The Move to Expand DNA Testing

The Move to Expand DNA Testing
by Aubrey Fox
21 May 2007

Governor Eliot Spitzer’s proposal to greatly expand the state’s database of DNA samples along with the exoneration last week of a New Jersey man who served 19 years in jail for the gruesome murder of two children has reopened debate about the use of a technology that could fundamentally change how justice is administered in New York City.

Spitzer wants to require testing of all individuals found guilty of felonies or misdemeanors, in state prison or on parole or probation, while making it easier for defendants to use DNA sampling to prove their innocence. In attempting to pass legislation that has been blocked several times in recent years by the state Assembly, Spitzer seeks to emphasize the role that DNA testing can play in freeing the innocent, as well as in fighting crime. It’s a powerful combination, given recent high-profile wrongful conviction cases, such as Alan Newton of the Bronx, freed by DNA sampling after serving 22 years on a rape charge, and Scott Fappiano, erroneously imprisoned in 1983 for the rape of a Brooklyn woman, that have rocked New York’s criminal justice community.

The legislation includes measures that make it easier for defendants and judges to request DNA testing. It would also create a state office to examine wrongful conviction cases in New York State and propose reforms.

Spitzer’s bill has the support of Brooklyn Democrat Joseph R. Lentol, chairman of the Assembly’s committee on criminal justice issues. Other prominent players, such as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Barry Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld of the Innocence Project, which has used DNA testing to free 23 wrongfully convicted New Yorkers, have not yet announced a position. The New York Civil Liberties Union has come out against the bill, citing concerns about the state’s ability to set, and enforce, consistent rules for the storage and processing of DNA materials.

Passage of the legislation would have a dramatic impact on New York City, which has invested over $250 million in a state-of-the-art forensic laboratory in Manhattan. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, enthusiastically support Spitzer's proposal. In the past, Bloomberg has argued for expansion of the state’s DNA sampling program on the grounds that many people who commit minor crimes also commit more major offenses and so that having DNA from so-called “petty criminals” would help solve bigger cases. He and Kelly have argued that the state’s existing restrictions on DNA sampling restrictions hurt the city’s ability to use DNA to reduce crime rates even further.

Regardless of the bill’s prospects for passage, DNA testing – only a little more than two decades old – offers a potentially transformative crime fighting technology. What may be less clear to New Yorkers are its benefits and drawbacks.

A NEW TOOL

Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is a molecule that can be found in all cells and is left behind in blood, saliva, sweat, semen, hair and skin, biological evidence that can often be found at crime scenes. DNA testing was developed by geneticist Alec Jeffreys of Leicester University in England in the early 1980s. He discovered that DNA could be used to isolate a “genetic marker” unique to each individual.

Jeffrey’s new technique was employed almost immediately to help solve two notorious rape and murder cases in the nearby countryside. After a 17-year-old confessed to one murder but not the other, the police asked Jeffreys to conduct a DNA test of the suspect. It revealed that he had given a false confession – making him, in Jeffrey’s recollection, “the first man ever proved innocent by molecular genetics.” The police then took blood samples of over 5,000 men from the nearby community and stumbled on the real killer when he was overheard bragging about getting a friend to submit a substitute sample.

NEW YORK’S DNA PROGRAM

Launched in 2000, New York’s DNA database holds 250,000 samples. Spitzer's proposal would immediately add 50,000 samples from prisoners, probationers and parolees, while hundreds of thousands more would be added over time from a broader array of newly convicted offenders.

The database is currently divided into two sections, a Forensic Index, which contains DNA samples taken from crime scenes, and a Convicted Offender Index. Supporters of DNA testing hope to collect as many samples of individual DNA as possible to compare to DNA taken at crime scenes. According to their logic, the likelihood of a crime scene “hit” goes up if there are more DNA samples in the Convicted Offender Index. The testing itself is quick and simple: Just a cotton swab dabbed at the individual’s mouth

At first, sampling in New York was limited to individuals convicted of sex crimes and some other felonies, but the law has since been amended to cover many more offenses. Currently, about half of all individuals convicted of a crime in New York are required to contribute a DNA sample. Spitzer’s legislation would extend testing to all convicted felony and misdemeanor offenders, though it would not include individuals who plead guilty to lower-level violations such as disorderly conduct. In addition, 50,000 samples from state prisoners, as well as individuals on probation and parole, would be added to the database.

A NEW TOOL FOR POLICE

Since it was introduced in New York, DNA sampling has emerged as an important tool in hard-to-solve cases like burglaries, in which, according to the New York Times, arrests are made in only about 15 percent of reported offenses. In 2004, a pilot program launched in Queens called Biotracks, which netted 23 suspects tied to 34 burglary cases in a nine-month period, according to the Times. It led to the arrest of one man, Robert Medina, who pled guilty to five burglaries after DNA on a scarf he left at a crime scene was matched to a sample taken from him after a previous felony arrest.

The same procedure can be used with sex offenses, which are also difficult to solve. In a recent case, DNA from a Queens man convicted on a drug-related charge was matched to a sample saved from a rape kit that included a taunting note left for the victim. As a result, he was found guilty of first-degree rape and second-degree burglary.

Speaking in 2006, Police Commissioner Kelly asserted that DNA testing had led to the arrests of 210 sex offenders. New York City. The technology spurred the elimination last year of the state’s five-year statue of limitation for rape cases.

Perhaps the strongest case for expansive DNA sampling comes from England, which, in the last decade, has embarked on the world’s most aggressive DNA gathering effort. The country’s DNA database maintains over 4 million samples, covering about 6 percent of the population, more than ten times the rate at which DNA samples are collected in the United States. The database has yielded close to 3,000 crime scene matches per month, according to NewScientist.com, including “hits for 15 murders, 45 rapes and sexual offenses and 2,500 car, theft and drug crimes.”

At the same time, DNA sampling can help prove the innocence of individuals wrongly convicted of a crime. The Innocence Project, which uses DNA to try to win the release of the wrongfully convicted, has helped exonerate 201 individuals in the United States, and 23 in New York State. Most recently, DNA testing was used to exonerate Byron Halsey, the New Jersey man who had served 19 years in jail for the murder of the seven and eight-year old children of Halsey’s girlfriend. DNA testing instead implicated a neighbor who had testified against Halsey during the trial. In a statement that shows the powerful impact of DNA, the victims’ mother said, “I knew Byron loved Tyrone and Tina. It didn’t make sense to me that he could have done this. I always had my doubts, but I didn’t know what to do about them. I am thankful that the DNA testing has identified who really did this to my children and that Byron is being released today.”

THE CIVIL LIBERTIES ISSUES

But along with its promise, any tool as powerful as DNA is bound to raise concerns as well. Some fear the technology can be misused, that DNA sampling is a slippery slope that will inevitably extend beyond a relatively small number of convicted offenders.

For evidence, some civil libertarians point to Britain. While the Spitzer proposal extends testing only to those convicted of crimes, however minor, in the United Kingdom the police take DNA samples from all those arrested. Since 2001, they can retain those samples even when the arrest results in an acquittal. And in 2004, the police received the authority to collect DNA from suspects, an even lower threshold than arrestees. The country’s database also includes samples from children under the age of 16, including two 12-year-old children who gave a DNA sample after they were accused of damaging a tree they were using to build a tree house.

While the large number of samples makes it more likely that police authorities can make a “hit” to DNA recovered at a crime scene, keeping samples from innocent people arguably violates the legal principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” As one civil libertarian said, “If your DNA is on the database it means that you are forever an automatic suspect for any crime in the future.”

Those who tend to dismiss arguments often draw an analogy to fingerprints– the criminal justice antecedent of DNA sampling. They are widely collected in the United States, private companies and government agencies use fingerprinting for security purposes, and consumers may soon be able to “unlock” cell phones, laptops and even their homes with fingerprint censors.

Why should New Yorkers be any more concerned about DNA sampling than they are about fingerprinting? One argument is that the information in a DNA sample is much more detailed, containing clues about an individual’s health and ethnicity. In the future, it might offer clues to an individual’s propensity to violence and criminal behavior. In light of this, some critics fear a science-fiction world where DNA sampling could convict individuals before they even commit a crime. Even Alan Jeffreys, who created DNA sampling, has been quoted saying that “as a geneticist I would greatly value the potential enormous power of the database for research, but it’s a gross infringement of civil liberties.”

MANAGING THE EVIDENCE

A less abstract argument raises the issue of whether the state’s already overburdened crime laboratories will be able to handle the increased numbers of samples. If not, evidence could be lost, mislabeled or used inadvertently to make false matches. In a press release critiquing the legislation, the New York Civil Liberties Union focused on what it calls the lax regulation of the state’s DNA laboratories. “Expansion of the databank will overload crime labs and undermine effective criminal investigation,” the statement said, and lead to “large backlogs in the processing of samples [that will] significantly delay the identification and apprehension of violent felons.”

In an op-ed published in June 2006 entitled “Think Before You Swab,” New York state Senator Thomas Duane raised a number of similar issues. He also asked whether an expansion the DNA database could lead to diminishing returns, citing statistics provided by the Division of Criminal Justice Services that fewer DNA “hits” resulted from expansions beyond a small number of felons. “Does [that] signal that adding genetic material from people convicted of lesser crimes has no positive impact?” Duane wrote. “Moreover, is it possible that increasing the number of samples will so overtax the system that the database will actually be less effective?”

It’s perhaps telling that the New York Civil Liberties Union centered its critique on the effectiveness of DNA sampling. The group may well have calculated that DNA sampling, which promises to solve crime and free the innocent at the same time, is too politically popular to take on directly. Or perhaps it shows an underlying confidence that the United States, which has a stronger tradition of civil liberties than Britain does, will be able to navigate the thorny trade-offs between exploiting the full potential of DNA sampling and protecting privacy rights.

In any case, one issue that DNA proponents and critics appear to agree on is the need to improve the state and city’s ability to process and analyze DNA, as well as other crime scene materials. Unfortunately, criminal justice authorities do not have a great track record on this score. Bronx resident Alan Newton, who served 22 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, is a good case in point. For a decade, police officials insisted that they could not find a rape kit that would allow for a test against Newton’s DNA. The kit, held in an enormous Queens warehouse along with over one million pieces of evidence, was finally found in its original 1984 storage bin.

Or take the example of Scott Fappiano, who spent 21 years in jail on a wrongful conviction for rape because key evidence was found only after an intensive two-year search. “It’s appalling that 21 states around this country have enacted preservation statutes for biological evidence, but New York has not,” the Innocence Project’s Peter Neufeld has said

Given that record, the key to ensuring public support for expanded DNA sampling may rest in more in New York’s ability convince the public it can use the technology effectively and responsibly than in the technology itself.

Aubrey Fox is project director of Bronx Community Solutions, aimed at changing the Bronx court system’s approach to low-level crime.

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Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/crime/20070521/4/2186

Sell the Buildings, Too

Sell the Buildings, Too
HOWARD HUSOCK



New York City Housing Authority ’s announcement that it would start to sell vacant land within the boundaries of its housing projects appears to signal the start of a new era in the city. It is, after all, an unprecedented step: historically, the Authority has been in the business of taking land — not selling it, and certainly not to private buyers, as planned.

But it’s not clear whether or not the sale of parking and vacant lots in Chelsea and East New York in order to raise $50 million is anything more than a stop-gap to allow the creaky NYCHA machine to keep going for a while. Instead, it should be the start of a wholesale re-examination of the financially troubled public housing system.

For those who complain that New York lacks “affordable housing,” it’s important to understand that the city has more subsidized housing of all kinds — especially public housing owned by NYCHA — than any other city in the country, both in total numbers and per capita.

New York’s 178,000 public housing units far outstrips that of runner-ups San Juan, which has 57,000 units, or Chicago which once had nearly 40,000 units but, after demolishing many of its most infamous high-rises, plans on retaining just 25,000.

NYCHA is a city-within-a-city in Gotham: there are more than 400,000 people who live in NYCHA-owned properties. This number is greater than the population of a city in the rest of the state — Buffalo’s population is less than 300,000.

Yet NYCHA’s real estate has been essentially frozen. As the city’s economy changes and neighborhoods change with it, public housing stands apart. The Ingersoll Houses in Brooklyn, for instance, were built for the shipyard workers of the Brooklyn Navy Yard — itself long gone and replaced by an industrial park with dozens of innovative small businesses.

That’s not all that’s changed. Originally, public housing was meant to be financially self-supporting. Government would finance construction — but working families would pay rents sufficient to maintain the buildings. It was thought that many would move up and out, as well.

Today, more than 40% of NYCHA households have been in their apartments for more than 10 years and fewer than half of NYCHA household heads are employed, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s data. The rent rolls aren’t nearly sufficient to cover the cost of maintaining aging structures.

The result is a financial crisis — a $225 million budget shortfall appears to have motivated the first-ever land sell-off. The benefits of 6,000 new apartments to be built on the land should not be minimized. But the larger problem of the “frozen city” is far more important in the long term.

The total real estate footprint of New York’s public housing projects is equivalent to the size of some 156 World Trade Center sites. The city can ill afford to declare so many sites in so many neighborhoods to be off limits to change.

Cities thrive, in part, by allowing their

real estate to be put to its highest and best use. In doing so, jobs and wealth are created — for all social classes, not just the rich. Setting aside land for those who earn low incomes is a deeply pessimistic policy — one that assumes there will always be a need for thousands of units of such housing.

Not only does such a system tie up a great deal of land with none of it on the property tax rolls, but also it requires a sprawling administrative and operational structure to keep it going, funded by a tax base depressed by the extent of public housing. Worse, it encourages continued poverty — by providing low-priced housing to the single-parent, female-headed families who dominate it — more than 70%, nationally.

It makes sense for the city to exit the public housing business in a gradual, humane manner. Selling off land could be a first step in that process. But it would be far better to start selling off whole buildings. The proceeds of the sales of buildings in hot real estate markets would do far more to help fund the existing system.

How to do it? As units become vacant, tenants from other buildings can move in. It is not unreasonable to pressure tenants, perhaps by raising the rent, to exit the system. This is the sort of turnover that happens in all neighborhoods; aging residents, faced with a decision as to whether it’s worth paying taxes on a big house, for instance, choose to make a move. NYCHA reports that more than 39,000 of its apartment units are what it calls “underoccupied units,” where the family size is less than the number of bedrooms. This newspaper’s suggestion of allowing public housing tenants to be given property rights to their apartments, which could then be sold, can help provide the incentive for movers.

The big picture is this: The public housing financial crisis is chronic, not passing. It is best solved not through a minor change akin to Lenin’s New Economic Policy, his brief flirtation with capitalism before a return to socialism. Instead, there must be a consolidation of the system in order to allow a gradual sell-off of property. Doing so will help spark real estate revitalization from Brooklyn to East Harlem to the South Bronx — and ultimately benefit all New Yorkers.

Mr. Husock, author of “America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake,” is vice

president for programs at the

Manhattan Institute.

BUILDING BOOM IN THE CITY

Danger & ripoffs are on the rise

How hot construction biz brings a black market, scams & death

BY BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Posted Sunday, May 27th 2007, 4:00 AM

The biggest building boom in more than 30 years has spawned a cadre of scofflaw developers in every borough who routinely violate building codes, flout zoning regulations and ignore basic construction safety, a Daily News investigation shows.

As a result, entire neighborhoods are being placed in danger, workers are being killed and injured in record numbers and the city is losing millions to a growing off-the-books construction economy.

The News investigation has uncovered:

Low-rise middle class neighborhoods battered and overwhelmed by the construction of high-rise condos for the wealthy.
Residents forced to flee their homes or pay massive repair bills because of shoddy and dangerous construction - often performed by contractors working on projects next door or nearby.
Abuses by architects and engineers in the self-certification program, where they attest that regulations have been met without an independent inspection.
Developers who ignore fines and penalties, or treat them as the cost of doing business.
Workers forced to work in unsafe conditions while being cheated of their rightful wages.


With permits for residential units more than doubling between 2000 and 2006, to 30,927, The News found sloppy oversight, regulations that encourage developers to sacrifice safety for speed and a seeming disregard for the legitimate complaints of ordinary New Yorkers.

The city's building boondoggle is being fed by a massive off-the-books construction industry that underpays workers and robs the city, state and federal governments of tens of millions in taxes.

Interviews with dozens of workers, union officials and industry experts reveal that much of the city's new housing is being built by nonunion workers, many of them undocumented immigrants paid in cash, well below the legal prevailing wage.

About 30,000 workers are illegally employed in the city's burgeoning residential housing sector, according to estimates by the Fiscal Policy Institute, a New York-based research group.

Nowhere is this shadow workforce more active than in city-subsidized housing, where only 5% of the workforce is unionized and most jobs go to the lowest bidder, encouraging contractors to shave wages and cut costs.

Hiring workers off the books shifts costs to taxpayers and law-abiding contractors and gives unscrupulous builders an unfair competitive advantage, especially in contracts awarded to the lowest bidder.

The underground construction economy cheats the government of no less than $85.3 million in payroll and personal income taxes, health insurance premiums and Medicaid costs each year, the Fiscal Policy Institute estimates.

The situation promises to worsen as the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development works to meet Mayor Bloomberg's goal of creating 92,000 affordable housing units in the next 10 years.

Enforcement of prevailing wage standards is spotty, and fines minuscule. In 2006, penalties for contractors caught underpaying workers amounted to only 14% of the underpayment, according to Public Interest Economics, a New York-based consulting group.

In December, the city controller's office investigated 20 buildings in the HPD's Tenant Interim Lease subsidy program. "The results were troubling to say the least," a high-ranking official said in a confidential e-mail obtained by The News.

"A large majority of the workers who were willing to talk to us said they were being paid substantially less than prevailing wages," the e-mail continued. "Only a few [sites] had sign-in sheets for the workers and none of the contractors would make payroll records available to our investigators."

The official also reported that "few of the workers had hardhats or other safety equipment."

In a rare prosecution, a contractor and the management company that hired it were penalized in March for cheating workers at an HPD-subsidized project out of almost $190,000 in wages.

But justice was not swift.

The work at 536-538 W. 163rd St. in upper Manhattan was done in the winter of 2003-04. None of the seven workers was owed less than $6,000, and two carpenters were owed nearly $48,000 each.

The contractor, Integrity Construction, was barred from doing business with the city or state for five years after an administrative law judge determined it had cooked its books to avoid paying prevailing wages.

The management company, Melcara Corp., which has been awarded more than $93 million in HPD contracts since 1990, was ordered to pay $350,000 in back wages, fines and penalties.

The job, which went to the lowest bidder, was worth $1.1 million, according to the controller's office. It was part of a $12 million contract Melcara won to supervise jobs at numerous subsidized housing sites, city records show.

Conditions were horrendous, according to workers.

"It was like working in Siberia, the gulag, bitterly cold," testified mason tender Dedan Kimanthi. "The contractor never provided heat [and] there was no bathroom on the site."

Kimanthi was paid $10 an hour. The prevailing wage for mason tenders is $29.85 an hour in straight pay plus $18.99 in benefits. Kimanthi was cheated of $17,299, investigators concluded.

"This set me back tremendously," said a carpenter who asked not to be identified. "I was no better off than those people in the street. I got in trouble for nonpayment of rent." Investigators determined the worker was owed $47,588.

Because off-the-books workers go uncounted, the vast army of shadow workers appears nowhere in official statistics.

However, "given the large increase in housing starts, it strains credibility to believe that Labor Department numbers accurately reflect construction employment," said Fiscal Policy Institute economist James Parrott.

Between 2000 and 2005, the number of new residential construction permits issued in the city increased by 110%. That should have triggered at least an 88% increase in construction employment, Parrott reported, citing industry standards. Yet official government sources put the job increase at only 48%.

"The employment increase should have been a projected 38,140 instead of the reported increase of 21,088," Parrott said. "That means about 17,000 workers are being paid off the books."

An additional 13,000 of the 26,500 workers reported in 2005 as being independent contractors are suspected of being full-time workers misclassified by employers to avoid paying them benefits, according to the institute.

bkates@nydailynews.com




Fatal gaps in the safety system

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BY BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, May 27th 2007, 4:00 AM

Thirty-one New York City construction workers were killed in 2006, the most in five years and nearly twice as many as in 2000, according to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Five workers have died on the job so far this year.

Virtually all the deaths occurred in buildings where city building codes were violated or federal safety regulations ignored.

Yet the number of inspectors for OSHA and the city Buildings Department, the first lines of defense for worker safety, remains woefully inadequate.

Since 2003, the number of OSHA compliance officers in the five boroughs has dropped from 51 to 44, according to spokesman John Chavez.

"OSHA is underfunded and understaffed," said Bill Kojola of the AFL-CIO's department of occupational safety and health. "With more and more sites to inspect, they are falling farther and farther behind."

And last fiscal year, the Buildings Department's 350-person inspection force was called upon to conduct a whopping 413,844 inspections and respond to nearly 118,000 complaints.

This year, the department has added 34 more inspectors. But the workload continues to grow.

Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster has conceded that the workload puts "strains on the department and on the communities its serves."





41 violations and $628,000 later...

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BY ROBERT GEARTY and BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Sunday, May 27th 2007, 4:00 AM
"Every piece of property he develops turns into a nightmare," city Councilman Tony Avella (D-Queens) said of rogue builder Thomas Huang.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in a series of stores and apartments Huang is building along Broadway and 51st Ave. in Elmhurst.

Area residents have filed 55 complaints against the project, and Huang has racked up 41 serious building violations. The city has slapped him with $54,050 in fines, but so far he has paid only $10,150, city records show.

One tangled piece of the project is an eight-story, 28-unit apartment house at 85-23 Broadway, where Huang told investors he was building three three-family houses. When they learned of the switch, the investors sued.

In court papers, Huang said he changed plans after miscalculating the amount of space needed to get permits.

Last December, Huang settled with the investors, agreeing to return $328,000 in deposits and an added $300,000. But that didn't solve his problems at the site.

Last May, as construction of the troubled apartment house continued, Huang was issued two violations for excavation that allegedly caused the driveway of the neighboring Reformed Church of Newtown to sink.

Additionally, at least two stop-work orders have been issued.

Elsewhere on the block, Huang was denied a certificate of occupancy for a new three-family home at 86-09 51st Ave. after he failed to obtain necessary permits. Faulty excavation there allegedly cracked the foundation of the house next door.

Homeowner Alvin Toy said he has spent more than $130,000 in legal fees fighting Huang. "We're at our wit's end," he said.

Huang did not respond to requests for comment.



To city, Karen Lieberman is the invisible woman

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BY BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, May 27th 2007, 4:00 AM
Karen Lieberman has lived in the same apartment for more than 25 years. But when the building's new owner began converting it to a single-family home, it was as if she did not exist.

Last May, developer Warren Malone received a permit to demolish the inside of his brownstone at 30 W. 85th St. The plans, certified by the architect but not confirmed by inspection, failed to show that Lieberman, the sole tenant, was living there.

Lieberman, who lives on Supplemental Security Income, has a lease for the first-foor rent-stabilized flat through Nov. 30, 2008.

Her plight underscores problems with the Buildings Department's much-criticized self-certification program.

In court papers, Lieberman charged that demolition caused damage to her ceiling and walls and sent water streaming through a light fixture. Workers slathered paint remover on the facade, filling her apartment with noxious fumes, she charged.

"I developed a cough and my eyes were red and swollen," Lieberman said. She had to be treated for allergic conjunctivitis, medical records show.

On Oct. 30, six days after granting him a single-family use permit, the Buildings Department cited Malone for "hazardous conditions" throughout the apartment.

Malone created a four-point tenant protection plan and signed an agreement to put Lieberman in a hotel and pay her $1,000 while he made repairs.

When she returned, cracks were still there and her sturdy wooden door had been replaced by "an improperly fitted metal door with a poor quality lock," according to court papers.

Malone's attorney, Joshua Price, charged that Lieberman is disgruntled because her prior landlord, a friend, had waived the rent for six years. Malone has sued Lieberman for nonpayment.

Lieberman's suit, meanwhile, was blocked in Manhattan Supreme Court after a judge agreed with the Buildings Department that she failed to take her fight first to the Board of Standards and Appeals.

While Lieberman ponders her next step, she continues to live in the middle of a construction site.

"The problem of self-certification is that it keeps the Buildings Department ignorant of potential safety problems," said Lieberman's attorney, Allega Chapman of MFY Legal Services. "Had the agency asked point-blank if a tenant lived in the building and if it had inspected, she might have been protected."

bkates@nydailynews.com

Queens developer is like one-man wrecking crew

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BY ROBERT GEARTY and BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Sunday, May 27th 2007, 12:08 PM
Nothing seem to stop developer Thomas Huang. Not his long record of violations of the city's building and zoning codes. Not numerous lawsuits. Not dozens of formal complaints.

His shoddy construction practices have wreaked havoc in Queens and even forced the evacuation of a city firehouse - not once but twice.

Huang's problems go back nearly two decades. Yet, like many dubious developers cashing in on the city's record construction surge, Huang continues to obtain permits to build.

In 1986, he acquired the RKO Keith's Theater in Flushing for $3.4 million and announced plans to build a movie complex, shopping mall and hotel.

But the city revoked the building permits in 1990 after parts of the theater's landmarked grand staircase were bulldozed. Later, the theater was torched in an arson fire that remains unsolved.

In 1997, Huang pleaded guilty to allowing some 10,000 gallons of heating oil to leak into the building. He was ordered to serve five years' probation, pay a $5,000 fine and clean up the spill. Five years ago, he sold the theater for $12.1 million.

In 1999, after he was sued by the state attorney general for irregularities at a Flushing housing complex he built, Huang was permanently barred from selling co-ops and condos in New York.

But he was not barred from putting up houses or apartment buildings.

Take Huang's since-abandoned project at 86-57 Grand Ave. in Elmhurst, Queens. Structural problems caused by faulty excavation forced the evacuation of the adjacent Ladder Co. 136 firehouse in December 2005 and January 2006.

After the second evacuation, the project manager, Thomas Cottone, 85, was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment for ignoring a stop-work order at the site and possession of a forged instrument for altering a building permit.

In a plea bargain, he admitted to the forged instrument charge and on April 25 was sentenced to five years' probation.

Owners of two adjacent properties sued Huang last year for causing damage to their buildings. That case is pending.

While building a house at 82-66 51st Ave., Huang's workers ripped off the gutters of the neighboring house, leaving only a foot between them, according to homeowner Luz Rodriquez, a retired Catholic nun.

"This was a detached house, now it's an attached house," she said.

Then there are the 11 houses Huang built at 34th Ave. and Union St. in Flushing.

The Buildings Department approved them as three-family homes in 2002, only to learn that Huang incorrectly listed the top floor as a mezzanine and built them so close together that the Fire Department could not gain access.

After the Board of Standards and Appeals revoked the certificates of occupancy in 2005, eight buyers, who paid between $500,000 and $600,000 for the homes, sued.

They settled last October after Huang promised to make necessary alterations.

Three other buyers sued in Brooklyn Federal Court, claiming they were defrauded of $321,000 down payments in a civil racketeering conspiracy led by Huang.

The case was privately settled in March.

bkates@nydailynews.com



The neighborhood killers

Homeowners rip overdevelopment and lack of city help

BY BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, June 17th 2007, 4:00 AM
The Daily News investigative series "Building Boom-doggle" prompted scores of e-mails, letters and phone calls from angry New Yorkers with overdevelopment horror stories of their own.

The series also has given a boost to reform legislation and extracted a promise of increased enforcement from the Bloomberg administration.

Many readers said they felt city bureaucrats gave them the brushoff, while others said the Buildings Department duly recorded their complaints and issued violations and imposed fines, but problems persisted.

Typical was an e-mail from Ed Jaworski, vice president of the Madison-Marine-Homecrest Civic Association in Brooklyn.

His group "has generated a construction Dumpster's worth of correspondence [to] Community Board 15, to the Board of Standards and Appeals, even to the mayor's office," Jaworski wrote. "We've spent thousands of hours in meetings and on the phone. But building and zoning regulations are being manipulated to change the character of neighborhoods, house by house, block by block."

Ann Marie Amodeo wrote that an unscrupulous developer undermined the foundation of her mother's house on 70th St. in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, damaging the wall and ruining the backyard when he demolished a building next door.

"Calls and formal complaints to the Buildings Department had little result," she wrote. "Under threat of a lawsuit, this builder eventually purchased my mother's house, but refused to pay market price."

Buildings Department spokeswoman Kate Lindquist said, "We take our enforcement responsibilities seriously, and will be announcing new enforcement initiatives in the near future."

She added that the department has boosted its inspection staff by 48% since 2002, and is increasing penalties for infractions.

Like homeowners in other city-subsidized buildings featured in The News series, Shanita Wells and about 20 of her Brooklyn neighbors are complaining about roof leaks, bad plumbing and crumbling stoops in front of the two-family houses they bought on Clifton Place in Bedford-Stuyvesant last year through the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

Their purchase agreements require them to live in the homes for 30 years or pay back about $160,000 in city subsidies.

"What should have been a dream is a nightmare," Wells said. "We are being ignored and don't know who to turn to."

Many building professionals confirmed The News' findings of widespread code violations and unsafe construction.

Bronx-based carpenter T.J. O'Connor wrote: "If the Department of Buildings exercised their power to not only issue violations but to enforce stop-work orders until fines are paid, the revenue collected from unscrupulous developers could be put toward hiring the needed inspectors."

Several readers added to the litany of complaints about the shoddy practices of architects and engineers who falsely certify that their work complies with building regulations and zoning codes.

But master plumber Robert Mengler mentioned another disturbing wrinkle.

"Master plumbers are also allowed to self-certify their work," he wrote. "There are certain licensed plumbers that have made lots of money by renting out their licenses. . . . The chances of this work being inspected is very, very, very low."

"Despite what the administration and the Buildings Department has said about dramatic changes, the DOB is in a perpetual state of chaos," said Councilman Tony Avella (D-Queens), chairman of the zoning committee and a member of the buildings committee. "They are not improving enforcement and insuring that construction is safe."

bkates@nydailynews.com


Anger rises along with bigger home in College Point

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BY BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, June 17th 2007, 4:00 AM

Norman Kara is at his wit's end.

He lives in a two-story attached house at 12-07 115th St. in College Point, Queens, and half of the building - not his half - is being transformed into a 2½ -story duplex by a new owner.

The two homes, mirror images of each other before the work began, share a wall and a walkway.

Since work began in May 2005, the new owner, listed in city records as Sasy Motti, has racked up 12 Environmental Control Board violations, nine of them recorded as "high severity."

Four of the citations were for "failure to provide adequate protection to adjacent property" - that is, Kara's home. Buildings Department records confirm that Kara's house was "damaged by rainwater" due to improper construction practices at the other part of the structure.

"My rear patio has collapsed, and my front walkway is cracked and sinking," said Kara, who has lived in the house with his wife and son for 11 years. "Work goes on in the wee hours of the night. The noise is deafening."

Kara and his neighbors have filed 53 formal complaints with the Buildings Department and rallied support from Councilman Tony Avella (D-Queens) and state Sen. Frank Padavan (R-Queens). But the work continues.

"Mr. Kara's half of the house is totally dwarfed by this," Avella said. "His quality of life is gone, and the economic value of his property is gone, too, unless he sells to a similar developer who will do the same thing, and that creates a domino effect for overscale development in the neighborhood. This is a serious problem throughout Queens and the city."

But Buildings Department spokeswoman Kate Lindquist said, "Inspectors have been to the site numerous times to ensure the builder is complying with the stop-work orders and to make sure construction is compliant."

"My house is ruined," Kara said. "If this is the sign of growth, then you can keep it."

Motti could not be reached for comment.



'Fines galore,' but eyesore lingers in Riverdale

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BY BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, June 17th 2007, 4:00 AM
For the past four years, the view from Irene Olsen's balcony has been the graffiti-covered, cinder-block shell of a house left half-completed next door.

A wall of her home and a side of the uncompleted property at 3190 Cambridge Ave. in Riverdale, the Bronx, are only 3 feet apart.

Rotting timbers frame nonexistent rooms. Warped plywood sheets cover what would be the second floor. Windows have been installed, but are broken. The site is littered with empty beer bottles, broken glass and construction debris.

A well-worn path through adjacent Ewen Park leads to the site, where a broken chain-link fence gives vandals easy access.

"Children of different ages hang out there after school," said Olsen, a widowed 85-year-old retired social worker. "On weekends, they are there until midnight. The kids break windows. You hear girls scream. The police told me not to go out."

Buildings Department records show permits were issued for work on the site in 2003 and 2005, but Olsen said no major construction has been done there for about four years.

She said she has complained via the 311 hotline and has called the 50th Precinct, the public advocate's office and Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who wrote a letter of complaint to the Buildings Department.

"Please be advised that one of our inspectors visited the site on 3/23/07 and a violation was issued for defective job site fencing," a department bureaucrat wrote Dinowitz on April 30.

The Buildings Department has slapped $24,000 in fines on the property since 2003, including one for $10,000, levied Nov. 9, for failure to maintain the chain-link fence that is supposed to surround the site.

"There are fines galore," Olsen said. "But what does anybody do about it? I have lived with this for four years."

None of the fines have been paid, Buildings Department records show.

"If the developer continues to neglect his duties to maintain a safe construction site, the city will step in and pursue demolition and bill him," department spokeswoman Kate Lindquist said.

The building owner, Frances O'Brien, could not be reached at phone numbers listed in city records.