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(10/10/05 4:26am)
NEW YORK -- A reported plot to bomb city subways with remote-controlled explosives has not been corroborated after days of investigation, law enforcement officials said Sunday amid an easing sense of concern.\nInterrogations of suspects captured in Iraq last week after an informant's tip about bomb-laden suitcases and baby carriages have yet to yield evidence that the plot was real, officials said.\n"The intelligence community has been able to determine that there are very serious doubts about the credibility of this specific threat," Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said. "This is after ongoing review and analysis."\nHomeland Security officials have been skeptical about the threat since it was publicly announced Thursday, but officials who were more assertive about the potential danger last week also appeared to be softening their assessment.\n"I believe in the short term we'll have a much better sense of whether or not this has, you know, real substance to it," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said on CNN's "Late Edition."\nA Homeland Security memo said the attack might have been planned to take place on or around Sunday.\nThe city has no immediate plans to pull extra officers out of the subway system or reduce the number of bag searches, according to Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Police doubled the number of daily bag checks and sent thousands of extra officers into the transit system, some in plainclothes and many others in uniform.\nBloomberg said he had no regrets.\n"We've got to take every threat seriously and that is what we are going to do," he said.\nThe mayor said he planned to ride the subway to Yankee Stadium Sunday night for Game 4 of the American League Divisional Series.\nThe informant who prompted the plot investigation has provided a mix of true and false information in past investigations, Kelly said on CNN. Asked whether the informant had passed a polygraph test, he replied, "That source was deemed to be, yes, believing in the information that was put forward."\nThe commissioner said he remained confident the city acted properly.\n"This threat was very, very specific. It had specific time, specific object and modality. So, you know, we had to do what we did," Kelly said.\nThe informant, who had spent time in Afghanistan, told U.S. intelligence that a group of men were plotting to attack New York subways with timed or remotely detonated bombs in strollers and bags. U.S. forces in Iraq arrested two plotters Thursday, prompting Bloomberg, Kelly and the FBI's New York office to announce security was being increased in the subways. A third suspect was arrested Friday.
(04/29/05 5:07am)
PORT--AU--PRINCE, Haiti -- Police opened fire on a crowd of apparently peaceful protesters demanding the release of detainees loyal to ousted President Jean--Bertrand Aristide, and at least five people were killed, U.N. officials and witnesses said.\nWednesday's shooting came as the U.S. State Department confirmed its plans to waive an arms embargo to allow sales of thousands of arms for the Haitian police, whom critics accuse of brutality, summary executions and persecution of pro-Aristide loyalists.\nU.S. officials and the interim Haitian government they helped install say the police are outgunned and outnumbered by politically allied gangsters.\nWitnesses said police drove up behind demonstrators Wednesday and shot into the crowd as it approached the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.\n"The police started to fire," said one witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of his safety. "People started to run and shout hostile slogans at the police."\nFive people were killed and an unknown number wounded, witnesses said.\nThe witnesses said the officers arrived in department pickup trucks and wore police uniforms and masks -- standard uniform for the riot squad.\nU.N. mission spokesman Damian Onses--Cardona confirmed that police opened fire on demonstrators but had no further information.\nU.N. civilian police spokesman Dan Moskaluk said peacekeepers were called to the scene after the shooting found five bodies. He called the march an "unauthorized, illegal demonstration."\nAn official at a Port--au--Prince morgue, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the bodies of five young men were brought in from the march.\nHaitian police could not be reached for comment.\nAfter the shooting, witnesses said some protesters fled to the pro-Aristide slum stronghold of Bel-Air, where at least two cars were set ablaze and automatic gunfire erupted.\nA Brazilian peacekeeper was slightly injured by a bullet to the arm, the military spokesman said.\nResidents hid in doorways as police with high-powered rifles peered around corners.\nThe shootings marked the third time in three months that police have opened fire on pro-Aristide protesters. Three people were killed in previous incidents, though police deny responsibility.\nHaiti has been mired in outbreaks of violence that has killed at least 400 people since a three-week rebellion ousted Aristide on Feb. 29, 2004.
(05/20/04 1:09am)
NEW YORK -- Outraged relatives of World Trade Center victims heckled former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani Wednesday as their hopes that he would be grilled by the Sept. 11 commission faded in the face of gentle questioning and effusive praise from panel members.\n"My son was murdered because of your incompetence!" shouted Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son died in the trade center. Seated three rows behind Giuliani, she jabbed her finger at the former mayor and waved a sign that read "Fiction" as he gave the city's emergency response a glowing review.\nGiuliani finished his testimony and abruptly left the auditorium minutes later, leaving many family members upset that they received few answers. Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband, Richard, called it a "lost opportunity."\n"This was not a time for Rudy Giuliani to talk about all the great things he did on 9/11," she said. "He can save that for his talking tours. He should have told us what went wrong and what we should do now."\nThe acrimonious hearing brought together the mayor, who became a symbol of heroism for his steady response to the attack and the activist relatives who have become a voice of dissent over his administration's emergency planning and response.\nTheir complaints have been supported by a growing mass of critical findings on gaps in command, control and communications among New York's agencies in charge of emergency response.\nThe anger directed at Giuliani came on the second and final day of hearings in New York by the Sept. 11 commission, created by Congress last year to investigate the attacks and advise the country on ways to avoid future attacks. The hearings resume in Washington on June 8-9 and the final report is due July 26.\nThe commission released two reports that mark the most comprehensive probe to date of New York's response on Sept 11. The findings detailed a list of failings including poor communication, gulfs in cooperation between police and fire fighters and grave deficiencies in the city's 911 emergency telephone network.\nThe report led to an aggressive interrogation of Giuliani's top fire, police and emergency management officials Tuesday, with Republican appointee John F. Lehman, a former Navy secretary under President Reagan, calling the failings "a scandal" and "not worthy of the Boy Scouts."\nEx-fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen later called Lehman's comments "outrageous" and "despicable."\nThe harsh questioning of Giuliani's former team was a sharp contrast to the universal praise that commission members heaped on the former mayor Wednesday. His positive assessment of such hotly debated topics as the 911 phone system and gaps in fire and police communications went virtually unchallenged.\n"New York City, on that terrible day, in a sense was blessed because it had you as leader," said commission chairman and former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean. "It had somebody who was a great, great leader to take charge of a terrible, terrible event. You also had, as you've told us, some of the best people in the country to call on who worked for you and worked for the city."\nFamily members called the Giuliani questioning weak.\n"A lot of these questions that the public has may die with this commission," said Patricia Casazza, whose husband died in one of the offices in the World Trade Center.\nGiuliani began his testimony Wednesday with a call to focus on the nation's true enemies and not criticize each other.\n"Our enemy is not each other but the terrorists who attacked us, murdered our loved ones and continue to offer a threat to our security, safety and survival," Giuliani said to applause.\nLater, Giuliani was chastised by members of the public. A longtime city gadfly berated him and the commission, yelling, "Three thousand people murdered does not mean leadership!" He and another person were hustled out of the room.\nOthers in the audience shouted about the failure of Fire Department radios, shouting, "Talk about the radios!"\n"You're simply wasting time at this point," commission head Thomas Kean told the family members.\n"You're wasting time!" came the angry reply.\nGiuliani began his remarks by describing a September morning that began at breakfast with two friends and quickly turned into unimaginable horror as two hijacked planes slammed into the twin towers, killing 2,749 people and rattling the city's psyche.\nAs Giuliani recalled watching a man leap from around the 102nd floor of the north tower, family members began to cry, clearly disturbed by the account.\nThe hearing was held at the New School University in Greenwich Village -- about 1 1/2 miles from ground zero.\nGiuliani also told the commission that warnings of a possible terrorist attack on New York contained in an Aug. 6, 2001, White House briefing paper never reached City Hall, but probably would not have changed local security precautions.\nThe intelligence briefing for President Bush referred to evidence of federal buildings in New York possibly being caused by terrorists. It mentioned New York or the World Trade Center three times.\n"If that information had been given to us, or more warnings had been given in the summer of 2001, I can't honestly tell you we'd do anything differently," said Giuliani, who has become one of the Bush administration's most vocal supporters. "We were doing at the time everything we could think of ... to protect the city."\nCurrent Mayor Michael Bloomberg later testified that New York was recently advised by Congress that its homeland security funding for the 2004 budget year would be cut by nearly 50 percent. Thinly populated states such as Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming receive several times more funding per capita than New York, he said.\n"This is pork-barrel politics at its worst," the mayor said. "It also, unfortunately, has the effect of aiding and abetting those who hate us and plot against us"
(03/11/04 10:26pm)
NEW YORK - Investigators found more than $700,000 in the storage locker of a former police detective at the heart of a widening corruption scandal, according to court papers made public Wednesday.\nThe detective and his former partner were charged with selling cocaine that law enforcement officials said they stole from drug dealers and resold through confidential informants.\nThe cash and drug allegations are detailed in a federal indictment charging former Detectives Thomas Rachko and Julio Vasquez with money laundering, narcotics conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, lying to federal agents and using firearms in the drug conspiracy.\nVasquez and Rachko were drug investigators in Manhattan in the late 1990s before Rachko retired and Vasquez was assigned to the police department's firearms investigation unit.\nThey were arrested in November and charged with interrupting a money laundering stakeout by arresting a drug money courier and taking his backpack full of money.\nSince then they have begun cooperating with federal prosecutors, law enforcement officials said, and have described a long pattern of stealing drugs and drug money from dealers.\nThey have implicated two fellow detectives and a retired lieutenant, officials said, in what is considered the gravest corruption scandal to hit the police department since the early '90s, when dozens of officers in a Harlem precinct were accused of beating and robbing dealers and reselling their drugs on the street.\nThe indictment charges Rachko and Vasquez with conspiracy to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine.\nRachko's lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, said he could not confirm that his client had been providing information and said Rachko had no formal cooperation agreement with the government.\n"I'm hopeful that we'll reach a fair resolution," he said.\nVasquez's attorney did not return a phone call seeking comment.
(10/16/03 5:49am)
NEW YORK -- A Staten Island ferry slammed into a pier as it was docking Wednesday, killing at least 10 people, tearing off victims' limbs and sending passengers leaping into the water, officials said. At least 34 were injured.\nThe 310-foot ferry, carrying about 1,500 passengers, plowed into the enormous wooden pilings on the Staten Island end of its run from Manhattan, reducing the front of the mighty boat to a mass of shattered planks, broken glass and twisted steel.\nThe crash happened on a windswept afternoon, with gusts over 40 mph and the water in New York Harbor very choppy.\n"Everyone just jumped for their lives," rider Bob Carroll told TV station NY1. "It was like an absolute horror. ... The whole side of the boat looked like an opener on a can."\nAt least 10 people were killed and 34 injured, said Mayor Michael Bloomberg, making it New York's worst mass transit accident in at least a generation. Some bodies were accidentally counted twice, leading to an initial report by city officials that 14 people were dead.\nFirefighters picked their way through the debris aboard the ship, the Andrew J. Barberi, in a search for victims, and Coast Guard divers searched the water. At least one body was recovered from the water.\nThe cause of the crash was not immediately known, although Bloomberg suggested the heavy wind as a possibility. The National Transportation Safety Board convened an accident investigation team, which will look at the weather, among other possible factors.\nThe ferry's crew will be interviewed and tested for drugs and alcohol, Bloomberg said. The ship's captain had been contacted by authorities, according to a police source.\nCommuters were trapped in piles of debris aboard the 22-year-old ferry, and victims screamed and dove for cover as metal crunched into wood just before the start of the evening rush hour, tearing girders, splintering planks and ripping a huge hole in the side of the vessel.\n"The ferry was coming too fast," said witness William Gonzalez, who lives in a nearby apartment complex. "They had no control to stop the boat."\n"People who were sitting there as the ferry docked were hit by the pilings that came through the side of the boat," the mayor said. The pilings hit on the ferry's main deck, crashing into windows that ordinarily afford a postcard view of the Statue of Liberty.\nThe accident ended an otherwise routine trip to Staten Island from lower Manhattan, a five-mile crossing that usually takes 25 minutes. A free ride on the Staten Island Ferry is one of the city's most beloved attractions to New Yorkers and tourists alike, taking visitors past the Statue of Liberty and giving them a Hollywood-style view of lower Manhattan's skyscrapers.\n"There were numerous injuries like fractures and lacerations," said Fire Department spokeswoman Maria Lamberti. "There were a couple of people with amputations -- legs and arms."\nVictims also suffered back and spinal injuries, chest pains, and hypothermia from the water, which was about 62 degrees.\nThe three-level, bright-orange ferry has a capacity of 6,000 passengers,\nThe seven boats that make up the Staten Island Ferry fleet carry 70,000 commuters a day between Staten Island and lower Manhattan. The boats make 104 daily trips between the two boroughs. The Andrew J. Barberi travels at about 18 mph.\nService was suspended on all of the Staten Island ferries after the accident.\nThe mayor, who was attending the New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox game with the American League pennant on the line, left Yankee Stadium to head to the scene. He boarded the ferry to assess the damage himself.\nSteamboat ferries began operating between Manhattan and Staten Island in 1817. A railroad company ran the ferry from 1884 until 1905, when it was taken over by the city. It is now run by the city Transportation Department.\nIn 1997, a car plunged off the ferry as it was docking in Staten Island, causing minor injuries to the driver and a deckhand who was knocked overboard by the car.
(09/11/03 5:05am)
NEW YORK -- Two years after scores of firefighters perished in the World Trade Center, the Fire Department's efforts to prepare for future terrorist attacks have been hobbled by dwindling resources and political battles, fire officials and others say.\nFire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta has made progress in transforming a department that only this week memorialized the last of 343 members killed on Sept. 11. But the department has fallen short of goals set a year ago to improve its response to future attacks, according to fire officials, union leaders and outside observers.\nThe city still has only one hazardous materials unit and the department's ranks have been depleted with more than 20 percent of firefighters retiring since the attacks -- many for health reasons.\n"For some things, there's just not money available," Scoppetta said. "We have got to run our department at the same time as we do all of these other new initiatives."\nAlthough new federal funds have helped pay for equipment and training, the department's budget was slashed by $50 million this year, to $1.1 billion, as the city struggled to close a multibillion-dollar deficit.\nThe report released last summer by management consultant McKinsey & Co. documented how thousands of off-duty firefighters rushed to the nearest firehouse, their own firehouse or straight into the towers on Sept. 11. At times, communications were garbled and the chain of command fell apart.\nFire officials launched a new procedure to summon off-duty personnel in stages -- a battalion or division at a time -- to predetermined locations. Department leaders laud the new procedure, but union officials say it worked poorly in a recent drill.\nThe department also more than doubled the number of firefighters with hazardous materials training, to roughly 1,000, but still has just a single, Queens-based hazardous materials unit.\nCommunication failures -- which left many firefighters unaware of the twin towers' imminent collapse -- have been helped by handheld radios that work better than their predecessors. But the report also recommended a system of repeaters to boost signals, which are often lost in high-rise buildings or underground.\nAt the same time, the department lost decades of experience when 2,348 firefighters retired after the attacks -- three to four times the normal rate. More than 1,800 firefighters have been hired, but the retirements have been devastating for a department dependent on hands-on learning.
(11/06/02 4:20am)
NEW YORK -- Run-DMC star Jam Master Jay, his killer still at large six days after he was shot in his recording studio, was mourned at his funeral Tuesday as "the embodiment of hip-hop." \nA fleet of white stretch limousines was parked outside the Allen A.M.E. Cathedral in Queens, the borough where the rapper, whose real name was Jason Mizell, first met up with his bandmates, Joseph "Run" Simmons and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels. \n"Jam Master Jay was not a thug," McDaniels told the overflow crowd inside the church. "Jam Master Jay was not a gangster. Jam Master Jay was a unique individual. … He was the embodiment of hip-hop." \nMcDaniels did a rap from the band's song "Jam Master Jay," with the whole audience joining in at the end to shout out the slain DJ's name. As McDaniels stood at the altar, he was surrounded by more than a dozen funeral wreaths — including one in the shape of twin turntables. \nAs the group's DJ, Jam Master Jay had worked the turntables as Simmons and McDaniels rapped a string of hits over nearly 20 years. \nAlong with the two bandmates, those attending the service included Simmons' brother, hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons, and performers LL Cool J, Chuck D and Queen Latifah. \nOutside the church, dozens of fans and police officers mingled on the streets. Several of the fans sported the classic white Adidas sneakers that the band turned into a fashion statement. \nThe heavy police presence included officers on surrounding rooftops. \nFollowing the funeral, the 37-year-old rap DJ will be buried at a Westchester County cemetery. \nOn Monday night, thousands of fans lined up outside a funeral home where the wake was held. Detectives investigating the unsolved shooting scanned a crowd of tearful relatives, friends and fans. \n"I grew up listening to them," social worker Sharon Kline said. "I felt like it was important to pay respects." \nPolice reported little progress in their hunt for the masked gunman who fired a single .40-caliber bullet to Jay's head as he played video games Wednesday night in the lounge of his recording studio.