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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Bronx News Roundup, April 27

Weather: Warm temperatures again today--though not as balmy as yesterday--with highs around 70. Skies will be mostly cloudy.

Story of the Day: Crackdown After Deadly Belmont Blaze
Mayor Bloomberg and chorus of other elected officials are calling for stricter regulation and punishments for building owners who oversee illegal apartments, after a fire early Monday killed a Bronx family of three in Belmont. The apartment where the victims lived was illegally subdivided, faultily wired and a haven for squatters, neighbors said.

It's unclear who should be held accountable for conditions at the Prospect Avenue building, which has no clear owner--according to the Post, the original landlord lost the property to foreclosure years ago, and that the building has since been part of a Texas private-equity firm's multibillion-dollar portfolio of subprime mortgages. The Times reports that some tenants were paying rent to another squatter who was living there illegally. The Bronx District Attorney's office also announced it will be conducting an investigation into the fire.

Quick Hits: 

A former NYPD officer pleaded guilty in Bronx Supreme Court yesterday for beating a man on a Davidson Avenue sidewalk last January. The incident was caught on tape by witnesses, and then-officer John Cicero resigned from his post a month later.

The fate of Kingsbridge Innovative Design Charter School is now in the hands of the Board of Regents, which put the school on probation for fiscal mismanagement. Officials at the school have until Friday to prove it is financially solvent enough to stay open.

Gotham Gazette takes a look at the growing artist community in the South Bronx and across the borough. 

A third prosecutor has been transferred to the NYPD department advocate's office to handle disciplinary cases in the ongoing ticket-fixing probe. It's unclear just how many officers are being probed in the scandal, which is largely concentrated on Bronx precincts, but some reports are putting the number in the hundreds.

An animal rescue group that filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health, for ignoring a law that requires animal shelters be established in all five boroughs, lost its case yesterday. The Bronx and Queens are both without full-service shelters.

Justin Long-Moton, a 17-year-old from Co-Op City, is the city's Youth Poet Laureate.

1 comment:

  1. More on the ticket fixing scandal:
    http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bronx/inspector_clueless_dEpuhOdRqGaElCLVo97B3L

    Apparently the culture of corruption is so deep, they don't think twice about signing their name and faxing notes to break the law for their buddies!

    ReplyDelete

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