Tag: new york

New York Spends $225 Million on Its Own “Cop City” — to Make the Whole City Run on Cops

NEW YORK CITY Mayor Eric Adams announced last Friday that the city would spend at least $225 million on a new police training facility in the borough of Queens. The mayor’s decision to pour further public funding into policing comes as he slashed services to the city’s most vulnerable, including cutting library budgets by $58.3 million.

The priorities could not be clearer. Like many politicians across the country, the mayor wants to disinvest from public services and privatize them, while instead increasing mass policing and carceral enforcement as a response to social problems.

To see just how much Adams has become the paragon of governance through policing, one need only look at the intended purposes of the police training facility. The site will be used to train law enforcement officers for all the city’s agencies — including the departments of Sanitation, Homeless Services, the Administration for Children’s Services, and the Taxi and Limousine Commission — under one roof, alongside New York Police Department officers.

In response to the mayor’s announcement, a number of commentators on social media decried the plan as a “Cop City” for New York — the term used to describe a vast police training facility under construction in Atlanta, which will swallow up crucial forest land in that city.

Despite the fact that the Atlanta facility will be a compound of over 85 acres, the cost is estimated to be a ballooning $109 million — less than half the amount New York City is dedicating to its new training building.

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New York and New Jersey Want To Let Felons Serve on Juries. Here’s Why.

The vast majority of states—44, to be exact—suspend people from serving on juries when they are convicted of a felony, and in many states the suspension is permanent. That means millions of people—especially groups of people convicted at relatively high rates, such as black and Hispanic men—are disqualified from jury service, quietly resulting in what some have called the “whitewashing” of American juries.

At least two states, New York and New Jersey, would like to change that.

The New York proposal, which is currently under review by the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee, would repeal the clause in the state’s judiciary law that blocks individuals convicted of felonies from serving on juries. New Jersey’s bill, which was introduced in January and endorsed by Gov. Phil Murphy on May 1, would amend the equivalent clause in its code to permit most felons to serve on juries, barring only people convicted of murder and aggravated sexual assault.

“Jury exclusion laws bar more than 20 million people nationwide from serving,” said Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative. “With this bill, New Jersey has the chance to reverse one of the harshest jury exclusion laws in the country, and to set an example that other states can follow to make their criminal legal systems fairer and more effective.”

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NYC Hotel Room Prices Skyrocket as 20% of Hotels Converted to Migrant Shelters

Average hotel room prices in New York City have exploded now that 20% of hotels have been converted into shelters for illegal aliens.

The average hotel room rate in the city reached a record high of $301 a night since 1 out of every 5 hotels have turned into migrant shelters since 2022, the New York Times reported last week.

“About 135 of the city’s roughly 680 hotels entered the shelter program, with many congregated in Midtown Manhattan, Long Island City in Queens and near Kennedy International Airport — all traditional magnets for tourists,” The Times reported.

“Participating hotels are paid up to $185 a night per room, according to the city. Not a single one has converted back into a traditional hotel.“

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‘The New McCarthyism’: NY Hospital Fires Nurse for Empathizing With Gaza Mothers

A nurse was fired earlier this month from a New York City hospital for a speech lamenting the anguish felt by Palestinian mothers whose children were killed during the Gaza genocide – remarks that came as she was being honored for providing extraordinary care to mothers who’ve lost babies.

NYU Langone Health labor and delivery nurse Hesen Jabr, who is Palestinian American, was terminated over her May 7 speech accepting the award, in which she said that “it pains me to see the women from my country going through unimaginable losses themselves during the current genocide in Gaza.”

“Even though I can’t hold their hands and comfort them as they grieve their unborn children and the children they have lost during this genocide, I hope to keep making them proud as I represent them here at NYU,” she added.

In a May 27 Instagram post, Jabr recounted what she says happened to her when she went back to work for the first time after her speech:

As soon as I walked onto the unit, I was dragged into an impromptu meeting with the president and vice president of nursing at NYU Langone to discuss how I “put others at risk” and “ruined the ceremony” and “offended people” because a small part of my speech was a tribute towards the grieving mothers in my country. I was sent back to work my shift while the hospital spent the day “figuring out” what to do with me. After working almost the entire shift, I was dragged once again to an office where I was read my termination letter by the director of human resources, Austin Bender, and escorted off the premises by a plain clothes police officer.

NYU Langone spokesperson Steve Ritea told The New York Times that Jabr was terminated over the speech and “a previous incident” related to Gaza, over which she was warned “not to bring her views on this divisive and charged issue into the workplace.”

“She instead chose not to heed that at a recent employee recognition event that was widely attended by her colleagues, some of whom were upset after her comments,” Ritea added. “As a result, Jabr is no longer an NYU Langone employee.”

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Video Of NYC Cops’ Marijuana Raid Raises Questions About Mayor’s Enforcement Offensive

As a new mayoral task force conducts sweeps of hundreds of shops suspected of selling illegal weed, a video of a raid on a Staten Island store obtained by THE CITY captures how enlisting police to conduct regulatory inspections can lead to criminal charges, igniting concerns about potential due process violations.

The 90-second clip taken from a store surveillance camera on May 18 shows seven uniformed law enforcement officers, most of them in NYPD gear, cursing, jumping over the store counter and charging at a shopkeeper after he asked them for a court order before opening the door to the back of the store.

Instead, the man was cuffed—before any unlicensed cannabis products were found—and taken to a local precinct where he was charged with obstruction of justice, records show.

“When a cop tells you to do something, you fucking do it,” one officer told the shopkeeper.

The surveillance video was shared with THE CITY on the condition that the identity of the shopkeeper be protected. The arrest and criminal charge was confirmed by police records.

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34 REASONS the Bragg-Biden Show Trial Should Have Been TOSSED OUT — Each One Alone Providing Grounds for a Mistrial

1. Unconstitutional Gag Order that prevented President Trump from criticizing the trial, exposing the many conflicts that should have forced the judge to recuse himself, and the railroading of his fundamental due process rights.

2. Judge Merchan’s many, many conflicts of interests – all of which were disqualifying. His daughter, Loren Merchan, is President of Authentic Campaigns, a political consulting firm that hires the likes of the Biden-Harris Campaign, Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar, and many other far left Democratic lawmakers. Loren’s firm has made tens of millions off these clients – Juan Merchan, through his daughter, had a direct financial stake in the outcome of this trial, a flagrant breach of the canons of legal ethics, both under the ABA and NY State, that under any other judge would have been grounds for a recusal.

3. Judge Merchan’s wife was previously employed by Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York State who campaigned on “getting” Donald Trump.

4. Bragg’s Lead Prosecutor was Matthew Colangelo, the former #3 official at the DOJ. We are told Colangelo graciously decided to step down from his prestigious office to work for a lowly state DA’s office – of course, a reasonable inference would be that he was directed to do so by the Biden Regime to persecute his leading political opponent in Donald John Trump.

5. Statute of Limitations (2 years, NY State) had long expired for the business records falsification scheme that served as the primary charge brought against Trump. For this reason, the case was passed over by the DOJ and even Alvin Bragg over seven years because it was so weak. Only once Bragg felt political pressure, externally via Clinton attorney Mark Pomerantz, who previously worked in Bragg’s office, and internally via Colangelo, a Biden lackey, did Bragg buckle under the political weight and press charges.

6. Venue in bright-blue Manhattan, a borough that voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump at almost a 9 to 1 clip, prevented the President from ever getting a fair trial, because the pool of jurors was naturally biased against the 45th President, and could not possibly rule fairly and impartially (8 of the 12 cited the NY Times as their main source of news). Any pro-Trump jurors who were considered chose to self-select out themselves because they claimed they “could not rule fairly.” Case in point: no way in hell is the burden of proof met on any of these charges, and yet the jury pool consisted of two lawyers, who evidently believed just that. No reasonable juror, and especially no reasonable lawyer-juror, would have found that the elements of every single crime brought against Trump met the burden of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt.

7. Election Interference: This was not a new case: it had been circulating in various court systems, federal and state, for years. These charges were only brought this year to interfere with the 2024 presidential race, period. President Trump is now the leading presidential candidate, by every reputable poll, and the frontrunner by significant margins, a gap that has only expanded over time. There is no reason why this case should be brought now, six months before Election Day, unless there was a conspiracy to prevent President Trump from being on the campaign trail in key swing states, like PA, MI, AZ, and GA, which is exactly what occurred.

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Judges Investigate ‘Dreadful’ MDC Brooklyn Prison Abuse Where Inmates Die Begging For Help As J6 Political Hostage Pleads For Emergency Surgery: ‘They Sent Me To Here to Set Me Up’

J6 political prisoner Ryan Samsel is pleading for assistance from prison guards, his attorney, and the American public to get to an emergency room immediately after strange lumps surfaced on the back of his neck while the blood clots in his leg and foot that he developed months ago remain dangerously untreated.

The new lumps may be malignant tumors or blood clots, but getting to a doctor or the life-saving surgery he was prescribed over three years ago, before his arrest for protesting at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, is an ongoing and uphill battle.

If Samsel suffers a medical emergency, it could take hours or days before anyone even notices while detained in perpetual lockdown in MDC Brooklyn, the jail system where Jeffrey Epstein allegedly killed himself, and inmates are known to die while begging for help from lazy, abusive prison staff.

And he suspects the notorious medical negligence within the understaffed correctional facility is exactly why the prosecutors and US District Judge Jia Cobb transferred him to the dangerous prison, “to set him up” to die or endure assaults while living on blood thinners.

“I’m on the eighth floor in a high-rise building in the back corner cell and literally in a corner and there is no call button. If I get sick, I might not see a CO for a full day. It’s dangerous here. It’s literally dangerous,” Samsel told The Gateway Pundit in an exclusive interview Wednesday.“ This place is as harsh as where Jeffrey Epstein died.

“They should not put this many inmates in the prison because they are understaffed, and we are constantly locked down. Judge Cobb knew how bad the conditions were in this jail a year and a half ago when she first sent me here.”

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Trump campaign announces $34.8 million fundraising haul after NY criminal trial verdict

Former President Donald Trump on Friday announced a sizeable fundraising haul in the wake of his guilty verdict in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s hush money case.

A New York jury on Thursday found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records after a weeks-long trial. The verdict appears to have energized his supporters, however, as the campaign’s donation page crashed, evidently due to the volume of traffic.

The campaign on Friday announced it had brought in $34.8 million in small dollar donations, marking a near-doubling of its single largest day total on WinRed.

“From just minutes after the sham trial verdict was announced, our digital fundraising system was overwhelmed with support, and despite temporary delays online because of the amount of traffic, President Trump raised $34.8 million dollars from small dollar donors,” said Trump Campaign Senior Advisors Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.

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Trump’s Conviction Suggests Jurors Bought the Prosecution’s Dubious ‘Election Fraud’ Narrative

After deliberating for a little more than a day, a Manhattan jury on Thursday found Donald Trump guilty of falsifying 34 business records to aid or conceal “another crime,” an intent that turns what would otherwise be misdemeanors into felonies. If you assumed that the jury’s conclusions would be driven by political animus, this first-ever criminal conviction of a former president is the result you probably expected in a jurisdiction where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 9 to 1. But in legal terms, the quick verdict is hard to fathom.

That’s not because there were so many counts to consider, each related to a specific invoice, check, or ledger entry allegedly aimed at disguising a hush-money reimbursement as payment for legal services. Once jurors accepted the prosecution’s theory of the case, it was pretty much inevitable that they would find Trump guilty on all 34 counts. But that theory was complicated, confusing, and in some versions highly implausible, if not nonsensical. Given the puzzles posed by the charges, you would expect conscientious jurors to spend more than an afternoon, a morning, and part of another afternoon teasing them out.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump stemmed from the $130,000 that Michael Cohen, then Trump’s lawyer and fixer, paid porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election to keep her from talking about her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump. When Trump reimbursed Cohen in 2017, prosecutors said, he tried to cover up the arrangement with Daniels by pretending that he was paying Cohen, whom he had designated as his personal attorney, for legal work.

Cohen testified that Trump instructed him to pay off Daniels and approved the plan to mischaracterize the reimbursement. Cohen was the only witness who directly confirmed those two points, and the defense team argued that jurors should not trust a convicted felon, disbarred lawyer, and admitted liar with a powerful grudge against his former boss. But even without Cohen’s testimony, there was strong circumstantial evidence that Trump approved the payoff and went along with the reimbursement scheme.

The real problem for the prosecution was proving that Trump falsified business records  with “an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof”—the element that was necessary to treat the misleading documents as felonies. Prosecutors said the other crime was a violation of Section 17-152, an obscure, little-used provision of the New York Election Law. Section 17-152 makes it a misdemeanor for “two or more persons” to “conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.” But prosecutors never settled on any particular explanation of “unlawful means,” and Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over the trial, told the jurors they could find Trump guilty even they could not agree on one.

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NYC hotel rates reach record highs as city fills rooms with illegal immigrants

New York City hotel prices have reached an all-time high due in large part to the unprecedented influx of illegal immigrants arriving from the southern border. The city turned to hotels to house the immigrants, many of which are paid to house the immigrants. 

As of late 2023, the average price for a one-night stay at a hotel in the Big Apple was over $300, an increase of nearly 10 percent over the previous year. While that has dipped slightly over the first few months of 2024, the summer tourism season is expected to bring with it another jump in prices.  

City policies, such as the “Sanctuary Hotel Program,” as reported on by the New York Times, also have contributed to the increase by shortening the supply of open rooms. When it was started in 2022, city officials said that the hotels were paid between $139 and $185 a room each night, whether or not the room is occupied. 

As The Times reports, inflation also played a role in the rising costs, even though the rate of inflation has fallen since 2022. 

Despite the high cost of accommodation, the city is anticipating around 70 million visitors this year. Hotel Association of New York City CEO Vijay Dandapani said he believes things will only get better with time.  

“At some point this migrant crisis is going to peter out,” he said, “and … you’re going to have a lowering of rates and it will become more affordable.”  

According to commercial real estate data provider CoStar, over 140 hotels have been temporarily or permanently transformed into shelters for illegal immigrants, bringing with them 16,000 rooms that are no longer available for tourists.  

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