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Conley Speaks At 108th Precinct Community Council
The winners of the Cop of the Month award were Patrol Officers José Zuleta and Vasilios Kovoros. On Sunday, December 3 at 11 p.m., the two officers noticed a car parked in the wrong direction, at 69th Street and Queens Boulevard. They went up to it and found there was no one at the wheel, but two passengers were in the front and back seats. They were asked to step out of the car, and a check of the interior revealed a loaded .380 gun. The two in the car were arrested and found to be from North Carolina. Thus far they have not talked, so their motives have not been determined, nor has the missing driver been found. Nevertheless, Captain Kavanagh said, the officers displayed good sense in checking on the car and apprehending its riders. The award to Conley was presented by the council's Pat Dorfman, who designed the plaque and praised him for his probity. Conley, in turn, began his report by saying that the vote on the Sunnyside Business Improvement District (BID) would be taken at the February board meeting, two days hence. His remarks certified his stand on the matter, since he said the BID established on Steinway Street transformed that Astoria shopping section, while the Long Island City BID, chartered in the summer of 2005, is working out well. He asked, "Why not Sunnyside?" and no one disagreed. Of Sunnyside Gardens and the dispute about giving that neighborhood landmark status or leaving it alone, he said, "Something has to happen." Towards making something happen, there will be a third landmark meeting, following the first in late November and the second in mid- January, though no date for it has yet been set. Conley mentioned some ongoing problems about housing and was critical of bureaucracies that don't seem in tune with the populace. Affordable housing was supposed to be bolstered by the 421-A tax credits put into effect a few years ago, but builders of luxury housing have seized 421-A and used it to their advantage, Conley said, and its original purpose must be recovered. The bureaucracies arousing his ire were the Department of Buildings, the Department of Transportation and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The Buildings Department was supposed to send a representative to the Sunnyside landmark meeting in January, but he did not appear. Also, Conley charged that the department has been lax in prosecuting what Conley called a blatant violation being committed on 43rd Street, beside the White Castle on the corner of Queens Boulevard. As for the DOT, Conley said its purported improvements on Queens Boulevard in Woodside and Sunnyside are no improvement at all, since they either put pedestrians crossing the boulevard through a rat's maze or curtail vehicle traffic moving north and south. He said he toured the affected areas recently with Matt Gorton, a director of the mayor's Community Assistance Unit. As they were proceeding, a woman stopped them and asked if they were from DOT, which she then denounced. Later, Gorton lightly asked Conley if the woman and her outburst were spontaneous or had she been set up by him. Conley's complaint about the MTA concerned the elevator that is proposed to run between the Court Square station on the cross town G line subway and the 45th Road station on the elevated No. 7 line. It is supposed to be for the handicapped, but the MTA was going to build it from the subway to the elevated level with no stop on the street level. Complaints to the MTA and Citibank, which is obligated to pay the cost of construction, have elicited a statement from Citibank that it would build the elevator with as m a n y stops as the handicapped required. The MTA insisted, however, that it would build the elevator only as initially proposed. Conley said that in reply, community and transportation groups raised such an outcry about what they called the Elevator to Nowhere that the MTA suspended its construction plan and said it might have to be reconsidered. One man who came to the meeting to complain was a Pearson Street resident who said a number of truck drivers "think the street is their parking lot" and leave their vehicles at all hours on Pearson, a short, dead-end street off Jackson Avenue, one block below Court Square. They are constantly ticketed, the man said, but he wondered if they deal down the amount of the fine and accept it all as the cost of doing business. He asked the police to look into the matter, and Kavanagh said they would. During the month there were 11 graffiti complaints and eight arrests. Attendees were reminded that 311 is the telephone number for reporting graffiti that has already been applied and 911 for reporting vandalism in progress. Callers should supply as much information as possible, they were told. They were also told that while those arrested are often bailed out almost immediately, one alleged vandal arrested during the month was still in jail, with nobody available to put up money to get him out. The next graffiti cleanup day is Thursday, February 22. Kavanagh's crime report included the fact that while for the month, the number of assaults declined, still he had to relate the details of one of them, a four-on-one horror (perhaps gang-related) in which the victim was strangled, stabbed and run over with a car. Still, the victim lived, and his assailants were easily identifiable for arrest, being covered with blood. There was a murder-suicide at 41-52 49th St., too: a man shot his girlfriend, then himself. A taxi driver is being investigated after a rape was committed in a taxicab. Grand larceny auto incidents increased also, though the total might run even higher if every limousine driver who stopped at some shop to buy something left his motor running, as one such driver, an auto theft victim, did recently. Finally, on Saturday, January 27 a gambling raid at the Romanian Garden Restaurant, 46-04 Skillman Ave. had surprised participants fleeing in all directions lest they be arrested.¦ |
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