Police Use Web To Track Down Gang Members
Posted on 13. Aug, 2009 by Mike Reicher in News Features
By Mike Reicher
Soon after Nicholas Donaldi-Subero, the 18-year-old son of a Metropolitan Opera singer, was fatally stabbed in Queens, New York in January, some self-declared members of the Latin Kings gang took to the internet to boast about their prowess.
“We shut plenty of clicks down in the past and Corona Queens is not even an exception,” someone named ‘Farrocking’ from Far Rockaway wrote on the site thehoodup.com.
More and more social networking users like Farrockking are boasting about gang exploits, making threats about future activities and posting photos of themselves in gang colors. And increasingly those sites have become helpful tools for law enforcement officials who have used this material to prosecute alleged gangbangers. States like Ohio and California have introduced online evidence to link suspects with street crimes. Meanwhile, Florida has made it a felony offense to post gang-related material online. But this increased presence of both gang activity and law enforcement surveillance online raises questions about how to determine the line between youthful braggadocio and true bad behavior. (more…)
Storyship – Truly Underground Music
Posted on 12. Aug, 2009 by Robert Voris in Arts & Culture, News Features
By Robert Voris
The band was playing on the L train platform in the station at 6th Avenue and 14th Street. They weren’t using any sort of amplification. They huddled together near one of the white-tiled staircases, allowing people to pass easily around them. A guitar case displaying homemade CDs sat open in front of the singer. People bought the CDs for a suggested donation of five dollars, or dropped in singles or loose change as they saw fit. The band did not directly solicit money. (more…)
Will the Gowanus Ever Be Cleaned Up?
Posted on 30. Jul, 2009 by Mike Reicher in News Features
By Kieran K. Meadows and Mike Reicher
More than two decades after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designated a section of the Hudson River a polluted Superfund site, barges finally began scooping toxic sediment from the riverbed last spring.
Miles away, residents of Brooklyn are wondering how long they might have to wait before the government begins cleaning up the Gowanus Canal, their own severely contaminated strip of water. (more…)
Wrongful Conviction, Unequal Compensation
Posted on 15. Jul, 2009 by Clark Merrefield in News Features
By Clark Merrefield
In March 1996, a bodega clerk scanned a lineup of suspects at a police station in Astoria, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. Two armed men in ski masks had robbed his nearby store. The clerk recalled glimpses of light black skin behind one mask, though he hadn’t seen either robber’s face.
He picked out John Scott, a construction worker. Scott later testified he was nowhere near the store. The clerk conceded at trial he was uncertain Scott was one of the robbers. Despite the clerk’s reversal, Scott was sentenced to 25 years in jail.
Scott languished in jail four years before an appeals court threw out the conviction.
Gay/Lesbian Bookstores Victims of Acceptance
Posted on 15. Jul, 2009 by Caroline Linton in Arts & Culture, Business & Economics, News Features
Back in 1967, Craig Rodwell could find only 25 books that could be considered gay and lesbian literature. But he put them on a shelf in Greenwich Village and opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop – the first and best-known gay and lesbian bookstore in America.
Many gay and lesbian bookstores followed, all over the country, as the movement grew in the following years. Many of those bookstores have closed recently, however, including the Oscar Wilde. Many see the disappearance of the stores as a sign of success growing out of the wider acceptance of gays and lesbians throughout society. They don’t need their own special bookstores any more because so many general bookstores carry gay and lesbian books.
A Journey into Uganda’s Deadly Malaria Zone
Posted on 27. May, 2009 by Rebecca Harshbarger in News Features, Travel
The buses going upcountry in Uganda are bright, advertisement-covered spectacles that rattle through landscapes of cassava, banana and coffee farms. When they stop for a moment, hindered by traffic, wandering livestock or passengers seeking a bathroom break, people who live in the small towns and villages along the road run to the side of the vehicles and set up a mini-market. They’ll try to sell you anything- livestock, goat meat, glass bottles of Fanta soda–even after your bus starts moving.
New York Cemeteries Face Grave Shortages
Posted on 26. May, 2009 by Robert Voris in Business & Economics, News Features
By Robert Voris
You are going to die. Of the more than 8 million people now alive in New York City, all will be dead, eventually. That’s a lot of bodies: 44 million feet of cadaver when laid end to end, assuming average height. And in New York City, where space is always at a premium, there’s not enough earth to grant them all eternal rest.
Want Fries With That? Adults Taking Teens’ Jobs
Posted on 19. May, 2009 by Rachel Geizhals in Business & Economics, News Features
Working the counter at the neighborhood ice cream shop is not the most sophisticated or glamorous of jobs, and it’s one teenagers usually take. But early this year – for the first time in his five years as the manager of a Carvel’s ice cream shop – William Betancourt was fielding calls from grownups begging for a job that pays $7.15 an hour.
In the past, adults called from employment centers looking to place high school kids in Betancourt’s store. Now, they’re calling for themselves – and they’re desperate for income. “They were like, ‘Do you have anything?’” said Betancourt, who manages a Carvel’s in Forest Hills, a neighborhood in Queens in New York City. “They just wanted to work.”
City Hospitals Moving Away from the Poor
Posted on 16. May, 2009 by Loren Bonner in Business & Economics, News Features
The 200 people gathered in a conference room at the Intercontinental Hotel on the campus of the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland talked until late afternoon about the problems the city’s uninsured face when accessing care. But the meeting didn’t include only medical representatives from Cleveland’s four health systems. Eighty people in attendance were uninsured. Since they were the very people being hurt by the system, health professionals figured it was about time the uninsured have a voice in discussions about how to improve health care.
