The usual suspects in the NYPD: A series of scandals weave a tangled web

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Luke Ford

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Harry Siegel writes for the New York Daily News:

In real life, the scandal has been less cinematic but even uglier. For starters, it wasn’t rank-and-file cops but members of the brass, inspectors and chiefs, who were arranging chauffeur service for Jona Rechnitz, a businessman and cop buff who in turn provided them with, among other things, a private flight to Vegas complete with a full-service flight attendant.

Quite literally, this is a mile-high scandal involving top cops taking diamonds for their wives, and hookers for themselves from Rechnitz. It turns out he’s also the very high-end bagman who delivered $60,000 in cash — inside a Ferragamo bag — to Norman Seabrook in exchange for the powerful prison guard union boss steering $20 million from his workers’ pension fund into Platinum Partners, a failing hedge fund.

Back to the Vegas flight: One of the cops on it was reportedly Philip Banks, the former chief of department, the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the NYPD – who’d been widely mentioned as a potential commissioner before Bill Bratton got the job and he walked away.

Banks, who also flew to Israel and California with Rechnitz, is good friends with Seabrook, who joined him on those trips and who’s well known for his taste in both finer things and baser pleasures. And — try to keep up here — Banks, who had a lucrative for-profit business while he was a cop that charged subordinates in the department for promotion exam preparation, signed on with a pot firm hoping for a cut of Gov. Cuomo’s new medical marijuana program in New York after he left the NYPD…

Speaking of criminal conduct, did I mention that Banks’ patron Rechnitz was also a major bundler for de Blasio’s 2013 election campaign and now-shuttered non-profit political operation?

“I wish I never met the guy,” the mayor said of Rechnitz, who has pled guilty to federal charges in connection to federal prosecutors’ case against Seabrook (whom de Blasio had previously called “a friend” and “a great leader”).

If this were a movie, some of the overlapping probes of NYPD brass that began in the Bloomberg-Kelly years would get cut out to keep the audience from getting confused. Like the one with cops taking bribes from a member of the Shomrim, the Jewish pseudo-cop community patrols that have long been supported by the NYPD and de Blasio himself, in exchange for gun permits.

The thread that ties the plotlines together, and explains how the feds found the guy de Blasio wishes he had never met, runs through Hamlet Peralta, owner of the Hudson River Café in Harlem that became a clubhouse hangout for NYPD brass. Peralta’s now charged with setting up a $12 million Ponzi scheme — one that sucked in Rechnitz — as he lived high on the hog and also apparently tried to get right on a debt to the mob.

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Museum of Tolerance gives up its New York lease

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Luke Ford

New York Post: The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which lost out on a $500,000 government grant due to its connection to a corruption scandal, is giving up its lease on the Midtown Museum of Tolerance next month, The Post has learned.

On Thursday, Center officials wouldn’t say if the funding setback contributed to the decision, instead attributing it to a “very steep rate hike” at the East 42nd Street site.

But on Friday, a museum representative said the decision not to renew the lease was made on March 31, 2015 — long before reports surfaced of a federal investigation involving city government.

Officials said the museum would continue to operate until it finds new space.

“We are not closing the Museum of Tolerance in New York. The lease in our current location expired and was not renewed because of a very steep rate hike. We are seeking a new space to develop new cutting-edge museum quality exhibits that will support our world-class training. As we are looking to develop a new facility, we are not minimizing out Simon Wiesenthal Center presence in New York. We are continuing to offer our dynamic programming including traveling exhibitions, film premieres and special events in the interim,” the museum said in a statement.

“We will have an office in New York and we will be hosting exhibitions and programming in prominent pop-up New York locations, including universities, churches, synagogues and film venues — until we find a new venue for the museum….”

The City Council yanked a proposed grant to the museum after ex-board member Mark Huberfeld was indicted for allegedly paying a bribe to direct correction-union pensions to his hedge fund.

JTA: NYC cuts funding for Wiesenthal Center after trustee’s corruption indictment

The trustee — Murray Huberfeld, a hedge-fund manager — was arrested last week for allegedly raising $20 million from a New York City correctional officers union through kickbacks. A real estate investor who allegedly conspired with Huberfeld was also a contributor to the Wiesenthal Center and had helped secure city funding for its programs.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center noted in a statement that Huberfeld resigned from its board on June 15.

The City Council apparently got cold feet over the connections.

“Given some of the investigations and some of the recent news about certain things that have been happening with regard to some of the people that have been affiliated with it, the council decided it wasn’t prudent this year to be funding something with the center,” Council Communications Director Eric Koch said following the budget vote.

Federal prosecutors claim that Norman Seabrook, the head of the union that represents New York City correctional officers, invested $20 million of the union’s pension money in Huberfeld’s hedge fund, Platinum Partners. Huberfeld allegedly agreed to pay kickbacks to Seabrook. Both men have been charged with honest services fraud, and both are denying any wrongdoing, NBC reported.

A spokesman for Mayor Bill De Blasio said there will be no mayoral allocation for the center this year.

Huberfeld is acquainted through Jewish philanthropic circles with Jona Rechnitz, a Brooklyn real-estate investor who helped arrange the union’s investment in Platinum, The Wall Street Journal reported. Rechnitz has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the case and is cooperating with federal investigators, The Journal reported.

Rechnitz had helped secure $655,000 over two years from the council to fund law-enforcement sensitivity seminars at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance, The New York Post reported in April. The Los Angeles-based center has a museum branch in midtown Manhattan.

Rechnitz and his wife donated $9,900 to De Blasio’s 2013 campaign — money the mayor said in April would be returned, the New York Daily News reported.

In a statement sent to JTA Friday, the center said: “At no time was the Simon Wiesenthal Center aware of any alleged unethical or illegal activities regarding our donors. The institution is vigilant and adheres to all city, state and federal laws. We are conducting our own review and will determine if any further action is appropriate.”

The statement noted that the law-enforcement training program has been in place in New York since 2004, “long before Jona Rechnitz had any connection with the Museum of Tolerance New York.”

“There was no impropriety in receiving $655,000 from the City Council of New York. Those funds were used to train front line Criminal Justice professionals and meticulously followed all lobbying laws and protocols of full disclosure to the City Council,” the statement continued. “We plan to continue to applying for funding in future for this highly praised and important training program, so that we can continue to provide this training to Criminal Justice professionals in New York.”

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‘If some nutter swore allegiance to Zeus, the Feds wouldn’t change that to “God” in his official 911 transcript.’

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Luke Ford

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Source.

Also from my Twitter feed:

* As long as shouting “racist!” can discredit true observations and reasonable arguments, we will never again achieve sane public discourse.

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Asians, many out of shame, not seeking U.S. deportation protection

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Luke Ford

The races are different.

You don’t see many homeless asians in America or asian murderers and asian rapists.

REUTERS: South Korean-born Hyun Kim feels American to his bones, but the undocumented immigrant has failed to seek protection from deportation under a program launched by President Barack Obama to shield young people brought to the United States as children.

The 20-year-old Kim, who dreams of attending a U.S. college and works as a barista in the Virginia town where he grew up, is like many of the more than 100,000 Asian immigrants who are eligible for Obama’s program but have not applied. Many cite shame over their unauthorized status as well as trouble locating documents as reasons they are not applying.

“I’m doing nothing with my life, just working these small-time jobs,” said Kim, who believes he is eligible but has been delayed by difficulties obtaining the required paperwork. “All I do when I go home is sleep and pay rent.”

The program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which was started four years ago, grants temporary legal status and the right to work to immigrants who entered the country before turning 16 and before mid-2007. For many individuals, it makes it easier to attend college. It does not, however, provide a path to citizenship.

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The Forward Won’t Publish Anything About Donald Trump for 24 Hours

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Luke Ford

Jane Eisner, editor of the Forward, writes:

Thhe attack on journalists, and journalism, that we are witnessing today is of a more significant and far more dangerous order of magnitude than anything I’ve seen over decades in this business. And whereas usually it’s best for a journalist to just grow a thick skin, a supple spine and the ability to ignore the crazies, what we’re witnessing in the age of Donald Trump calls for a bolder response.
Online bullying is a non-partisan activity — both the far left and the far right are quite good at it — but the virulent anti-Semitism many journalists experience today comes from what is known as the “alt-right,” shadowy white supremacists who mainly hide behind the anonymity of Twitter to traffic in horrible Holocaust imagery and directly threaten Jews.
Many of these threats draw on connections with Trump’s presidential campaign, using Trump’s image and targeting his critics, including several of our regular writers. Even if you don’t believe that the presumed Republican standard bearer has stoked this cyber-hate (which is a generous assumption), you have to admit that he appears to have done nothing to minimize or condemn it.
How can the Forward, a relatively small news organization with a passionate national following and a journalistic pedigree more than a century old, respond? We haven’t been banned from covering Trump, as The Washington Post and other outlets have, but nor have we been offered much access. When given the opportunity, we ask the candidate tough questions , as we do any candidate, but that opportunity has been given only once so far.
So we have decided to declare a moratorium on Trump coverage for a day. A Trumpatorium, if you will.
For 24 hours beginning 5 am Tuesday, June 21, and ending 5 am Wednesday, June 22, we will refrain from publishing anything that mentions Trump’s name or his campaign.
Why take such a symbolic step? (And yes, we are conscious that this is symbolic.) My immediate concern is to address the rising threat level against journalists who are Jewish or who are perceived to be — the haters sometimes don’t bother to distinguish — and who are being bullied, harassed and endangered by the surge of anti-Semitism on social media, predominantly on Twitter. The situation is so dire that the Anti-Defamation League has created, for the first time, a task force to evaluate the problem, develop recommendations and spark public conversation about this dismaying trend.
Two members of the task force, Bethany Mandel and Jay Michaelson, are regular Forward columnists, and have been the subjects of terrible personal attacks for their totally legitimate criticisms of Trump’s policies and pronouncements.

COMMENTS:

* One wonders how his campaign will recover from this…

* Let me state at the outset that I am not a Trump supporter- nor would I ever support Clinton. But for the Forward – led by Jane Eisner – to all of a sudden take a principled stand on anything is nothing short of ludicrous… especially as it pertains to its Donald Trump coverage. I think a better signal of their journalistic principals would to take a 24 hour moratorium of publishing any articles that bash Orhtodox Jews and Judaism (and that can be spearheaded by Jay Michaelson. And trumpeted by Ms. Eisner.)
Or maybe they can take a 24 hour break from publishing articles in support of the BDS movement, a 24 hour respite from mudslinging against the settlers (Naomi Zeviloff) , stop the presses for a whole day of their horrid smear campaign against PM Netanyahu (again, Zeviloff) , take a moratorium on re-printing articles from HaAretz for a day, or maybe even print an article that doesn’t condemn that Kotel praying arrangements (Helen Chernikoff). Maybe those might be better and more useful causes for the Forward to undertake…and if you care about your readership, maybe they would actually benefit from that.

* So, let me get this straight Ms. Eisner. It’s totally OK for your socialist publication to attack with vile hatred anyone you personally oppose (Orthodox Jews, right wingers, tea party, Trump, etc.) via freedom of the press but it’s not OK for them to strike back at you?

Now the shoe is on the other foot. How do you like the fit?

* Wow. I once heard one little girl keep telling the other girl how she wasn’t talking to her. The girl on the receiving end of the repeated announcements of cherum didn’t really seem to care. Because she already wasn’t interested in talking to the boycotter in the first place. Probably just wished the girl would finally make good on her threat and stop freaking talking.

Seriously.

There’s a level of childishness and undeserved self importance at the forward that boggles the mind. Does the Trump campaign or basically anyone outside your little club know you guys exist? Isn’t not paying attention to the forward more like failing to notice the forward?

Is there anyone who actually knows what the forward who can’t figure out what the sycophants there think about every issue?

* The People’s Front of Judea says they don’t support your moratorium!

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