with Diaz and the photographer struck him as “uncalled for.”

He and his fellow legal observers recorded the names of those arrested, and the Guild plans to provide them with free legal advice if necessary.

“The idea is to get them out of the criminal justice system as quickly and cleanly as possible,” the observer explained. He said that the Guild team’s policy was not to provide observers’ names to the media, to ensure complete impartiality during the events.

Others arrested at the event included the rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, and Jim Vrettos, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Organizer Carl Dix called yesterday’s civil disobedience “only the beginning” and encouraged similar actions next week in Brooklyn, and possibly East Harlem and the South Bronx.

­­­­­

A security camera recorded the lookout man at Super Laundromats and Dry Cleaners before a robbery on Nov. 1. (Photo courtesy of Sung Cho)

Three bandits made off with nearly $700 from Sung Cho’s 24-hour laundromat on Nagle Avenue in Inwood in the early morning of November 1.

It was the tenth in a string of nineteen robberies since early August that police say are connected. In each case, two or three men made off with cash and drove away in a dark Ford Windstar.

On Friday, the police announced four arrests in the case, including one East Harlem man, Arvel Bullock, 40. The others under arrest are Joseph Suce, 24, and Fred Littles, 41, both of Brooklyn, and Xzavian Woney, 21, of the Bronx.

Cho is surprised that his Super Laundromats and Dry Cleaners became a target. “You can’t really take much from this kind of store,” he says. “The money is well secured.”  The money the thieves pocketed came from the employee working the night shift and the sole customer, not the cash register.

The night after they hit Cho’s, robbers made off with money from Sunrise Laundromat on East 116th between Second and Third Avenues in East Harlem.

A third early-morning incident three days later, at Super Clean Laundromat on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, netted two robbers $230 from the cash register.

“They said, ‘Don’t do anything stupid,” says Adam Idrissa, who was alone on the night shift watching a DVD when the robbers burst in, one waving a baseball bat. On demand, he pointed to the cash register and opened his wallet to show that it was empty.

Idrissa called 911 when the robbers left, and the police arrived within minutes.

He’s not sure whether his robbery is part of the citywide crime spree. The two men who robbed him were Hispanic, he’s “100 percent sure,” but the police told him the suspects from an earlier incident were African-American.

Each of the three locations has a security camera, but masks and baseball caps obscured the thieves’ identities. The police took tapes from Super Clean, recorded before the robbery, in case the thieves had cased the store earlier, says employee Iris Valois.

Initial police reports described three suspects in their early 20s. Two of the men under arrest match that description; the other two are in their early 40s.

Cho hasn’t heard from the police since the initial investigation, nor have investigators asked for security tapes from Family Dollar next door, says store manager Mario Claudio.

As for the laundromats, they remain open and their night shift attendants still work alone. It’s back to business as usual, which worries Idrissa. He’d like to be able to lock the door when it gets late, opening it only for customers.

“I’m more nervous now, especially when it’s two or three o’clock when nobody’s there,” he says. “What happened can happen again.”

José Lazala, shown in his family's apartment, was shot to death on December 28, 2009. (Photo courtesy of José Lazala, Sr.)

All the blood had been cleaned from the attendant booth’s windowpane. It looked like nothing had happened at the 24-hour parking garage in Harlem where José Lazala, 30, had been shot twice in the head at close range, murdered execution-style while working a late night shift.

The day of his death, Lazala had called his wife, Lidia Justo, to say he’d be sending her money to help pay for pre-school for their four-year-old son Brandon.  It was the last time they spoke.

As soon as she found out about the shooting, Justo, an Army sergeant raised in Washington Heights and stationed in Virginia, traveled to the garage where her husband had worked for three months. She wanted answers. Can you show me where he was killed? Is this the safe? Do you keep any money in the safe? No, there’s no money in the safe, José’s supervisor told her. It was December 2009, very close to New Year’s.

The New York Daily News headline on December 30th read: “Robber Killed Garage Worker who Couldn’t Open Cash Box.” The story reported, “A chilling security video shows José Lazala being led at gunpoint into the glass-enclosed office at W. 132nd Street garage sometime between 10:30 p.m. and 11 p.m., Monday. Moments after the robber and Lazala pass out of view, the footage shows blood splattering on the window.”

The spatter trajectory  indicates José was lying on the garage’s black-and-white checkerboard vinyl floor when he was shot.  Justo never saw that video— the last moments of her husband’s life. It was too painful to watch. She and José were separated, but she still loved him.

But while news accounts said Lazala had been killed during an attempted robbery, Detectives Michael Langella and Daniel Hull of the 32nd precinct have their doubts.  The brief encounter between assailant and attendant was too short for a robbery, they say: just 49 seconds.  The assailant, a black male approximately six feet tall, wearing a dark colored 3/4-length coat, purple or blue sweats and white sneakers, didn’t rummage through anything in the garage after shooting Lazala.  Since the surveillance video has no sound, nothing in the video indicates that the robber was asking Lazala to open a safe or cash box. The supposed robber didn’t even take the $7 still in José’s pocket.

Nine months after the murder, Crimestoppers has announced a $20,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest and conviction and Langella and Hull have appealed to the public for help in solving the case. “We have no leads right now and no one has come forward and spoken to us in regard to any kind of possibilities, or why it happened, or who it may be,” says Hull.

VFC Garage, on the corner of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard and 132^nd Street, sits just blocks from the Harlem YMCA  and the 32^nd Police Precinct. Many of the garage’s patrons work at nearby Harlem Hospital.

On a recent Thursday afternoon, some VFC attendants are eating stewed chicken and yellow rice in the garage’s tiny reception area and office, where Lazala was killed. Martin Madera, who’s worked at the garage since the mid- nineties, was on the job the day Lazala was killed.

“We thought maybe the guy wanted to rob the safe because that’s where we found José’s body—in front of the safe,” says Madera, who, like Lazala, emigrated from the Dominican Republic.  Lazala relieved Madera at 5 p.m. that day to work till midnight. The shift actually belonged to co-worker Victor DeValle, but Lazala agreed to sub because DeValle was on vacation for two weeks.

“The times he came to relieve me, we’d talk for a few minutes, and from our conversations he looked like he was happy,” says Madera.  “The last thing you would think is that he had any type of problem.”

VFC Garage on W. 132nd Street (photo by Makkada Selah)

“José was a good co-worker, a good guy,“ adds Victor DeValle. “Everybody was devastated. Nobody believed that. Everybody was in shock.”

Lazala didn’t like working alone, they say.   When the current owners, 4153 LLC, took over the garage in 2007, the management initially scheduled two people at night, but Madera says it eventually began allowing a single worker on night shifts. Still, “I never heard José talking negative,” says Madera. “He was always positive.  He told me he was going to school to become a superintendent.”

In fact, Lazala had paid $500 to take a 4-hour superintendent certification class, according to his former roommate Alfredo Ortiz of Washington Heights, who grew up with him in the Dominican Republic. Lazala planned to quit his parking attendant job very soon; he had the papers ready to apply for a job at a building downtown. Ortiz describes Lazala as “always happy.”  In a recent photo Ortiz and Lazala stand on Wall Street around Christmas, surrounded by light-laden trees; in another photo  Lazala leans against Ortiz’s mother  in Times Square, holding up two fingers in the peace sign.

“I couldn’t sleep for more than two weeks thinking about that,” says Madera. “ A co-worker gets killed on the job—it’s hard to come back from.” The body wasn’t found until around 12:30 a.m. when the worker for the next shift came in, so Lazala lay bleeding for almost two hours.

“Just the way the whole thing played out, it happened very quickly and very suddenly, which usually indicates a little more than a robbery,” says Det.Hull, speaking in one of the upstairs offices at the 32^nd precinct.

Hull insists that usually a robbery lasts a lot longer. “If you go in to rob a place and 30 seconds later you kill someone, you haven’t gone there for the reason you intended to go there.” he says. “By killing him, the assailant doesn’t gain anything.  If a guy didn’t know the combination to the safe—-that’s not something a person would get killed over. He might get beaten over it. But he wouldn’t be killed over it.”

The detective adds that the assailant didn’t even look around and try to take anything: “All the automobiles are accounted for. All the keys for the cars are accounted for. All the money for the evening in the safe in the back office was accounted for. And we didn’t see the subject take anything or remove anything from the victim.”

Though news accounts reported that the assailant asked Lazala to open the safe, with no sound on the surveillance video, it isn’t clear what they were discussing. “No one will ever know except those two,” says Hull.

During their initial investigation the detectives spoke to everyone employed at the garage, including past employees, and found no criminal records; they looked at the owners and management and found nothing unusual. Parking garages are notorious for drug sales, gambling and stolen cars, says Hull, but ” nothing told us that there’s any business going on there besides parking.” Lazala had no criminal record.

All homicides remain open until solved, however. “Once you get to a point where you have no one else to speak to you,” says Hull, who’s been on the force for 14 years, “ you have to wait until someone comes forward and says: ‘I have something to say.’”

“I’ve been getting a little frustrated,” says Justo in a phone call to Jose Lazala’s father’s house. Lazala, Sr., who is retired, sits at the kitchen table in his central Harlem apartment, perusing photos of his son’s funeral in Santo Domingo. This is where Jose Lazala lived, where he likely ate breakfast the day he died. “It’s been almost a year and they haven’t arrested anybody,” says Justo.

They met in Washington Heights through a close friend. Scheduled to deploy with her unit to Afghanistan in December,  she was so distraught over her husband’s death that her commanding officer decided she should stay behind.

“José’s supervisor was so rude to me,” Lidia recalls. “He thought I was blaming the garage company for José’s death, and in a way I do hold them responsible.” She doesn’t think it should be the garage’s policy to allow one person to work alone at night. If another attendant had been there, she thinks perhaps Lazala’sdeath could have been prevented.

Two funerals were held, one in New York and one in Santo Domingo, and Lazala Sr. went to both, traveling to Santo Domingo with his son’s body. One of the photo he’s looking through shows Jose’s birth mother beside her son’s coffin. She hadn’t seen him in over 8 years. After such a long time, she seemed to cherish his dead body, taking many photos of it.  In  death, Lazala’s lips were shiny.  He wore a big wooden crucifix across his chest; another stood towering at the head of his coffin. He is buried in a town called Villa de Gracia, in a cemetary of the same name.

There’s a clicking sound of the gas stove burner being lit as Lazala’s stepmother, Juana, prepares a meal. “I loved him like a son,” she says, referring to José the younger. “They are bad people, people who would do something like what happened to José.”

“No se sienten amor” – they don’t feel love, says her husband.

“Ay, si padre.”

His father calls José “amable” and his stepmother calls him “cariñoso.”

“He never drank,” she  says. “He had one enemy, the man who killed him.”

]]> http://theuptowner.org/2010/10/29/who-killed-jose-lazala/feed/ 0 http://theuptowner.org/2009/12/15/uptowners-police-clash-over-quality-of-life-complaints/ http://theuptowner.org/2009/12/15/uptowners-police-clash-over-quality-of-life-complaints/#comments Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:27:09 +0000 Tim Kiladze http://theuptowner.org/?p=2478

Olga Tello worked hard to rid her neighborhood of pesky problems but she says the 34th Precinct did little to help. (Photo by Tim Kiladze)

Bridget Best loves her Inwood apartment on the second floor of 1 Arden Street that overlooks the building’s front entrance. Not only is it a beautiful space with “absurdly cheap” rent, it is close to the No. 1 subway line she rides to the Manhattan School of Music.

Best looked at the apartment last fall when the roads were empty and the neighborhood noise was minimal. She saw nothing suspicious. But as the temperature rose this past spring, she fell victim to the cacophony created by teenagers who took to the streets. Over one two-week period, Best says the noise was nonstop between 4 p.m. and 3 a.m, something she couldn’t handle despite growing up in urban Toronto and living in New York for three years.

The situation quickly escalated. A few fights broke out in front of her building, then a 50-person brawl another night – the two sides distinguished by their white and black beaters. On a different evening, people threw bricks from her building, smashing a car window. Best called for police in both cases, but no one responded.

Many residents of the 34th Precinct, which covers Inwood and Washington Heights, complain of the same thing. At community meetings this fall, they voiced their frustration with inadequate responses from the people who are supposed to serve and protect their communities. Although murders have declined, three last year versus 103 in 1990, quality of life issues bother these residents – problems they say the police don’t care about because a body isn’t on the ground.

Best thinks social demographics plays a role. “You see these kids,” she says, “They have no future and nothing to do. And nobody cares about them because they’re poor and Dominican. If these were white kids from a good neighborhood, you’d have police there every night.” Taking matters into her own hands, she befriended the people she says deal weed and crack on her street so they would know her when she walks home from the subway at 2 a.m.

After a few months, however, they stopped talking to her. Best soon discovered someone started a rumor that her boyfriend, a 6-foot-6 opera singer, was a cop. She isn’t worried. “Truthfully, I’ve never feared for my own safety,” she says. “They don’t want to hurt me; they want to kill each other.” She simply wishes she did not have to put up with the resulting noise and the drugs.

Olga Tello has similar problems. She lives in 640 Fort Washington Avenue and constantly complains about noise and nuisances like drunks sleeping in her building’s lobby, something new tenants have to adjust to when they first move in. “We pay too much rent” for that, she says with a thick *Argentinian accent.

Her battle, which she has been fighting since 1997 when she first moved in with her husband, Tom, is akin to a war of attrition. Before moving uptown, she was a live-in housekeeper for a family on 72nd Street. She was excited to have her own place and her new building looked nice from the outside, but she soon found out it was full of parties and drugs, and the elevator was in bad shape. She and Tom often complained to the superintendent and eventually held tenant meetings. Tello also asked the landlord if she could make a small garden; he obliged and contributed some money. He also fixed the elevator.

But some tenants didn’t appreciate the changes. They heckled Tello and played games with her. One night when Tom was away driving a bus to North Carolina, she came home to glue stuck inside her keyhole, preventing her from getting inside. In another incident, someone dumped bleach in her garden.

She turned to the police but she says they offered little assistance. Despite her constant calls to the precinct, officers rarely showed up. “Tommy went so many times to talk with Inspector Monaghan,” the previous commanding officer, she says. “They were not helping us.”

Tello turned into a community activist, morphing her building meetings into community gatherings in 1998. Her efforts proved successful. “We cleaned the buildings, but it was not easy,” she says.

These community meetings have become popular uptown, drawing the interest of public officials. Once a year, Tello manages to bring together officers from the 34th Precinct, Councilman Robert Jackson, representatives from transit and sanitation, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

She also attends the 34th Precinct’s monthly community meetings, which she says are especially ineffective because the police listen to public complaints but rarely follow up on them. She thinks the meetings are all for show. “I see people complaining over and over about the issues, and they don’t fix them,” she says.

She urges neighborhood residents to make Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly aware of their concerns. “Write to the mayor, write to Kelly,” she says. “Let the officials know that we’re not going to put up with this nonsense no more.”

Her frustration has reached a tipping point. “There are wonderful police officers who do their job and are nice,” she says, “but I cannot say that about the 34th Precinct… They never helped me with the problems I had here.” On the rare occasion they responded to one of her calls, she says “the police would come, and they would always have an attitude. And they would never do anything.”

Deputy Inspector Andrew Capul, the 34th Precinct’s commanding officer, sat on the panel at Tello’s Oct. 26 community meeting. Most residents voiced problems outside his jurisdiction (overflowing garbage cans, for example), but he briefly addressed quality of life issues, acknowledging noise complaints and such problems as a flurry of vehicle break-ins on Cabrini Boulevard (15 autos were stolen in a 28 day period this fall).

Capul tried to assuage the crowd by citing his officers’ efforts. For the vehicles, the precinct now parks a car with an embedded camera on the street. He also said the police try to respond to all noise complaints but have trouble doing anything because the volume often dies down before they arrive.

He used the same defenses at the 34th Precinct’s monthly meeting just before Thanksgiving. Unlike Tello’s community gathering, this night focused on police issues and a slew of officers attended, including Executive Officer Jose Navarro and traffic Officer Steven McManus.

On this occasion, Capul addressed quality of life issues first, noting a rise in complaints and growing community outrage. Upfront, he said: “If I had to give us a grade, I wouldn’t give us an outstanding. We can do better.”

Elizabeth Porter certainly believes that. She lives with her daughter on West 181st Street across from Cabrini Boulevard in an apartment she calls the “investment of my life,” but is constantly bothered by noise late into the night. Her living room, complete with VHS movies like “My Cousin Vinny,” overlooks 181st, a popular thoroughfare.

Mexican restaurant Agave Azul and cigar shop Fumee, both owned by the same man, are directly across the street from Porter’s living room window. Fumee offers valet service on several nights, which blocks parking spaces available to area residents, forcing people – often the shop’s patrons – to double-park.

This wouldn’t be a problem on a side street, but 181st connects to the West Side Highway. When cars are blocked, drivers honk incessantly and yell for people to come out and move their vehicles. When someone appears, a war of words ensues. It gets so loud that “it sounds like people are standing in your living room,” Porter says.

Fumee’s patrons also drink on the street and leave the shop drunk late at night, she charges, even though Fumee doesn’t have a liquor license. Porter has logged many complaints about the noise and the illegal drinking, of which she has photos.

Just as with Best and Tello, Porter complains that the police rarely respond to her calls. She is convinced they don’t respond because they themselves are Fumee’s patrons and sometimes double-park their squad cars – something she also has photographed.

Porter is fed up. Inspector Capul speaks to her personally at meetings but does little to follow up. “For many years he was treating me as a crazy old lady,” she says, adding that he listens to her and then throws out statistics proving the police are doing a good job. “He has a pitch,” Porter says. “He uses the same words to pat himself on the back.”

She’s also fed up with 311. When she calls, she gets a reference number to track the complaint’s status online and will check hours later only to find the complaint is closed, yet the cars remain double-parked or Fumee’s patrons continue to make noise. In some instances, she waits for the police to arrive and finds the complaint closed even though no one responded.

When officers do show up, they do very little. In one complaint she filed on July 21, 2008, at 8:37 p.m. because Fumee’s patrons were drinking outside and making noise, an officer wrote: “IT’S A FRIGGIN’ RESTAURANT BAR WITH A SIDEWALK EXTESION.”

The 311 complaint line also baffles Best. “I would always call 311 and they would rarely come,” she says. “And when they come, they shut the guys up for two minutes and then they get loud again.”

Porter feels like she has nowhere to turn. Calling the precinct is futile. “There is nobody that you can get connected with at the precinct that is going to give you a straight answer.” In the rare occasion someone says they will put an officer on her problem, she has no way to track the complaint like she does on 311.

Porter used to vent at Community Board 12 meetings, which includes the 34th Precinct, but she worries she can’t trust them considering Chair Manny Velazquez recently resigned because of shady liquor license negotiations. Community and precinct meetings are the only other outlets, but they sap her morale. “You go, you let your heart out, you get your heart going, and nothing comes of it,” she says.

Inspector Capul promises to take action on unanswered 311 complaints; he publicly vowed to sit down with two key officers before year-end to discuss how they can do a better job, focusing on chronic problems like noise complaints, which make up about 75 percent of 311 calls.

Capul says improving 311 response times and making sure the police show up are his priorities, but cautions that each precinct has around 50 fewer officers than five years ago. Cars dispatched to 311 calls sometimes get diverted to more pressing issues.

Capul also says the police are doing well in some areas. In 25 burglaries this year, the police traced fingerprints or DNA at the scene and tracked down the invaders; in a recent shooting on Sherman Avenue, the suspect was caught within a block and a half.

Tello doesn’t deny that some officers and precincts do a good job, but she wants accountability on the issues that constantly affect her. She’s also sick of hearing crime statistics cited at public gatherings because she has nothing to compare them to, something she fears makes the police look unjustly good.

Best would also like to see accountability. The 34th precinct meeting was her first, but she attended because she’s had enough.

“I used to think people who complained at community meetings were losers,” she says. “Now I’m one of them.”

*The story originally misstated Tello’s former nationality: she comes from Argentina, not Venezuela.

A public hearing in Harlem Thursday will revisit the controversial May 28 police-on-police shooting in East Harlem, once more spotlighting issues of racial tension in law enforcement.

In a similar hearing in Albany Nov. 16, law enforcement officials, researchers, and community members emphasized the role of racial stereotypes in police-on-police shootings and offered recommendations to prevent future incidents. The hearing, held by a task force organized by Governor David A. Paterson, was the first of three in the state. On Thursday afternoon, the second hearing will take place near the crime scene, where a white police officer mistakenly killed a black plainclothes officer.

Officer Omar J. Edwards was fatally shot by another officer earlier this year. (AP Photo/New York Police Department)

The Albany task force included nine community members, law enforcement officials and experts on law and justice. “We are here to discuss the issues and implications arising from police on police shootings, especially those between those of different races, nationalities, and ethnicities,” said Christopher Stone, the task force chair and a professor of criminal justice at Harvard University.

Lewis Rice, a former Drug Enforcement Association agent, emphasized the role of race in the shooting. “No longer can it be acceptable to consider men and women of color…criminals before being proved otherwise,” he said.

On the night of the shooting, Andrew P. Dunton shot and killed another off-duty officer in plainclothes. Omar J. Edwards, 35, had just finished patrolling East Harlem’s housing projects and then chased a man who had supposedly broken into his car. With his gun drawn, he ran along 125th Street between First and Second avenues when three other officers saw him.

Dunton fired six rounds, and three bullets struck Edwards, one wounding him fatally. The shooting prompted angry protests, with marchers shouting “Justice for Omar,” according to The New York Times.

The upcoming trial will determine whether Dunton ordered Edwards to put down his weapon before he opened fire. Investigators said they think Dunton had called “Stop, police!” just before Edwards turned and Dunton fired the fatal bullet, according to The Times. The sequence of this scene will determine the verdict. Meanwhile, Dunton has been on administrative duty since the shooting. A grand jury in Manhattan decided not to indict Dunton, but a Police Department investigation is still underway.

The Harlem hearing can be expected to address many of the same issues that arose in Albany. Task force members there suggested cultural diversity training to prevent racial profiling, but some questioned whether the city would have the funds to support new programs.

“We must be creative in the recommendations we make so they are relevant in the reality of the current budget crisis,” said task force member Michael J. Farrell, a deputy commissioner with the New York Police Department.

The public hearing will begin at 3:30 p.m. Dec. 3 at the State Office Building on 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard.

Michael Anderson, 57, vanished on November 12, neighbors said. Anderson, a tall black male, lived alone and kept to himself, said one neighbor who asked for anonymity.

Michael Anderson, 57, disappeared on November 12 and police have padlocked his apartment as they search for him. (Photo courtesy of DCPI)

Police at the 34 Precinct said they issued a missing person’s report for Anderson after his doctors called his apartment looking for him. Anderson also emailed a suicide letter to a friend, the neighbor said.

Officers searched the apartment complex at 330 Haven Avenue for Anderson, last seen on November 12 around 1 a.m., police said. They broke down his door and scoured the grounds, said neighbors, who watched.

“They woke me up at 3 a.m. last week and they asked me what I know about him,” Anderson’s neighbor said. “Now they’ve padlocked the door.”
At the precinct, Detective Marc Nell said police saw no signs of struggle in Anderson’s apartment, but continue to look for clues.

His neighbor, a 20-year resident of the complex, said he has known Anderson since he moved in nearly 15 years ago and described him as quiet, reserved and an lover of theater and art. “I would always see him with playbills and programs in his hand,” he said.

Although Anderson was introverted and kept to himself, he always greeted his neighbors, they said.
Now his disappearance distresses them as they pass his padlocked apartment and see his face on missing posters, his longtime neighbor said.

Harlem dirt bike riders "Free" and Elliot Brown cruise Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. (Photo by Sam Petulla)

Stand on a block in Harlem and wait for a loud buzz—building to a roar, interrupted by pops. Eventually one will rip past, its rider howling—a dirt bike speeding and diving through city traffic. The bike wheelies further down the street and slides out the tail. The rider’s wearing athletic shoulder pads, a mesh chest guard, and underneath his helmet, flying behind like a flag of independence, a black do-rag.

Harlem has become home to a booming dirt bike scene—from renegades on illegal bikes to stunt jockeys who practice in abandoned lots. The bikes come in more colors than an iPod: classic red, hunter green, combinations like blue and yellow, checkered variations, and straight jet-black. Some bikes aren’t registered, and the police try to impound them and ticket the drivers. Residents either applaud their efforts or say despite city ordinances and police enforcement, they’re here to stay.

McKilo Williams, 33, known better by his alias “Ki-Lo The Dread,” helped start the dirt bike trend in Harlem a decade ago, when he starred as lead rider in hip-hop artist DMX’s video for the classic rap song “The Ruff Ryders Anthem.” As DMX raps, hundreds of dirt bikers, ATV and motorcycle riders swarm him—some in block-long wheelies, others burning-out their back tires into smoke clouds. Together, they became a bike team—the “Ruff Ryders.”  Their influence in the hip-hop scene remains strong; dirt bikers still idolize them for their speed and their beat-up, ride-anywhere style.

Williams stands over 6 feet tall, has a lean but muscular frame and wears long shaggy dreadlocks. He turned dirt biking through Harlem’s streets into a profession. “I met another guy, Wink1100, while I was riding down the street practicing tricks. He eventually asked me to be in the hip-hop videos,” he said, hanging out on 134th Street with his family, who looked on pridefully. “But I take care of my family with this,” he added. “I went to Miami, South Carolina—all on tour with the Ruff Ryders.”

Russell Houston, 28, standing on the corner of 135th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, said he sees urban dirt biking only gaining popularity. “My friends, basically everybody, is getting a bike. I decided I should try and get one myself and start a bike club.”

So Houston has been saving. “I gotta do my research,” he said. “If you want a used bike it will probably be like eight hundred dollars. A new bike is closer to fifteen hundred, two thousand.”

Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 135th Street is a hub for riders and their fans. “When you see a crowd, they’ll be out,” said Darnell Jackson, sitting on a ledge on the 135th Street block corner, beside the public housing apartments towering behind him. From here, bikes cruise up and down Frederick Douglass, or move cross-town, over to First Avenue and back.

And the bikes are quick.

“They can get up to 75, 80, 90,” said Blue Rico, a casual rider in baggy jeans reluctant to supply his name for fear of the police. “We’ll ride Frederick Douglass, Lenox—all over.”

They travel in teams—entire packs flying down Frederick Douglass Boulevard, bike after bike up pointed skyward in a wheelie. “40 of us—maybe. 50 on a good day—all riding,” said Elliot Brown, who rides a brown KLR 650. Some bikes have busted license plates dangling from the rear; others riders go without registration or helmets at all. Often, nubby tires are worn almost past the rubber from spending too many miles on asphalt street instead of on the soft dirt tracks they’re designed for. Stickers plaster the bikes like murals devoted to everything popular in dirt biking, fashion, music, and any other decals that can stylize them.

Dirt biker "Free" rides a wheelie down Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. (Photo by Sam Petulla)

A dirt biker’s arch nemesis is a police cruiser.

Police in the 32nd Precinct, however, say that they can try to pull over dirt bikers, but they cannot chase. “We can’t catch them because they’ll take the sidewalk,” said Officer Keith Lee, visibly angered, “We can’t pursue.” Another officer, standing beside him but declining to be named, added, “They all disappear. If we continue to chase it’s even more of a hazard to pedestrians.”

At the 32nd Precinct, disagreement reigned over such basic facts as dirt bike-pedestrian collisions. Some officers said they had heard about several pedestrian injuries in the last few months—none as a result of police pursuit—while other officers hadn’t heard of any. Currently, the department has no strategies for curbing the rise in illegal dirt biking or for catching fleeing riders, said officers at the 32nd Precinct. A Police Department Press Spokesman would not respond to phone calls and emails.

When issuing out tickets, police look for bikers not meeting the legal requirements for owning any motorcycle: periodic exhaust inspections from the Department of Motor Vehicles, and registration for the bike, considered a motorcycle. The rider must also have a motorcycle license, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Yet Williams says the police’s unfriendliness towards dirt bikers is unfounded. “They stop us and they give us lots of tickets and they try to take your bike,” he said.   “I even have cop friends that ride them, and they’ll still try to stop us, looking for anything that can give us a ticket.”

At Cycle Therapy—Harlem’s largest motorcycle shop—salesman Tomar Sho said sales of dirt bikes have skyrocketed—“easily doubling”—in recent years, and that he sees as many legal as illegal bikes on the street. But, he added, once a bike is sold, he can’t control how a customer will use it—that’s on the police.

Eyal Deep, another Cycle Therapy salesman, noted that mini-dirt bikes—for riders up to four feet tall—have become a particularly hot seller, with kids from the same apartment building sometimes pooling money to buy one.

But Sho added that while dirt bike sales have risen, they still only account for 1 percent of motorcycle sales and cause their share of headaches. Riders rarely bring bikes in for maintenance, preferring a beat-up style—a major revenue loss.

A few months ago, Deep said he heard some dirt bikes down the street and assumed they were coming to buy parts. Instead, the pack of riders, mostly in their early 20s, hopped the steps leading to the shop, roared through the door and started hiding their bikes from pursuing police officers among the showroom bikes and gear.

Residents have mixed opinions. Bea Harris, who has lived in Harlem since 1954, wants to see the dirt bike trend end. “They’re loud and they’re in the wrong place,” she said, walking along Frederick Douglass Boulevard shortly after some bikes passed, “The riders don’t use them the way they should. They’re not careful. They’re just reckless.”

But Malik Cupid, another lifelong resident, considered the police and biker urban cat-and-mouse games a permanent Harlem culture fixture. “They’re kind of fun to watch,” he said, looking around the neighborhood. “It’s not going anywhere. So just give it up,” he laughed.

A promotional video for the Harlem Legendz motorcycle club, features narration from a rider named “Buster,” who explains that illegal bikes are a popular emblem of street life. “All the rappers, all the movie stars—they emulate the streets. They emulate us. They emulate Harlem.”