Gardner becomes an all star

#Gardner Becomes an All Star

By Howard Goldin

BRONX, NEW YORK, JULY 10- At the end of the fourth inning of the game between the Yankees and the Oakland Athletics, an announcement on the Public Address system of Yankee Stadium was made that Brett Gardner was selected to the American League All-Star team. 

Gardner was chosen to the 34 man roster by American league manager Ned Yost to replace them injured Alex Gordon. Previous to his selection on Thursday, Gardner was one of five players on the “Final Vote’ ballot for the final spot on the roster of the 2015 A.L. team.

Gardner will join teammates Mark Teixeira and DillenBetances on the American League squad for Tuesday’s game at the great American ballpark in Cincinnati. The announcement was followed  by the chanting of Gardner’s name throughout the ballpark, which the outfielder responded to with a wave of his hand. He called the reaction of the fans “awesome”.

Gardner expressed surprise by his selection, “I was surprised. It caught me off guard. I had no idea. There’s a lot of great outfielders in the American League.”

In addition to being surprised, he was very excited by what he stated could be his final opportunity to receive this honor, ‘I’m sure next week will be a lot of fun. I’m really excited about it. I’ll be 32 years old next month. I don’t know how many opportunities I’ll get. I’m very grateful.” 

Asked if he’s looking forward to wearing the All-Star uniform, Gardner joked, “I never had a jersey with my name on the back. I’m not saying the Yankees should change.”

Gardner’s play in recent weeks earned him serious consideration by the fans voting and by the American League manager. During the month of June, Gardner batted a superlative .351 (39 for 111) and 18 of his hits were for extra bases. His 27 runs scored in that month led the majors. 

His best performance of the six game homestand that ended on Wednesday afternoon came in the final game against Oakland. He blasted his 10th home run of the season on the first pitch of his at bat in the first inning. The homer accounted for the first run of the contest. The run was the 76th scored by the Yankees in the first inning of a game in 2015, the highest run total by any team in a single inning this season. The Yankees have compiled a mark of 25-9 when scoring in the first.

Gardner singled in the third and fourth frames, the only other innings in which they scored on Thursday; the game ended the homestand on a high note with a 6-2 win. His fine hitting has raised Gardner’s season batting average to .303.

Yankee manager Joe Girardi was very pleased by what he believes was a very well-deserved choice, “He’s [Gardner] so important to our team. I believe he deserved to go and now he’s going.”

#BrettGardner #AllStarGame #Yankees #Bronxnews

Pelham Bay News: Authorities Snuff Out $2M bootleg Smokes Ring

Pelham Bay News: Authorities Snuff Out $2M bootleg Smokes Ring: Authorities Snuff Out $2M bootleg Smokes Ring BRONX, NEW YORK, JULY 9- District Attorney Robert Johnson announced mu...

Authorities Snuff Out $2M bootleg Smokes Ring

Authorities Snuff Out $2M bootleg Smokes Ring

BRONX, NEW YORK, JULY 9- District Attorney Robert Johnson announced multiple indictments of 20 people and six corporations containing 1,345 counts regarding a major smuggling operation that brought more than 44,000 untaxed cartons of cigarettes from Virginia to the Bronx during a single five-month period in 2014 alone. The participants are accused of evading more than $2.978 million in New York State and City taxes. The total maximum tax penalty, for New York City and State combined, is more than $35,768,000.

The various defendants face State felony charges ranging from Enterprise Corruption, Criminal Tax Fraud, and Money Laundering, to New York City Administrative Code violations of the Cigarette Tax laws.

After a two-and-a-half-year multi-agency investigation, 19 men and one woman were charged following simultaneous arrests in New York, Virginia, Connecticut and New Jersey. The Bronx County grand jury indictments were unsealed with the Supreme Court arraignment of several of the defendants in Part 60, before Justice Steven Barrett.  The following defendants are named in one or more indictment:

Cigarette smuggling is big business.  It is estimated that, in New York State, 58 percent of all cigarettes sold are untaxed, and smuggled in primarily from Virginia. With per pack prices topping $11 and more, bringing in untaxed cigarettes is very profitable – New York state and city taxes add $5.85 to each pack.

It is alleged in the indictment that the boss, Mohamed Mustafa, headed the operation by acquiring cigarettes for distribution from Virginia, storing those cigarettes at 2118 Matthews Avenue in Morris Park and other locations in the Bronx, and by controlling the distribution of cigarettes to the New York City area without paying New York State or City tobacco taxes, thereby generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit proceeds for himself and other members of the enterprise. His lieutenant, Hiyad Chaib, is alleged to have assisted the criminal enterprise in all aspects of the operation, and would serve as the central contact for the employees and associates when Mustafa was away.

Mustafa and Chaib determined the New York-based distributors to whom they would sell cigarettes, the prices the

distributors had to pay for cigarettes, and the times and locations at which the distributors would exchange money for cigarettes, it is further alleged. They also controlled the storage facilities and both of them actively answered a “business line” to collect orders and arrange deliveries. Each week, almost 2,000 cartons of cigarettes (400,000 cigarettes) would pass through the enterprise costing the state over $100,000 in tax revenue. The total tax fraud is estimated to be close to $3 million; total maximum tax penalties, if the defendants are convicted, will reach nearly $36 million.

Indictment papers also describe how Mustafa and Chaib originally acquired the majority of the cigarettes they distributed in the Bronx from suppliers Rabih Saba and Moeen Khan, residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia, who owned and managed a chain of mattress stores (“The Mattress Place”) and dollar stores around Richmond, Virginia. Indeed, Saba and Khan used their Virginia businesses, in part, as collection and distribution centers for cigarettes purchased in Virginia with only the low Virginia cigarette tax, and thereafter controlled the distribution of

the cigarettes to the New York City area without anyone associated with the Enterprise paying New York State or City tobacco taxes for those cigarettes. They also used their business and personal accounts to transfer money from the Bronx and Manhattan to them in Virginia.

To generate said money, Saba and Khan are accused of forming a network of cigarette buyers in Virginia who would visit Costco, Sam’s Club, Wawa, and other retail sellers of cigarettes, to purchase cartons of cigarettes in a large enough quantity to make trafficking them to New York profitable. Saba and Khan arranged with Mustafa and Chaib for near-daily deliveries to New York. Some of the proceeds were also sent to a number of the defendants’ home countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Money seized from the operation totals more than $100,000.

Operation Smoke Brake is being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorneys W. Dyer Halpern, Jessica-Deanna Lupo, and Caitlin Carroll of the Arson/Auto/Economic Crimes Bureau, which is under the supervision of Counsel to the Investigations Division Mary Jo Blanchard, Bureau Chief William Zelenka and Executive A.D.A. Thomas Leahy.

#Cigarettes #BronxDA #Bronxnews

Pelham Bay News: Inmate charged with attacking social worker in Rik...

Pelham Bay News: Inmate charged with attacking social worker in Rik...: Inmate charged with attacking social worker in Rikers District Attorney Robert Johnson announced the indictment of 35-yea...

Inmate charged with attacking social worker in Rikers

Inmate charged with attacking social worker in Rikers

District Attorney Robert Johnson announced the indictment of 35-year-old Jonathan Hodgson in the brutal June attack on a Rikers Island medical worker.

Hodgson was arraigned in Bronx Supreme Court before Justice Joseph Dawson and pled not guilty to: assault in the first degree (Class B Felony); assault in the second degree (3 counts) (Class D Felony); assault in the third degree (Class A Misdemeanor) and resisting Arrest (Class A Misdemeanor). 

Hodgson is being held at Rikers Island’s George R. Vierno Center on an underlying Manhattan indictment for attempted murder in the second degree and assault in the first degree for a January, 2015 attack. On June 18^th, he stepped into the office where 69-year-old mental health clinician Ralph Atlas was working.  

Hodgson is accused of, without warning or provocation, pummeling the Corizon employee in the face and head, breaking the clinician’s jaw, fracturing his eye socket and nose, as well as causing other injuries for which the victim had to be hospitalized.        

Bail was set at $10,000 following the D.A.’s request for $250,000; Hodgson is to return to court on September 1, 2015, Part 77, Hall of Justice, 265 E. 161^st Street, Room 680. The defendant has asked to represent himself in Court.

If convicted of the charges, Hodgson faces up to 25 years behind bars.  The case against Hodgson is being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Ara Ayvazian of the Bronx D.A. Intake Bureau.  The charges in this indictment are merely an accusation and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.    

#RikersIsland #NYPD #BronxDA #Bronxnews      

Pelham Bay News: #Politics

Pelham Bay News: #Politics: Albany Session Recap #Politics 100 PERCENT By Robert Press BRONX, NEW YORK, JULY 2- Let’s recap this p...

#Politics

Albany Session Recap

#Politics

100 PERCENT

By Robert Press

BRONX, NEW YORK, JULY 2- Let’s recap this past session which came to an end on Friday June 26^th. 

There were several major items that had to be taken care of: Rent Regulations that had expires in mid June, The 421A Tax Abatement program, Mayoral Control of the NYC public school system, and some other legislation such as judicial reform, Mayor de Blasio's 3 MTA Board appointments (to be confirmed by the State Senate), and anything else that was not done due to the Dysfunction in the state legislature.

Taking rent regulations first, which was Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie's major item that he was concerned about, let's see how he did. Well rent regulations will be in effect for at least four more years, but the apartment vacancy decontrol level was raised from $2,500 to only $2,700, and not the $3,000 level that many NYC assembly members had wanted it to be increased to. New tenant protections, there were none announced other than the 2 mentioned in the previous sentence, so there must be no new tenant protection legislation that came from this past session. You can go to my blog at www.100percentbronx.blogspot.com to the June archive heading 'Statement from Senator Rivera on the end of Session. In his statement Senator Rivera states that he was deeply disappointed in the end result of this legislative session. Senator Rivera says that hardworking New Yorkers were used as political pawns, the failure to make significant changes in the rent regulation laws will result in the loss of almost 90,000 current rent regulated units, there was little effort to fix the broken 421A program, Charter and private schools have made out much better than the struggling (as Senator Rivera says, but failing as many of us still say) public schools, and that no criminal justice reform legislation was passed. If you go to the bottom of the blog posting there is a statement from Assemblyman Victor Pichardo which tell of how the rent regulations deal enhances tenant protection. So who is correct on the rent regulation issue, State Senator Gustavo Rivera or Assemblyman (and former chief of staff to Senator Rivera) Victor Pichardo.

Senator Rivera also fails to make mention of the State Senate request and approval with the State Assembly of a $1.3 Million property tax rebate for homeowners outside of New York City. So why were the homeowners of the Bronx, who need this tax rebate more than the millionaires living outside of New York City, left out? Perhaps Assembly Speaker Heastie can answer that question to the struggling homeowners in his assembly district, since I know he will not answer that question if I was to ask it of him, and to Mr. Mike Whyland Press Person to Assemblyman Heastie when will I get my interview of Assemblyman Heastie? We can do it here in this newspaper if you would like you already know some of my questions, and right now the answers are 'NO COMMENT” by Assemblyman Carl Heastie. Perhaps I should ask someone like Marcia Kramer of WCBS T.V. to take this over from me, after all she did some great reporting of former State Senator Pedro Espada Jr.

The new Marriott Hotel at the Hutch Metro Center officially opened last week, and there are photos on my blog of the event. This new Marriott hotel is owned by Simone Development, and is a franchise of Marriott International. It was 

said that a short distance from the hotel (about 250 feet) that the new Metro North Morris Park station will be built in a few short years, and that travel from this new Marriott Hotel to midtown Manhattan will take less than 30 minutes. It was said that the hotel is currently operating at near capacity since its unofficial opening on Mother’s Day.

Lastly, no one with any ties to Community Board 8 had anything to do with the decision of the Kingsbridge National Ice Center at the Kingsbridge Armory located just outside of Community Board 8 in the Kingsbridge Heights section of the Bronx. It seems odd to this columnist that Councilman Fernando Cabrera has chosen as his representatives to the KNIC Community Advisory Council three people from the Riverdale area of Community Board 8, including the former Vice-Chair of CB 8 Maria Khurry who lives in Riverdale. One would have to question that since Councilman Cabrera has chosen three people from CB 8 including its former Vice-Chair, why then did Councilman Cabrera not insist that Community Board 8 be a part of the KNIC process. It kind of makes you wonder what the priorities of Councilman Cabrera are. The Kingsbridge Armory lies entirely in Community Board 7, and Community Board 7 was the only community board involved in the KNIC process. Why now are people living in Community Board 8 being brought into the process, and why not current CB 8 members?

If you have any political information that you want to share or have checked out, any comments about this column, or would like to have an event listed or covered in this column or on my blog you can e-mail us at 100percentbronxnews@gmail.com or call 718-644-4199 Mr. Robert Press.