Archive » January – June 1997

Archive

January – June 1997

June 30, 1997
Foglia doing battle again
In the 1980s, Phil Foglia was regarded as one of the sharpest assistant district attorneys in the Bronx.

June 23, 1997
Messinger on her message
Democratic front-runner Ruth Messinger says her first police priority, if elected mayor, would be to return to "community policing."

June 16, 1997
Venditti’s mom angry at PBA
The mother of a detective slain a decade ago in a celebrated and unresolved case has accused the police union's president of abandoning a cop recently convicted of killing an unarmed man on a Bronx subway platform.

June 9, 1997
Quieter drama ends in death
While the media chronicled in wrenching detail the struggle for life of Malcolm X' widow, Betty Shabazz, in the Bronx' Jacobi Hospital, another drama ended sadly and unheralded.

June 2, 1997
PBA and Times miss the boat
The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and The New York Times - each in its fashion - failed to cover the trial of Police Officer Paolo Colecchia, convicted last week of fatally shooting an unarmed man in the back on a Bronx subway platform.

May 27, 1997
Family in blue abandons cop
Last fall, scores of cops showed up in the Bronx courtroom where ex-Police Officer Francis X. Livoti was on trial for the murder of Anthony Baez.

May 19, 1997
It pays to be a Safir civilian
Last week Mayor Rudolph Giuliani rejected a suggestion that increased productivity should warrant raises for cops. Maybe that's because the mayor doesn't want anyone asking questions about the hefty salaries of three civilians in Police Commissioner Howard Safir's office, and the lack of productivity thereof.

May 15, 1997
New Vallone bid on cop review panel
City Council Speaker Peter Vallone is resurrecting his once-discredited proposal for an independent panel to monitor police corruption that was vetoed by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and subsequently tossed out of court as unlawful.

May 12, 1997
Big 8 questions get no answers
Last week, a reporter asked Deputy Inspector Mike Collins where a detective assigned to Police Commissioner Howard Safir's detail had been transferred.

May 8, 1997
Baez brutality case fuels political bid
The mother of a 29-year-old man who died after an escalating argument with a police officer over a touch football game announced her candidacy for Bronx borough president yesterday.

May 5, 1997
Ripples spread in sea of trouble
To mitigate some serious tax problems, or perhaps even a prison sentence, the rogue gun dealer and rogue husband Michael Zerin has been visiting with the United States attorney, offering nuggets of police corruption.

May 1, 1997
Sal: I’ll sweep headquarters
Sal Albanese, the Brooklyn Don Quixote tilting at the Democratic primary windmill, says he can put 2,000 more cops on the street.

April 28, 1997
Rudy focused on pettiness
Are there no limits to the spite and pettiness of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani?

April 21, 1997
Cracks appear in the blue wall of NYPD silence
If nothing else, the 30th precinct scandal proves that the NYPD's "blue wall of silence" - that supposedly impenetrable barrier protecting corrupt cops - can be breached.

April 17, 1997
Risks his life, then he steals
This is the second of two columns on the misdeeds of Officer Joseph Walsh, one of the last officers from the 30th Precinct to be sentenced in what is known as the Dirty Thirty scandal.

April 16, 1997
Misdeed menu of dirty 30 cop
Police Officer Joseph Walsh of the 30th Precinct was sentenced last month to six months in prison after pleading guilty to perjury, tax evasion and civil-rights conspiracy charges.

April 14, 1997
NYPD’s legacy of distrust
No matter how the shooting death of 16-year-old Kevin Cedeno of Washington Heights plays out; no matter whether Police Officer Anthony Pellegrini was justified in shooting him in the back, here are five reasons why New York's poor, minority communities distrust the police department of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani - a distrust that serves as quick tinder for mayoral opponent Al Sharpton.

April 7, 1997
Our city cops, in title only
In a mayoral election where at least two candidates have raised the issue of residency requirements for police brass, here's a look by Newsday at where the top NYPD commanders live.

April 6, 1997
Sharpton talks about NYPD
Call Al Sharpton what you will - activist, race-baiter, charlatan - he speaks for a constituency that includes the poorest, least educated and those most in need of police protection.

March 24, 1997
New media still old media foe
A couple of weeks ahead of schedule following his heart-bypass surgery, a kinder, more philosophical Howard Safir has returned to One Police Plaza.

March 21, 1997
Some red faces among NYPD’s blue uniforms
The New York Times reporter who police arrested while covering the funeral procession of rapper Biggie Smalls was temporarily barred from Police Plaza yesterday, and informed by a sergeant that her building pass had been invalidated because of her arrest.

March 20, 1997
Police vs. press: tension
As a former NYPD police inspector with years of dealing with news reporters put it, there is the reporter's version and the police version, and somewhere in the middle is the truth.

March 17, 1997
Memo reveals Safir’s who’s who
In Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's police department, where information is as closely guarded as it was in the Soviet Politburo, a news release last week from ailing Commissioner Howard Safir provides a glimpse into who's in favor and who is not.

March 10, 1997
Surgery? Brass didn’t have clue
True to his fashion, Police Commissioner Howard Safir told virtually no one at Police Plaza of his coronary bypass.

March 3, 1997
Where was the commissioner?
The greatest mystery after why Ali Hassan Abu Kamal shot seven people at the Empire State Building is where Police Commissioner Howard Safir was between the time of the shooting - about 5:15 p.m. - and his appearence at 8 p.m. at Bellevue, the hospital where some victims were brought.

February 24, 1997
Safir’s test on Livoti case
Even for a law school dropout like Police Commissioner Howard Safir, his decision to fire Francis X. Livoti was a no-brainer.

February 21, 1997
No. 2 cop pursues tax-free pension
�Apparently First Deputy Commissioner Tosano Simonetti's heart problem will not prevent him from protecting zillionaire Ronald Perelman.

February 20, 1997
Was it their last hurrah?
On the surface, the night belonged to the Jackster.

February 17, 1997
It’s a matter of priorities
When John Timoney was sworn in as First Deputy Police Commissioner in 1995, he made a speech the media never reported.

February 10, 1997
A gun story, continued
Here now are more details of the dealings between the firearms merchant and police department insider whose world has caved in on him and, as his agent refers to him, the greatest law enforcement official of the decade, if not the century.

February 3, 1997
Ferrer shows NYPD blueprint
Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer declared his candidacy for mayor last week and for someone who's never worked in the criminal justice system or ever been arrested, he knows the New York Police Department.

January 27, 1997
Pistol-packin’ partners probed
At precisely the same hour Wednesday that federal prosecutors announced the racketeering indictments of police-union big shot lawyers, the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau swooped down on Room 110 at One Police Plaza.

January 6, 1997
The psychic felons network
Here are some predictions of what might occur at One Police Plaza in 1997.