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Welcome back to the program, ladies and gentlemen of the Bronx. A little weekend wrap-up to get you started this week. On to the news!
NY1’s Dean Meminger runs through the top Bronx stories of 2010: the Riverdale bombing attempt trial; the the anti-gay attacks attributed by police to the Latin King Goonies; Pedro Espada, Jr.’s trials, tribulations and, finally, primary loss to Gustavo Rivera; a borough-wide rise in violent crime; the deaths of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and announcer Bob Sheppard, as well as Supreme Court Justice Burton Roberts.
Police have made an arrest in the shooting of an off-duty police detective early Sunday morning in the Bronx’s Pelham Bay neighborhood. The detective, Richard Olmo, 43, was apparently trying in a dispute – over a minor fender bender or parking too close to another vehicle – outside of the Pelham Bay Diner when someone pulled out a gun and shot him in the backside. Olmo was released from Jacobi Hospital this morning.
Award-winning Latin jazz musician Arturo O’Farrill is teaching the next generation of Latin jazz artists at the Urban Assembly Bronx Studio School for Writers and Artists. Great Bronx quote from the Daily News article: “The Bronx is what’s left of the New York I grew up with – of policemen and teachers – of real working people,” O’Farrill said.
On Friday, a Bronx judge ordered LNR Property Corp. – the realty group that is overseeing 10 dilapidated Bronx apartment buildings that were bought and then abandoned by Milbank Real Estate – to cough up $2.5 million for repairs. The judge ordered the repair work in September, but issued a stay as LNR shopped the mortgages for the properties over the last few months. The City Council recently estimated that it would cost more than $26.6 million to fully rehab the buildings.
As part of its Neediest Cases series, the Times looks at a Burmese family making its way in the Bronx’s West Farms area.
With poverty and unemployment rising, some say the Bronx’sCommunity Board 7 could have used the minimum wage jobs that would have come with a new mall inside the Kingsbridge Armory. But the mall plan was killed in the City Council a year ago.
A couple that met in the Bronx and almost married here was reunited more than four decades later, thanks to Facebook.
An NYU study breaks down the city’s Dominican population, 40% of which lives in the Bronx.
A couple of Pedro Espada stories as the state senator continues to stay away from Albany during his final weeks in office:
The Post says he’s still collecting a pay check from his network of nonprofit health clinics, which Attorney General Andrew Cuomo accused him of using as his “personal piggy bank.” (This isn’t really news, we knew he was still getting paid from the health clinics, but it remains unclear how much compensation Espada’s receiving because he hasn’t been listed on the nonprofit’s last three tax forms. A source says criminal charges for Espada could come as soon as next month.)
And, finally, Albany Times-Union political bureau chief Casey Seiler says goodbye to absentee Espada in an opinion piece. At the end, he captures Espada in a good mood, reveling in the chaos he caused during the now infamous state senate “coup” of 2009.
