Officials Quickly React to Possible Post Office Closings

Howard Beach, Ridgewood Among Locations Eyed

By Conor Greene

After announcing that 53 post office stations across the city were being considered for closure, including branches in Howard Beach and Ridgewood, the United States Postal Service has reduced that list to 14 locations in the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens.

Faced with a sharp drop-off in business, in part due to e-mail, the USPS initially announced that nearly 700 branches nationwide were being studied for possible closure. Under that plan, 16 Queens post office branches were in jeopardy, including Station B on 159th Avenue in Howard Beach and the Fresh Pond Road branch in Ridgewood.

Other area offices that were being considered under the plan included Astoria, Long Island City, East Elmhurst, College Point, Jackson Heights and Corona. Word of the potential closures quickly spread to local officials who vowed to fight back against the plan.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Forest Hills) blasted the USPS for basing its analysis on the number of other post offices within a five-mile radius and for failing to discuss the closure plan with local community leaders. The USPS now says that no final decisions regarding closures will be made before October and the public will be given the chance to weigh in on the plan before then.

“New York is a city of neighborhoods and at the center of each community is a post office,” said Weiner. “The USPS is mailing it in if they think we will stand by while they shut us out of essential services New Yorkers rely on." After the USPS announced the scaled back plan, Weiner added: “The way the USPS has released information in dribs and drabs, it’s no wonder that they have been losing business. If their intention was to raise alarms, what they’ve really done is raise questions about their management.”

The plan to close Station B, which would have forced customers to use the branch at Cross Bay Boulevard and 160th Avenue, was blasted by Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) and Community Board 10 Chairwoman Betty Braton.

“The post office near Coleman Square… is a vital lifeline for our area. Without this post office, residents would have to travel a great distance to access postal services,” the councilman said in a statement. “The lack of adequate transportation in the area, combined with the significant distance to the nearest alternative post office… would place an undue burden on residents.”

Braton recalled a similar fight to keep Station B open nearly a decade ago, and urged local residents to use that branch to justify its continued operation. “Station B serves a need for people in Howard Beach for whom it is difficult to get to Cross Bay Boulevard,” said Braton. “A number of years ago the Postal Service tried to close Station B. At that time the effort was stopped because the community rallied together to ensure that Station B was used [enough] to stay open. It looks like once again we need to make a conscious effort to ensure that all of us are using it.”

In Ridgewood, having two branches is necessary in order to serve the demands of the community, which includes a large immigrant population that uses the UPSP, said Community Board 5 District Manager Gary Giordano. “I think that considering the size of the Ridgewood population, having two post offices is probably necessary, since you’re talking about considerably more than 60,000 people living here,” he said. “To have two branches doesn’t seem like a waste. Myrtle is always packed and I’m told that Fresh Pond Road, for a portion of the day, is very busy.”

Despite a 2-cent increase in the price of stamps and cost saving measures including staff cuts, the USPS is facing a loss of as much as $7 billion this fiscal year. In response to declining revenues, Postmaster General John Potter has asked Congress for approval to reduce deliveries from six days a week to five.

The Postal Service was added to the Government Accountability Office’s list of troubled agencies, which determined, “Every major postal policy, from employee pay to days of delivery, to the closing of postal facilities must be on the table. Without major changes, the day will soon come when the Postal Service will be unable to pay its bills.”

Last year, the number of pieces of mail delivered fell 9.5 billion to 203 billion items. That number is expected to drop by another 28 billion items this year. While the list of branches eyed for possible closure has been reduced, USPS officials said as many as 300 more locations could be added.

Too Little to Late for Cord Meyer? Maybe Not

By Steve Tiszenkel

It’s old news by now, but after years of panic by old-school locals, the charming Cord Meyer section of Forest Hills may have caught a major break. The story is familiar to any regular reader of Queens media. For decades Cord Meyer, a sizable chunk of the neighborhood starting north of Queens Boulevard and chopped off unceremoniously by the Grand Central Parkway, has been a bastion of middle-class serenity in a part of the borough often dominated by six-story brick apartment blocks, attached houses on tiny concrete lots and exhaust-choked thoroughfares.

It doesn’t look like Queens, and yet it looks exactly like Queens, a testament to the impressive variety of urban and suburban landscapes easily encountered in New York’s most diverse borough. Cord Meyer doesn’t look poor, but it doesn’t look rich, either. In the shadow of posh Forest Hills Gardens, which has the air of an exclusive Westchester or Connecticut town, it feels a little like a Nassau County suburb—one of the old inner-ring ones, maybe founded by Brooklyn émigrés in 1921 and home to generations of kids who left to become commodities traders and punk rockers. That’s sort of what Cord Meyer is, only with the subway at its feet and the feverish immigrant energy of a place like Corona just a couple of miles down the road.

When the mid-century woodframe houses — gorgeous in their simplicity and situated at the back of lawns that would make Daniel Stern as an adult Kevin Arnold wax nostalgic—started to come down, it was understandable that the people who had grown up in Cord Meyer panicked. The culprits were mostly Bukharians, immigrant Jews from Uzbekistan who had targeted Forest Hills and adjoining Rego Park as their refuge in a country, a state, a city, a borough, a neighborhood where countless of their coreligionists had come before. When they got there, like tens of millions of starry-eyed immigrants before them, they found that maybe the children and grandchildren of their forerunners weren’t quite as hospitable as they’d hoped. The sticking point was a cultural propensity that perhaps they hadn’t even realized they had back in their impoverished post-Soviet homeland: the desire to build huge, gaudy houses on modest lots, all gleaming metal gates and vulgar stonework, those Wonder Years lawns paved over in favor of gargantuan brick-and-cement driveways.

The Bukharians had the momentum, but the old-timers still had the power. Somehow, some way, they had to stop the teardowns. Some made noise of a historic district, but let’s be honest—it was a stretch to call Cord Meyer “historic,” no matter how many people made it a repository for their hopes and dreams. Finally the politicians came up with an idea so simple, it must have taken years to conjure up: They rezoned the area to favor homes smaller in footprint and height, with an actual yard, grass and all, required by law. It was a big, bold step that no Cord Meyer lifer could fail to admire. But was it too late?

Conventional wisdom said yes — the area was too far gone, the towering McMansions, now grandfathered into a city-mandated low-key neighborhood, forever scarring what was once a valuable slice of Americana, Queens-style. “Cord Meyer Area is a Lost Cause,” blared one representative subject line on my Queens Central forum. And when those zoning regulations got passed, I found it hard to get excited. Too little, too late, I thought — the city might as well have left the neighborhood to the bulldozers and paint-by-numbers architects, with their budgets so large and ideas so small.

But I took a long walk around Cord Meyer recently. You know what? It’s still beautiful. It’s still charming. And maybe, just maybe, now that their era is past, the big, ugly palaces add a layer to the neighborhood that make it more interesting and unique. Now that the McMansions are no longer Cord Meyer’s future, they’ve become more a part of its past and present. They remind us of the neighborhood’s history and the heated battles they inspired. What I found on my walk was that I love the area as much as ever—and if I don’t love the new construction, at least I don’t hate it anymore. Somehow, it fits.

Cord Meyer, the old Cord Meyer, was never going to be a historic district. Neither was the Cord Meyer of the newcomers’ dreams, the Cord Meyer that never was. But what we accidentally got, this fascinating blend of old and new, the awkward collision of two generations aspiring to find their American dream? One day, we might see that as history.

The writer is the host of the Website Queens Central. Log on to queenscentral.com to read more about Forest Hills and Central Queens.

"Hero" Cab Driver Admits to Attempted Rape

An Elmhurst cab driver who was involved last year in a plot to abandon a baby has pleaded guilty to the attempted rape of a 23-year-old passenger in March.

Klever Sailema, 46, of 41st Avenue was arrested in March after the woman told police he tried to rape her in the backseat of his cab on March 2 near the area of 28th Avenue and 37th Street in Astoria. The victim hailed the cab at about 1 a.m. and fell asleep before awaking to find Sailema on top of her with her pants and underwear pulled down. She began screaming and punching Sailema, before grabbing his hack registration and a photo of him and fleeing the vehicle.

The victim was taken to a local hospital where she was treated for injuries sustained during the attempted rape. Sailema was arrested and held in jail on $50,000bail for the past four months before pleading guilty last week to attempted first-degree rape. Acting Queens Supreme Court Justice Joseph Grosso indicated he would sentence Sailema to five-and-a-half years in state prison and seven years post-release supervision in August.

As a convicted sex offender, Sailema will have to register with the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, which will place his name in the Sex Offender Registry database.

“The offense to which the defendant has admitted is a crime of violence that poses a serious threat to public safety and, as such, warrants punishment by a prison term,” said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Sailema made headlines in February 2008, when he was called a hero after dropping off a six-month-old baby at a Corona firehouse. He told authorities that a passenger had left the girl in the backseat of his cab, but later admitted to being involved in the plot to abandon the baby. Charges against Sailema in that case were eventually dismissed.

Brazen Car Theft Ring Dismantled

Luxury Vehicles Driven Off Dealer Lots

By Conor Greene

Members of a car theft ring that stole luxury vehicles off the parking lots of local dealerships – often exiting through holes cut in the chain link fences – were arrested after a nine-month joint probe between the NYPD and Queens District Attorney.

Eight individuals, including a middle school assistant principal from Brooklyn, were arrested as a result of a nine-month investigation dubbed “Operation Lockbox,” announced Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. The individuals were indicted on charges involving the theft of 16 late model, high-end cars worth more than $400,000.

The majority of the vehicles, which included 2008 model BMWs, Mercedes Benzs and Lincolns, were stolen right off the parking lots of major auto dealerships. The vehicle’s identification numbers were changed or altered before they were resold.

According to the charges, Melvin Pinckney, 54, of Brooklyn, stole the vehicles from dealership parking lots in Queens and Long Island with the help of alleged ring members David Jimenez, 40, and Alexander Gill, 34, both of Brooklyn. The majority of the vehicles were taken from Recon Motors on 14th Avenue in Whitestone, which is a storage facility where numerous local dealerships store their excess inventory.

After driving the vehicles off the lot, often through large holes
cut in the dealership’s fence, the thieves drove the cars to various locations, such as a parking garage on Eldert Lane in Brooklyn and the vicinity of 78th Street and 153rd Avenue in Queens, where they were kept until they were sold.

Members of the ring including Eddie Olivera, 38, of the Bronx and Lisele Jackson, 54, who is a teacher and assistant principal at MS 61 in Brooklyn, allegedly purchased and traded stolen vehicles with Pinckney. In addition, Trevlyn LaTore, 35, of Hempstead is accused of operating a tagging operation out of a single-car garage at 149-19 133rd Avenue in Queens, where ring members brought cars to have their vehicle identification numbers altered or forged.

“A sweeping nine-month investigation that utilized both court-authorized wiretaps and traditional surveillance has dismantled a loosely knit auto theft ring that specializes in stealing luxury automobiles,” said Brown. “For such thieves, an automotive dealership represented the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They could leisurely window shop for the exact makes and models of the cars they wanted and then, under the cover of darkness, steal them.”

Among the victimized dealerships were several from Long Island, Brooklyn and New Jersey, as well as Hillside Honda in Jamaica, Queensboro Toyota in Woodside, Bayside Chrysler Jeep on Northern Boulevard and DiBlasi Ford in Corona.

“This successful operation is emblematic of why car thefts in New York City, including Queens, have plummeted in recent years,” said NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Pinckney was ordered held on $100,000 bail on charges including third and fourth degree grand larceny. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted. Co-conspirators Jimenez, who was ordered held on $50,000 bail, and Gil, ordered held on $25,000 bail, both also face up to 15 years. Jackson was reassigned from his Department of Education position, which comes with a $96,405 salary, following his release.

Corona Man Accused of Molesting Girl

By Conor Greene

A 50-year-old man who works at a Corona preschool has been charged with sexually molesting a 9-year-old girl for whom his wife babysat.

Jose Duran, of 99-18 41st Avenue, who is a custodian at the Therese Cervini Head Start Program on 104th Street, was arrested last week on charges of first-degree sexual abuse, second-degree sexual conduct against a child and endangering the welfare of a child. If convicted, he faces up to seven years in prison.

“The defendant is accused of turning a young child’s visits with her babysitter into a terrifying sexual ordeal that not only robbed her of her innocence but will forever soil her childhood memories,” said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, who called the charges “very disturbing.”

According to the charges, the defendant sexually abused the girl in his apartment on multiple occasions between November 1, 2008 and this past March 30. District Attorney Brown is now asking anyone with additional information or who believes that they may have been a victim to contact his Special Victims Bureau at (718) 286-6505.

Duran allegedly warned the victim not to tell anyone, and the actions didn’t come to light until the victim told a guidance counselor that she had been sexually abused after attending a puppet show at her school about sexual abuse.

Following Duran’s arrest, Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens immediately suspended him, according to a spokeswoman. While the alleged victim doesn’t attend Therese Cervini, the agency’s early childhood administrators are available to address any concerns parents might have.

“Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens takes allegations of sexual abuse against any staff member very seriously,” the spokeswoman said in a statement. “Our primary concern is the safety of the children in our care. Prior to employment, all staff working with or near children must undergo rigorous background checks. Once employed, all staff must take mandated sexual abuse and child abuse training.”

Criminal checks are performed on all staff members and are rechecked every two years. Duran’s last criminal check was completed in January, according to the spokeswoman. He has worked at the program for more than ten years, cleaning the classrooms daily after the children were dismissed.

“Our children were never left unattended,” the spokeswoman said. “Thankfully, there have been no incidents involving our children.”

The program is operated by Catholic Charities Neighborhood Services, Inc., a subsidiary of Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens.

Nusing Home Employee Convicted of Sex Attack

A Corona man has been convicted of sexually molesting a 64-year-old Alzheimer’s patient at a Flushing nursing home where he worked, authorities announced. He now faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced next month.

Juan Tavares-Nunez, 55, of 33-41 104th Street was convicted last Wednesday of first-degree criminal sexual act and endangering the welfare of an incompetent person after a one-week jury trial. Following the verdict, Supreme Court Justice Robert C. Kohm revoked the defendant’s $250,000 bail and ordered him remanded into custody until he is sentenced on March 5. He will also be required to register as a sex offender and submit his DNA to the nationwide database.

According to evidence established at trial, Tavares-Nunez, while working as a porter at Cliffside Nursing Home on Graham Court in Flushing, entered the room of a bedridden Alzheimer patient - who is completely dependent on others for daily activities - and sexually molested her on the afternoon of July 27, 2007. The crime came to light when the defendant’s supervisor observed the incident and reported it. Tavares-Nunez, who worked at Cliffside for about nine years, was immediately fired.

“The defendant stands convicted of committing a particularly heinous crime against one of our most vulnerable citizens,” said Brown. “A nursing facility should always be viewed as a patient’s home away from home. To force anyone to endure such a traumatic incident – especially one at such a fragile stage in their life – is beyond moral comprehension.”

The investigation was conducted by the NYPD’s Queens Special Victims Squad and was prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorney Dianna L. Megias, of the DA’s Special Victims Bureau.

Wishing a Sweet Year to All!

By Steve Tiszenkel

Walk up 108th Street in Forest Hills from Queens Boulevard to the LIE and you'll see a neighborhood change before your eyes. Starting from the exhaust-clogged hustle and bustle of the Boulevard of Death, you pass grand prewar apartment complexes with white-railed balconies and sprawling lawns, then lower-key brick residences that eschew ornamentation, before you get to “Bukharian Broadway,” the Central Asian shopping mecca where a lone Mexican takeout joint stands out for holding limited Uzbek appeal. Finally, as the shopping peters out, you get to some decreasingly grand apartment blocks capped off by the long-controversial Forest Hills Houses projects, before one of Queens' most-desired neighborhoods is cut off suddenly at the expressway overpass. On the other side of the divide is working-class, heavily Hispanic Corona, where many of the residents on the south side of the LIE dare not tread.

You'll see a lot of differences on that walk. But you'll also see one major similarity. From Queens Boulevard to the LIE more than a mile later, synagogue after synagogue after synagogue appears on the landscape. From old-school Ashkenazi to new-school Bukharian, Google Maps counts no fewer than five centers of Jewish worship along the relatively short stretch. That’s an average of one every 4.6 blocks, and that doesn’t even count the prominent Y—the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, that is, not the Village People kind.

108th Street may be Forest Hills’ Jewish axis, but it’s hardly the only place local Jews flocked this week to ask God to forgive their transgressions for another year. Throughout the neighborhood every imaginable subgroup of Jews is represented. There are houses of worship Conservative, Reform and Orthodox—that’s both regular Orthodox and Modern Orthodox, thank you very much—for the plain-vanilla Jews who have been here for the better part of a century and for Georgian Jews who poured in after the fall of the Soviet Union. All in all, there are better than a dozen synagogues in Forest Hills alone. Add in adjacent Rego Park, Kew Gardens and Kew Gardens Hills and, well, that’s a lot of minyans.

Forest Hills has been a Jewish population center for years. In the first half of the 20th century, European immigrants and their children made their way from the tenements of the Lower East Side to greener pastures, where the new subway line could whisk them away to their city jobs and back to their more-idyllic life in the Borough of Homes. Even as prestigious Forest Hills Gardens banned them, they settled just outside its limits, in the ranch houses and six-story apartment buildings that sprung up with the influx. They opened shops and supermarkets, restaurants and, of course, synagogues.

Their children grew up and, as children are won't to do, moved away—many to the suburbs north and east of Queens, where they found houses were bigger and better and their new-found wealth was more easily flaunted. This phenomenon wasn’t unique to Forest Hills, but another one was: over the years, Israelis, Iranians, Russians, Uzbeks and more flooded in to replace them. According to a 2007 article in The Jewish Week, more than 100,000 Jews from all over the world make their home in Forest Hills today. It isn’t a city, but if it were, it would be one of the biggest outside Israel.

This is the week that Jews everywhere celebrate a new year—it’s 5769, which by my count is at least a few thousand up on the secular world. They dip apples in honey in the hope that a sweet year is to come, and more of them will do it in Forest Hills than pretty much anywhere else. But truth be told, in Forest Hills, Jewish life is always pretty sweet.

The writer, Steve Tiszenkel is the host of the Website, Queens Central. Log on to queenscentral.com to read more about Forest Hills and surrounding neighborhoods.

Man to be Sentenced for Brutal Park Muggings

String of Attacks Killed One, Left Another in a Coma

By Conor Greene

A Queens teenager will be sentenced next month for his role in a series of violent muggings in Flushing Meadows Park which left one man dead and another in a coma.

Yovanni Rivera, 19, who was living on the streets of Corona at the time of the robberies, will be sentenced on October 6 after pleading in Queens Criminal Court last week to second-degree murder and second-degree attempted murder. He will likely receive a sentence of 25 years to life, according to District Attorney Richard Brown.

An accomplice in several of the robberies, Marcos Polanco, 19, of 43rd Avenue in Corona, pled guilty to first-degree robbery in March and is expected to receive 20 years in prison when he is sentenced next Friday, said Brown.

As part of a pattern of muggings in late 2006 that left residents shaken, Rivera approached Carlos Flores, 40, of Ridgewood as he was walking alone through the park on December 4 and robbed him of $20 cash and a MetroCard before hitting him numerous times with and legs and gashes to the back of his head.

The body of Flores, an immigrant from Ecuador, was found the following morning half-submerged in a park pond near the Long Island Expressway.

In the second brutal attack, Rivera and Polanco approached 33-year-old Ja Woo Park while he was jogging near the Unisphere on the evening of December 25. The men punched, kicked and stomped him, causing severe head trauma before robbing him of cash and the keys to his 2007 Honda van.

Park, a student from Little Neck, was not identified until several weeks after the attack before his family members, who were in South Korea at the time, returned home to Queens and identified him. Park remains in a coma, and under the plea agreement Rivera won’t get additional prison time if his victim dies.

The break in the case came after investigators linked the Honda, found torched on the Horace Harding Expressway, back to Park through the registration. Rivera was badly burned while setting the vehicle on fire, according to authorities. Polanco was arrested at his home after being linked to the crimes after he used the victim’s credit cards.

“The defendant was involved in a string of brutal muggings in and around Flushing Meadow Park that left one man dead and another severely injured and in a coma,” said Brown. “The defendant’s admission of guilt ensures that he is held responsible for his actions and that he will serve a lengthy prison sentence.”

Police say Rivera was known as “Nyquil” because of his ability to knock somebody out with a single punch. The defendants told authorities that the robbed the victims for food money. They were initially charged in four attacks, but were believed to be responsible for as many as ten that took place in the park, including several using the machete.

“Residents of our community should not have to fear being brutally attacked or robbed by thugs whenever they enter one of our parks,” said Brown after the men were arrested. “Those who would commit such heinous crimes are put on notice that my office will vigorously prosecute cases involving attacks on park-goers to the fullest extent of the law.”