Tag: new york

NY principal allegedly seeking sex with teen on Snapchat brought chicken nuggets, shake to remote location prior to arrest

An upstate middle-school principal used Snapchat to try to lure a 16-year-old girl to meet him in a remote location for sex — bringing with him condoms, chicken nuggets and a Grimace milkshake from McDonald’s, authorities say.

Johnson City Middle School Principal Daniel Erickson was arrested Friday and charged with luring a child and attempted rape, the Broome County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

Erickson, 55, had been allegedly communicating with the teen for at least a week before his arrest.

The New York principal made statements to her that indicated he was “going to engage in sexual conduct with the minor,” the sheriff’s office said.

Erickson initially posed as a younger adult before revealing his true identity to the girl, officials said.

He then used “his position as the Johnson City Middle School Principal and school district database information to convince the 16-year-old girl who he really was,” authorities said.

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‘Woke or KKK’: NYU Hosts Whites-Only ‘Antiracism’ Workshop for Public School Parents

New York University hosted a whites-only “anti-racism” workshop for public school parents in New York City, barring minorities from a five-months-long seminar that legal experts say was a brazen violation of civil rights law.

The all-white seminar, “From Integration to Anti-Racism,” cost $360 to attend and met six times between February and June, according to a description of the program that has since been scrubbed from the university’s website without explanation. Organized by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education, the workshop was “designed specifically for white public school parents” committed to “becoming anti-racist” and building “multiracial parent communities.”

But to promote solidarity with all races, participants were told, it was necessary that the seminar include only one.

A few days before the first session, facilitators circulated a short handout, “Why a White Space,” to explain “why we are meeting as white folks for these six months.” The handout, produced by the nonprofit Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere, argued that white people need spaces where they can “unlearn racism” without subjecting minorities to “undue trauma or pain.”

Facilitators reiterated this argument on day one of the seminar, audio and video of which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. When a parent questioned the premise of the workshop—saying it seemed “a little counterintuitive” to exclude minorities from an anti-racism seminar—Barbara Gross, the associate director of Steinhardt’s Education Justice Research group, assured her that it was for their own good.

“People of color are dealing with racism all the time,” Gross said. “Like every minute of every day. It’s a harm on top of a harm for them to hear our racist thoughts.”

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Eric Adams’s Fallen Cop Photo Is a Fake

Democratic New York City mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly shown off a picture of a murdered police officer, saying he has kept the picture in his wallet for decades. In reality, the picture was a Google printout that Adams aides altered last year to make it look like “the mayor had been carrying it for some time,” the New York Times reported Thursday.

Adams has used the picture to tout his image as tough on crime, saying last year that the killings of two police officers “reminded him of the 1987 line-of-duty death of a friend, Officer Robert Venable,” according to the Times report. “I keep a picture of Robert in my wallet,” Adams said. One week later, the mayor posed for a picture in which he held up the photo of Venable. He has “repeated the moving anecdote”—and held up the Venable photo—multiple times since.

But the photo “had not actually spent decades in the mayor’s wallet,” the Times reported. Adams had, in fact, instructed City Hall employees to print out a Google image of the fallen officer and make it look older, “including by splashing some coffee on it.” Two former City Hall aides confirmed that “they were informed about the manipulated photo last year, not long after it was created.”

This is far from the first time Adams has faced accusations of manipulating the truth. The mayor, who claims to be a vegan, was caught ordering fish only days after he ordered New York City schools to serve only vegan food on Fridays, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

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2 decapitated goats found in plastic bags were slaughtered in ‘ritual sacrifice’ on Long Island

Two decapitated goats that were found stuffed inside plastic bags on Long Island were slaughtered in a “ritualistic sacrifice,” authorities said.

The Suffolk County SPCA made the gruesome discovery on Thursday behind a Burger King at 96 Broadhollow Road in Farmingdale.

The headless goats had been put inside black bags “along with other items that would suggest a ritualistic animal sacrifice,” according to Roy Gross, chief of the Suffolk County SPCA.

The organization is offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for mutilating the animals.

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Lawmakers Push For Investigation Into Secret “Problem Codes” Database Kept on Unvaccinated Teachers

A group of nine Congressional representatives from New York have taken a united front, urging the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) to conduct a full investigation regarding secret “problem codes” databases, alongside fingerprints, that were kept on teachers who opted not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. The representatives have penned a letter to the NYC DOE Chancellor, David Banks, expressing their concerns.

The gravity of the issue is rooted in the NYC DOE’s utilization of the same “problem codes” database — ordinarily assigned to individuals accused of severe offenses like child abuse, rape, or assault—for educators who were put on unpaid leave due to their refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19, as per an internal email in 2022. The comparison of unvaccinated educators with individuals implicated in heinous crimes has created a maelstrom of concerns.

Mary Holland, former president of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD), an organization actively advocating for a bipartisan congressional investigation since March, was emphatic about the lack of transparency. She stated that the city’s “unwillingness to be transparent about how and when these codes are used and under what circumstances requires a thorough and complete investigation.”

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Midtown Gets Paywall: Feds Approve NYC Congestion Toll

The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration approved the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s congestion tax scheme to charge drivers entering New York City’s midtown Manhattan. The tax is the first of its kind in the nation, expected to fleece hardworking Americans between $9 and $23 per day to drive through the district, reported Bloomberg.

“Congestion pricing will reduce traffic in our crowded downtown, improve air quality and provide critical resources to the MTA,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul. 

Hochul said, “I am proud of the thorough environmental assessment process we conducted, including responding to thousands of comments from community members from across the region.”

She added: “With the green light from the federal government, we look forward to moving ahead with the implementation of this program.”

The MTA operates NYC’s subways, buses, and rail lines. It’ll be responsible for implementing the tax scheme as soon as April 2024. Bloomberg said motorists driving south of 60th Street would be able to use an E-ZPass.

The new tax aims to fleece motorists and raise $1 billion of new annual revenue for the MTA. NYC officials want to reduce the number of daily vehicles entering the district by up to 20%.

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Mama Mia! NYC rules crack down on coal, wood-fired pizzerias — must cut carbon emissions up to 75%

Historic Big Apple pizza joints could be forced to dish out mounds of dough under a proposed city edict targeting pollutant-spewing coal-and-wood-fired ovens, The Post has learned.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has drafted new rules that would order eateries using the decades-old baking method to slice carbon emissions by up to 75%.

“All New Yorkers deserve to breathe healthy air and wood and coal-fired stoves are among the largest contributors of harmful pollutants in neighborhoods with poor air quality,” DEP spokesman Ted Timbers said in a statement Sunday. “This common-sense rule, developed with restaurant and environmental justice groups, requires a professional review of whether installing emission controls is feasible.”

The rule could require pizzerias with such ovens installed prior to May 2016 to buy pricey emission-control devices — with the owner of one Brooklyn joint saying he’s already tossed $20,000 on an air filter system in anticipation of the new mandate.

“Oh yeah, it’s a big expense!” said Paul Giannoni, the owner of Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint. “It’s not just the expense of having it installed, it’s the maintenance. I got to pay somebody to do it, to go up there every couple of weeks and hose it down and you know do the maintenance.”

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NYC considers reparations for black residents, removal of ‘racist’ public art amid flurry of legislation

The City Council is mulling a package of controversial bills that include weighing whether black New Yorkers deserve reparations for slavery, and another resurrecting a woke push to remove artwork they consider “racist” from public property.

Councilwoman Farah Louis (D-Brooklyn) introduced her reparations bill on Thursday – the same day the state Legislature in Albany approved a comparable bill.

That legislation, which has been sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul for consideration, would create a commission to study the effects of slavery and racial discrimination on the entire Empire State and potentially reward payments.

Louis’ reparations bill – which only covers the city — would create a nine-member task force that would be required to deliver a report one year after being appointed. Like the state bill, any recommendations would be non-binding and strictly advisory.

It is part of a larger legislative package introduced Thursday by some council members of color they said is aimed at “rectifying” historical “injustices.”

One measure by Crystal Hudson (D-Brooklyn) would require the city’s Commission of Racial Equity to create a “Truth, Healing, and Reconciliation” process that establishes “historical facts” about the city’s past use of slavery and then recommends changes for local government and institutions to “prevent recurrence” – even though New York abolished slavery more than two centuries ago, and lost more than 50,000 men while fighting to free slaves during the Civil War.

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Traffic cop sues city over ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ cards for NYPD friends and family

Mathew Bianchi became a Staten Island traffic cop in 2017, two years after joining the New York police department, assigned to enforcing traffic violations and issuing tickets. In the first two years on that beat, he received stellar performance evaluations.

But in November 2018 – a year into his career in the traffic unit – Bianchi issued a ticket to a civilian who held a New York City police department laminated courtesy card, an unofficial credential issued to NYPD officers based on their union affiliation that can then be distributed to family members and friends to carry with them.

What happened next is the subject of a lawsuit against the city and a police captain. According to Bianchi, who is Cuban-American, courtesy cards are used to maintain a system of impunity – a “get-of-jail-free card” for families and friends of NYPD officers to avoid traffic tickets, a growing source of revenue for the city.

Bianchi claims his superiors retaliated against him for his stance against the “corrupt” cards after he was warned by an official with the Police Benevolent Association, New York City’s largest police union, that he would not be protected by his union if he wrote tickets for people with cards. And if he continued, he’d be reassigned.

In some instances, the complaint said, Bianchi was reprimanded for writing a ticket to a relative or parent of an officer; in others, his commanding officer reviewed body-camera footage to see if he was giving motorists with cards a “hard time”.

“I see card after card. You’re not allowed to write any of them [up],” he told the Associated Press. “We’re not supposed to be showing favoritism when we do car stops, and we shouldn’t be giving them out because the guy mows my lawn.”

Bianchi told his precinct commander that he did not agree with the courtesy card policy and claims he was told: “Is it better to be right or better to be on patrol?” The lawsuit cites several instances where his NYPD colleagues complained about his ticket-writing, including on Facebook.

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NY farmers with 300K pounds of weed fume over state’s slow shop roll-out

New York’s weed farmers are fuming over the snail’s-pace rollout of legal cannabis shops in the Empire State — complaining they are sitting on mountains of spoiling marijuana crops.

The state’s failure to follow through on OK’ing dozens of dispensaries for legal marijuana as predicted by Gov. Kathy Hochul last year has thwarted the roughly 200 New York farmers who grew 300,000 pounds of cannabis — the equivalent of more than 272 million half-gram joints.

The farmers say their product, most of which is eventually converted into CDB oil, has been going nowhere fast, worrying them that it could soon become too old to peddle.

And this season’s new crop is already on the horizon.

“We’re really under the gun here,” New York marijuana farmer Seth Jacobs told The Associated Press. “We’re all losing money. Even the most entrepreneurial and ambitious among us just can’t move much product in this environment.”

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