Sunnyside Chamber Hears From Brown, Pizzuti
BY THOMAS COGAN

Both DA Brown and Assistant Chief Pizzuti favor the proposed move of the Police Academy to College Point.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown told the April luncheon audience of the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce that he had just returned from a vacation spent fishing in Florida, an interlude he sought in the wake of the grand jury's indictments in the Sean Bell shooting case. The busy schedule that awaited him upon his return forced him to leave the meeting early, and thus he could not share the spotlight with Assistant Chief Diana Pizzuti, commander of Patrol Borough Queens North, who was also scheduled to appear but got delayed arriving from a school safety conference in Brooklyn. Auxiliary Police personnel were also commended. Finally, there were announcements of some meetings and a religious tolerance project to be presented by LaGuardia Community College in the last half of May.

Brown began by saying that the Sean Bell grand jury procedure was the biggest he has ever seen and the best handled. In proceedings that lasted more than three weeks (22 days of prosecution and defense, followed by three days' deliberation) and elicited testimony from 500 witnesses, indictments were returned on three police officers and the case is headed for trial. "I will fight vigorously to keep that case in Queens County," Brown said, as a reply to those who would take it to a venue outside the borough where the shooting incident took place the weekend after last Thanksgiving. Getting around to general matters, he said he has 300 assistant district attorneys and each year receives 1,300 applications for about 35 ADA positions in Queens. Those who are hired make a three-year commitment, and then, as Brown said, perhaps overstating, "We lose them." Recentlygraduated law students tend to have a heavy debt burden, and while they will tolerate relatively low pay in exchange for the valuable experience of working in the Queens DA's office (hence the 35-40 applications for every one appointment), it's on to higher pay elsewhere when the commitment is fulfilled. Brown said that wherever the former ADAs land, he believes those hiring them should be impressed by the education in law they have had in his office. The matter of a tight budget came up again when Brown was asked about Bill 53, a measure coming out of the City Council public safety committee, chaired by Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. As law, it would demand "charge or release" regarding the recently incarcerated: either arraign the detainee or let the detainee go. Brown said that fast arraignments are good for his $35 million budget; additionally, they get police officers back to their crime-fighting duties and out of the courts, where they are required as witnesses to arrests. Even though Queens has the fastest arrest-to-arraignment rate, 18.5 hours (in contrast, the rate in The Bronx is 30 hours, he said), he'd like it to be even faster. Before the District Attorney left, he introduced Jesse Sligh, executive ADA and head of the DA's crime victims advocate program, and also referred to the breakfast he'd had with special victims unit personnel that morning, which he called an hour and a half of excellent dialogue.

Assistant Chief Pizzuti came in after Brown had left and was quickly asked, as Brown had been asked before her, about the proposal to move the Police Academy from 235 E. 20th St. in Manhattan to College Point. She said she favored it, since she understood it would be far larger than the current academy (as did Brown, for the same reason). She was commander of the academy from 2002 to 2006 (where she oversaw training of 14,000 rookies), and believes that its current facilities are no longer adequate for the training task. When Marc Leavitt, a local attorney, noted that the incarcerated tended to have education problems and asked if she foresees schooling programs at Rikers Island, she said she was more in favor of earlier intervention, in the public schools. For example, she said, she would like to develop a program to teach middle school students how to resist dangerous peer pressure.

Diane Ballek of the 108th Police Precinct Community Council presented plaques to two auxiliary officers, Sergeant Greg Baranowski and Officer. Thomas Massa, who recently responded to a call to aid someone who had apparently suffered a heart attack. The incident involved defibrillating the victim twice. Captain Thomas Kavanagh, commander of the 108th Precinct, called the auxiliary force "a seven-day operation".

Apart from the general luncheon theme of law enforcement, Elise Johmann of LaGuardia Community College related news about Difficult Dialogues, a Ford Foundation-sponsored project that brings members of various religious denominations together in a series of study circles aimed at establishing better understanding and tolerance. As its title implies, the series may prove those virtues are gained only with considerable effort. The dialogues will be held at the school and various houses of worship in Queens (such as St. Joan of Arc in Jackson Heights), beginning Saturday, May 12 and ending Wednesday, May 30 at LaGuardia, where the meeting will feature a performance by a choral group.