Reported and Produced by Eilf Ince and Rania Zabaneh.

The boulevard is celebrating this year its 100th anniversary. (A. Baez/Bronx Ink)

In a push to move preservation plans forward, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, together with the Bronx Borough President’s office, initiated talks with  residents along the concourse  in hopes of putting to rest concerns about the landmark status and what it will mean for residents along the concourse today.

The proposed district covers East 153^rd to East 167^th streets, but also encompasses stretches of Walton and Gerard Avenues on either side of the thoroughfare “in order to give the project a sense of place.”  The zone comprises approximately 73 properties, including a significant number of Art Deco and modern apartment buildings and institutional structures, two parks and two already  designated New York City landmarks: the Bronx County Building and the Renaissance-inspired Andrew Freedman Home for the elderly.

The plan would mean the commission could regulate any changes to a building’s façade and would promote projects that restore buildings to their prewar charm, said the commission’s executive director Kate Daly.  While property-owners will have to request permission from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission before initiating work on the exterior of a building, they are promised a short waiting period for approval, Daly said.  She said she guarantees that work can commence quickly, as 95 percent of permits are issued on a staff level.

1150 Grand Concourse, known to Bronxites as the 'Fish Building,' to be designated historic landmark by year's end. (A. Baez/Bronx Ink)

Cynthia Cox, a longtime resident of the Bronx and one of fewer than two dozen residents who attended the meeting, complained that little public notice was given about last night’s meeting.   She said the commission should do a better job of sharing information in ways that are accessible to all residents and in languages other than English.  Sam Goodman, an urban planner at the Bronx Borough President’s office who supports the landmark status, said that there would be further opportunities for the community to get involved in the decision.

Goodman, a resident of the concourse whose family saw the golden years of the neighborhood in the early 20^th century, also expressed concerns over stores that have taken up space on ground-floor apartments and are an eyesore to the aesthetic elegance of a residential street.  The shops are in breach of zoning laws established in the 1980s, which prohibit opening stores in many areas of the boulevard and limit signs to 12 square feet, said Goodman.  Daly assured him that if the concourse became a historic district, these violations would be addressed.  She advised that residents call 311 to report current zoning violations.

Originally designed by French engineer Louis Reiss to be the main road connecting Manhattan to the Bronx, the concourse enjoyed a period of growth as an influx of working-class immigrants, mostly European and Jewish, arrived in search of affordable housing.  During the 1980s, economic hardships stripped away much of the luxury of the earlier part of the century.

Over the past 20 years the area around the concourse has seen renewed interest in its prewar architecture and renovations to its parks, streetlights and even its traffic patterns.  Such renovation projects have heightened fears of increased rent for the thousands of Bronxites living in the proposed designated areas.

Marjo Benavides, an agent at Ariela Heilman Real Estate, agrees that the designation of the boulevard as a historic landmark would make the neighborhood more attractive.  “People might become more interested,” she said.

Representatives of the N.Y.C. Landmarks Preservation Commission say that while they have no jurisdiction over the use or sale of buildings, they do not foresee an increase in taxes or rent.  “There will be no direct impact on the residents,” Daly said.

The Grand Concourse may become a historic landmark (A. Baez/Bronx Ink).

Morgan Powell, a Bronx resident and history buff, is not completely sold on the idea yet.  He said he feels that the neighborhood has seen an extensive evolution in the past 20 years alone with the development of co-ops and wealthier families moving in.  A historical designation could exacerbate anxieties for residents in the middle-lower to lower income brackets who don’t want to get priced out.

Ed Garcia Conde, lifetime resident and self-declared Mayor of Melrose, praised the efforts of the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission.  Garcia Conde, a blogger and real estate agent, believes that the grants could provide the financial incentive property owners need to fix buildings in a way that honors the history of the boulevard.  Grants ranging from $5,000 to $20,000, in addition to tax credits, will be made available to homeowners and landlords to make improvements, said commission representatives.

The Grand Concourse has already been recognized on a state and national level for its historical significance, and the N.Y.C. Landmarks Preservation Commission hopes to see it designated officially as a historic site by the end of the year, pending review by the City Council  in June.

“We’re at an interesting point in our history,” he said of the neighborhood he calls home,“We’re going fittingly to the grandeur we once had.”

]]> http://bronxink.org/2010/03/12/5538-centenarian-boulevard-merits-preservation-commission-says/feed/ 0 http://bronxink.org/2010/03/11/5478-man-who-killed-mother-and-brother-gets-40-years/ http://bronxink.org/2010/03/11/5478-man-who-killed-mother-and-brother-gets-40-years/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:30:19 +0000 Lynsey Chutel http://bronxink.org/?p=5478 Lamar Platt will spend the next 40 years of his life in a state prison – 20 years for killing his mother and 20 more for killing his younger brother.

“The defendant has brutally murdered his own mother, Marlene, and his own brother Nashan,”  Assistant District Attorney David Birnbaum said at today’s sentencing. “And chopped up their bodies, and unceremoniously threw them into the Harlem River.”

The Harlem River, where Lamar Platt threw his mother's and brother's bodies (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Platt’s lanky 6-foot-2-inch frame was clad in a bright orange Department of Corrections jumpsuit when he entered the courtroom in Bronx State Supreme Court this afternoon for the sentencing.

The twisted cornrows and neat goatee he sported on his MySpace page at the time of the murder, Nov.  18, 2007, had been replaced by a closely shaven head and thick full beard. During the hearing Platt sat quietly with his shoulders taut as his hands were cuffed in front of him. As the sentence was read, he simply stared at the floor, barely grimacing.

It was Platt’s 65-year-old grandmother Elveda who first made contact with the police.  She grew concerned after she was unable to get in touch with her family over the phone from her home in Washington, D.C. She had not spoken with her 42-year-old daughter, Marlene, and her grandsons, Nashan, 22, and Lamar, 26, for days. Platt  had succumbed to a psychotic episode that led him to shoot his mother and brother and carve up their bodies, according to his lawyer, Amy Galacchio, and his social worker, Mishka Vertin.

He placed the dismembered body parts in luggage and garbage bags and dragged them in a laundry cart to the Roberto Clemente State Park in the South Bronx, prosecutors said. Then he dumped the bags into the Harlem River that flows next to the park.

Within a week, Platt’s grandmother Elveda Wright traveled to New York City, where she met the police at her daughter’s first-floor apartment on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, in the Morris Heights section of the western Bronx. Platt was found near the apartment. He failed to account for his mother and brother, prompting the police to climb through the window into the apartment, where they found a trail of blood.

“He devastated and wiped out an entire family,” Birnbaum said. “Marlene is no more. Nashan is no more, and now Lamar will spend the best part of his life in jail.”

Outside the courtroom, Birnbaum and Gallicchio, along with Vertin, discussed the gruesome details of the case. Using his own body, Birnbaum showed how Platt methodically carved up his brother’s body into parts small enough to fit into a Samsonite suitcase.

The police found only parts of the two bodies. They recovered Nashan’s sawed body, from his waist down to his knees. In another suitcase, the police found Marlene’s foot and head, and some more limbs in garbage bags. Marlene was a nurse’s aide and a single mother who had struggled to make sure both her children would be able to go to college. Nashan was set to graduate from Lehman College the year of his death.

“It was a horrific case,” Birnbaum said. “I think that the end result was satisfactory to society and we accomplished what we needed to.”

Birnbaum recommended the sentence that was handed down in court, and Platt’s lawyer, Amy Gallicchio, said she also considered it a fair punishment. Birnbaum relayed that Platt’s remaining family, especially Wright, agreed the defendant deserved 40 years in prison and five additional years of supervision once he’s released — around 2050. No mention was made of parole.

Before the murders, Platt had worked as a barber and had dropped out of college. Vertin believes it was   the combination of a long undiagnosed psychiatric condition combined with a marijuana habit that induced the violent episode. In 2007, Platt had sought medical help; but his stay in the hospital was short and he never received a full treatment.

“He really got nothing,” Vertin said. “And this just continued and continued until…” she trailed off. It was only after he was arrested that he was given the treatment he needed.

Platt has been lucid since his arrest. Gallicchio said he had been found to be clinically insane, but personally chose a prison sentence over an indefinite stay at a psychiatric facility.

Audio Slideshow produced by Rania Zabaneh.

In Parkchester, a street is dedicated to a soldier killed in Iraq in 2007.

Department of Education and local representatives listen as students and community members urge them to leave University Heights High at its current location. (Photo: Sonia Dasgupta/The Bronx Ink)

The refrain was echoed by several students who took to the microphone to try to convince the small panel before them that the high school should not be forced to move from the Bronx Community College campus, part of the City University of New York (CUNY) network.

The school, which has been on the campus since 1986, is scheduled to be relocated to the South Bronx High School campus, where it would share space with Mott Haven Village Preparatory High School. But students, administrators and parents at University Heights have organized to fight the move – about three and a half miles away and to another school district – citing concerns about the school’s culture, safety and students’ commutes.

The college says that it needs the high school’s classroom space to serve the college’s growing student body. Enrollment has increased 46 percent from fall 2001 to fall 2009. In December of 2008, CUNY asked the Department of Education to look for a new location for University Heights, in anticipation of the trend continuing. And the college’s enrollment continues to climb: the figure increased by 1,500 students from last spring to this semester.

Judy Wexler, assistant principal at University Heights, said she was happy for the college that its enrollment has grown. But she said she was frustrated that there had been no talk of a compromise – such as using the high school classrooms for late afternoon and night classes only. “It’s not feeling like it’s an open dialogue,” she said.

At the meeting Tuesday night, she implored the Board of Education to find a way to keep the school in its current location until the college’s construction of a new building is complete, two years from now.

University Heights, which serves 450 students and has received A’s on its last two report cards, was founded with the idea that a presence on a college campus would help make college seem like a realistic and attainable option for its students. Some students are even able to take college courses while still in high school.

Multiple students spoke Tuesday night about the positive message that being on a college campus had sent to them, contrasting that with the new location: less than half a mile up the road from a juvenile detention center. That sends a message “that the next step is jail,” Maria Ruiz, a senior, said after the meeting.

Other students worried more about the safety of the proposed location, some recounting stories of gunshots and gang violence in the South Bronx that they didn’t have to worry about on a college campus. “When we go up those steps, we don’t have to worry about our cell phones or iPods” getting stolen, said junior Aurelis Troncoso.

But Troncoso’s biggest concern about her school’s future is whether she’ll be able to continue to attend. Right now she lives close enough to the school that she can walk if need be. If the school moves to a new location, she’d need to take a bus and two trains to get there. And with the transit authority getting rid of student MetroCards, she doesn’t know if she’d be able to afford the trip; her mother is an unemployed single parent.

Wexler is hopeful though, that even if the school is forced to move, the vast majority of student will continue to attend.

Although the speakers Tuesday night were mostly students, representatives from elected officials and from the teachers’ union also made appeals for the relocation plans to end. The students have set up meeting with council members and written hundreds of letters. And many of them remained optimistic that their voices would be heard in the end.

“I’m always hopeful of everything. I don’t think it’s over until it’s over,” junior Tyriq Greene said. “I don’t have money. All we have are words and actions.”

The day after a 17-year-old was killed by joyriding teens who crashed a stolen car, the police line tape lay limply across the sidewalk and the accident scene was void of life. A destroyed bumper, headlight and side view mirror were strewn among a smattering of broken glass and plastic. Meanwhile, six blocks away, at the Rosedale Avenue house where Keon Nedd lived with his mother and four siblings, his family and friends sat around in mismatched chairs talking quietly, still describing him in the present tense.

Family and friends of Keon Nedd, who was killed in a hit-and-run accident early Monday morning gathered at his mother's home Tuesday where they created a memorial in his honor. (Alec Johnson/ The Bronx Ink)

A row of candles, with messages to Keon scrawled on the glass holders sits in front of the metal fence in front of his home. Behind them stand empty alcohol bottles, transformed into vases for blue and pink carnations and a single dying yellow rose.

More candles are set up in a cardboard box turned on its side. The box is now an integral part of the memorial though, covered in messages like “Your gone but nevah forgotten.” A sharpie lies on top, inviting others to contribute.

Keon, a tenth grader at Columbus High School was on his way home from a party early Monday morning, when a car crossing Seward Avenue on White Plains Road lost control and flipped on to the sidewalk, killing him. The car had been stolen from its owner earlier that day, and the driver and passengers fled the scene after the accident, his family said. Police would not provide additional details.

His grandmother, Carol Harris George, last saw Keon three days ago, when she dropped by his house to give him some money. She raised Keon until he was seven, and still carries his nine-year-old photo in her wallet. “I still can’t catch myself,” she said. “I haven’t eaten since the accident.”

Carol Harris George, Keon Nedd's grandmother, has kept this photo of nine year old Nedd in her wallet for years. (Alec Johnson/ The Bronx Ink)

George is trying to decide where to hold the funeral; she’s worried her church isn’t large enough. “That church is not going to fit all of his friends,” she said.

Many of these friends gathered in the driveway and even more were upstairs. Keon, who loved Jamaican music, was the joker of the group, they said. “He was a clown who used to live next door,” Mariah Hueston said. “He was always happy no matter what and he loved to play fight.”

Keon’s cousin, Anthony Bryant, turned 15 today. But his birthday was barely on his mind; instead he mourned the loss of someone he considered a brother. They were together “24/7,” he said, playing pickup games of basketball, rapping, joking and just sitting around.

Before he moved back to the Bronx 3 years ago, Keon loved to mow grass and fix the lawnmower when it broke, at his home in Monticello, N.Y. He’d take apart just about anything from computers to TVs and would work on his stepfather’s car, his grandmother said. “He liked doing things with his hands.”

He wanted to be a mechanic or an engineer when he grew up and had already built his mother a computer. The oldest of five children, Keon was close to his siblings. “He picked them up from school and took them to the bus in the morning,” his mother, Skeeter Nedd, said.

Though none of his friends who gathered at the house had been with him the night of the accident, Destiny Hueston was one of the last people to speak to Keon before his death – They talked on the phone around 12:30 about meeting up this weekend.

“I can’t take it,” she said knowing that he was killed by teenagers who stole a car.

George and his mother both were appalled that the culprits had not turned themselves in. “Kids will be kids,” Skeeter said. “But you always have to know there is an action behind what you do.”

The scene of the crash where Keon Nedd, 17, was killed early Monday morning was still littered with debris from the accident on Tuesday afternoon. (Alec Johnson/ The Bronx Ink)

Schools in the underfed Bronx draw attention to the need for improvement in the National School Lunch Program. (Baez/Bronx Ink)

By Astrid Baez and Sunil Joshi

It was a single empty box on a form that Ivellisse Nebron had dutifully filled out for the past two years in applications for her 9-year-old daughter Lisbeth’s school lunch. Despite having taken the form to work to enlist the help of the more English-proficient hairdressers in filling out each individual box, Nebron forgot to include her Social Security number. The omission was enough to warrant a call to Nebron at work, warning that her daughter would go without lunch.

The counselor at 218 Rafael Hernandez Dual Language Magnet School in the Bronx informed Nebron that, as a result, Lisbeth would not be allowed to eat lunch that day. The tie-up illustrates a common complaint about the program that provides free lunches to children in the largest school district in the nation.

Under application guidelines, Nebron was required to submit her Social Security number because she provided income information. Her daughter was to be counted among the 82.1 percent of children living on or below the poverty line who eat lunch for free, according to the school’s most recent “Demographic and Accountability Snapshot” on the New York City Department of Education Web site. “My daughter’s been a student at that school since she was in kindergarten and for them to withhold a meal that would otherwise be free is senseless,” Nebron said.

The misstep in filling out the application was the last straw for Nebron who has joined several other parents and educators in a push to change the system. “There’s a lot of red tape involved and the application tends to cause confusion among some parents, not to mention the added stress of the stigma associated with free meals,” said Roxanne Henry, Community Outreach Manager at Food Bank for New York City. Of the 1.1 million students enrolled in the New York City public school system, more than 70 percent are eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunch, Henry said. “A significant number of these students don’t want to participate, because free food is associated with being poor.”

A report published by The New York Times on March 1, 2008, found that participation in the lunch program was as low as 40 percent in New York’s high schools.

“It’s not so much the case with the younger kids, but when you get to the high school level you’d be surprised by how many teens are not eating, because they don’t want other students to know that their parents can’t afford to pay,” said Agnes Molnar, co-director of Community Food Advocates in New York City.
Congress will soon debate renewal of the Child Nutrition Act, which determines school-food policy and resources. The legislation was originally passed in 1966 and must be renewed every five years. The law was up for renewal on Sept. 30, 2009, but it received a temporary extension through the Agriculture Appropriations Bill.

In advance of the coming debate, several food-advocacy groups are building support for an amendment to the legislation that would direct enough federal money to make free school lunches available to all students.

Food Bank of NYC, a member of the New York City Alliance for Child Nutrition Reauthorization, is championing the universal school meals provision claiming that “both the application process and the stigma associated with being identified as poor act as barriers to participation” in the school lunch program.

“This is not just an individual family issue anymore, it’s a community concern,” Henry said.

The coalition of food-advocacy groups is conducting a letter-writing campaign targeting city and state legislators, including Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gilibrand, to channel support for the universal school meals provision. Citing the current process as labor-intensive, inefficient and prone to inaccuracy, the organization is urging Congress to replace the application-based system with a data-driven one. As of January 2010, the Food Bank reported having received more than 1,500 petitions signed by parents from the Bronx alone.

Following federal guidelines, students are separated into three groups based on their family size and income relative to the poverty level, $18,310 for a family of three, and two earnings thresholds. Students are eligible for free lunches if their family income does not exceed the first threshold, set at 30 percent above the poverty line, or $28,803 for a family of three. Students pay full price for lunch if their family income exceeds the second threshold, 85 percent more than the poverty line, or $33,874 for a family of three. Students whose family income falls between the 30 percent benchmark and the 85 percent benchmark are eligible for discounted lunches.

Extending universal school lunches nationwide would cost roughly $12 billion, says Janet Poppendieck, a sociologist at Hunter College who wrote the book “Free for All: Fixing School Lunches in America,” though she cautions that this is a “back-of-the-envelope calculation.” The federal government currently spends $11 billion on lunch reimbursement, but Poppendieck said that the money could be procured through an increase in the graduated income tax. She also said that partial financing could come from the millions of dollars saved by eliminating tiered school-lunch programs. She pointed out a study of 29 schools by Community Food Advocates, which concluded that in 2006, New York City spent more than 1,000 person-hours per school to process and execute the three-tiered school-lunch program. That translated to a cost of $16,330 per school, or more than $24 million for the entire district.

“It’s so expensive, this process of determining each meal and where it fits in the categories,” she said. “It’s a massive undertaking.”

The plan to extend lunch benefits to all students also received support from the Department of Education. Eric Goldstein, who heads the food program for the Department of Education, said in a written statement that “the benefits of the Childhood Nutrition Reauthorization would be a win for NYC public school students because it would help defray the costs for improved menu items that call for healthier ingredients, and it would help us to expand our universal lunch program. We have worked very hard over the past six years developing more nutritious options for both breakfast and lunch.”

Dr. Susan Rubin, a dentist and certified nutritionist, agrees that the cost of administering the current application system is high and wasteful, and could be redirected to implementing new food standards.

“We need to come up with a new paradigm and one that connects this issue directly to health care,” said Rubin, founder of the Better School Food movement turned non-profit, a proponent of universal school meals and putting better food in lunch rooms. Rubin believes that there should be a greater emphasis on providing healthier food, removing the “à la carte” option from lunch rooms that divide kids into “haves” and “have nots.”

In an open letter to parents, Rubin makes the connection between tight budgets, the need for cafeterias to make a profit for survival serving poor quality food that is “quick, cheap and profitable” and the resulting deterioration of children’s health. “Our kids are getting food that is downright dangerous,” Rubin said, “we can pay now or pay later.”

Gatorade, one of the most popular drinks at bodegas is likely to be taxed if Governor David Paterson's proposal to generate revenue is passed. (Photo by Mamta Badkar/The Bronx Ink)

Orlando Deuras stood on 228^th Street and Broadway talking on his phone, taking swigs from a 300-milliliter Mountain Dew bottle that he clutched in his right hand. Deuras doesn’t drink coffee. He doesn’t smoke cigarettes. But he says he goes through two liters of Mountain Dew in two days.

Gov. David Paterson’s proposal to increase the  soda tax has met with some criticism and doesn’t sit well with  Deuras.

“I don’t think taxes on soda will stop people from drinking soda,” Deuras said. “I’ve been drinking soda since it was 50 cents a can, and now it’s a dollar. I think it’s his way of getting money out of the masses.”

Deuras, who says he weighs 234 pounds, countered Paterson’s rationale that the taxes would help fight obesity, adding that it wouldn’t stop him from drinking sugary beverages and that the choice should really be up to the individual.

The embattled Paterson has said he would deal with New York’s “inevitable fiscal reasoning” in part by raising $465 million through taxes on syrups used in sodas. A poll conducted by the Siena Research Institute found that 50 percent of  voters opposed this tax. Paterson had tried a similar move in 2009 when he tried to pass an 18 percent tax on sugary drinks.

Akm Huda, who works at High-Ride News, a convenience store in the Kingsbridge neighborhood of the Bronx, said he believed that 15 percent to 20 percent of his business comes from sales of soda, boxed juice drinks and other sugar-sweetened drinks. He said that small businesses like his won’t be able to shoulder the burden because the tax increases will adversely affect consumer spending.

However, some store owners like Gus Guzman, whose business relies only in small part on the sale of drinks, sympathize with the governor. “It hurts everybody’s pockets more, but there’s only so much the city can do,” Guzman said.

Shawn Rivera, who sat at a corner table at the McDonalds on 236^th Street and Broadway with his twin sons, says he has no qualms about Pateron’s proposal.

“My personal problem is that this stuff is cheap and easily available, and healthy food isn’t as accessible,” Rivera said.  The 32-year-old, who works as hospital maintenance worker, said he spends $40 a month on sugary drinks for his family of six.

“If it was by choice, I would like to shop at Whole Foods, get healthy food, but that’s not easily accessible,” he said. “It’s not realistic.”

The address was Diaz’s first as borough president since he took office last April. His call for the construction of the first major hotel in the city’s northernmost borough was the high mark of an hourlong speech largely devoted to his economic growth plan for the Bronx.

Ruben Diaz Jr. delivers his first state of the borough address. (Dan Fastenberg/The Bronx Ink)

Delayed for a week because of last week’s blizzard, the state of the borough address was delivered at the Evander Childs High School in the Norwood section of the northern Bronx. Diaz, the borough’s 13th president, made clear his view that economic growth through projects like the hotel is the vehicle for the Bronx’s further development.

“I am tired of visitors coming to the Bronx, and then spending their evenings in Westchester or New Jersey, taking with them the money that could be spent in our restaurants and shops,” Diaz said in reference to the hotel project.

He didn’t delve into any specifics on the plan. Diaz is not the first borough president to call for a major hotel in the Bronx. Fernando Ferrer, who was the 11^th borough president from 1987 to 2001, looked into the construction of a hotel near Yankee Stadium.

“I think Diaz is right on target,” Ferrer said while sitting in the audience at Friday’s address. “He’s got the right energy, he’s forceful and he just gets it.”

Diaz has used the term “One Bronx” to describe his economic agenda, and he made use of the phrase again today while promoting plans to develop the waterfront along the Harlem River. And while also announcing plans for the creation of new retail retention zones for the borough, Diaz rolled out a strident defense of his version of development when discussing the move to kill the new mall at the Kingsbridge Armory, which remains empty.

After announcing an intention to create a task force to decide the next step for the Armory, he defended the stop order, which came under fire from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, among others. Diaz said that the retailers’ wages should be higher than the minimum wage, and that health benefits should be included.

“I welcome development, but we must raise the standard,” he said. “We must stand up and demand that major projects that receive heavy taxpayer benefits offer more than poverty-level jobs.”

Diaz came into office last year after his predecessor, Adolfo Carrion Jr., was tapped by the Obama administration to serve as the director of urban affairs.

The 36-year old borough president also dedicated much of his address to his plans aimed at stemming some of the borough’s lagging indicators. He announced a May Food Summit, which is intended to bring healthier eating options and supermarkets into the borough. Bronx County was labeled last month as the most unhealthy county in the state in a much-publicized study produced by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

The Bronx is also the home of the highest urban poverty rates in the country.  Diaz has spoken before about a need to remake the economic landscape of the borough, and today he put forward his plan to create growth through his sustainable development policy, which will place nearly 500 Bronxites in green manufacturing jobs. Diaz even referred to his economic plan as a “greenprint” for the Bronx, and he emphasized that the Bronx will withhold any project financing until a high level of environmental certification is met.

Diaz became borough president after a special election was held on April 21, 2009. He will be eligible to run for a second term in 2013.

The florist on the corner of Hillside Avenue knows that on Sunday mornings he will see Emily Toro. She will buy three dozen roses, for which she will not have to ask. She will place the roses in her car and drive to the Long Island National Cemetery, make her way to Section R Site 2827-O and, depending on the time of year, place either a blanket or a folding chair beside her son Isaac’s grave. And then she will start to talk to him.

They talk about the weather. Emily gives Isaac updates on Cheyenne and Chance, the two nieces who kiss his picture every night before they go to sleep. She tells him how his grandmother’s health is, and how she bought him a cake to celebrate his birthday. She begs him to visit her in her dreams so she can see him again. She tells him that two years of calls and letters have paid off, that she has finally convinced the city to name a street in his name. PV2 Isaac T. Cortes Street will be unveiled in Parkchester on Saturday, right next to the fountain he grew up looking at from his window.

She lays a dozen of the roses on his grave, and places a single rose on the grave of the other soldiers she visits. There are 27 of them, young men who were killed in the same war her son was, whose mothers come on other days. She leaves trinkets on their graves, too. A Yankees hat. A greeting card. A little red heart. She knows the graveyard workers will take it all away and throw it out. So before she leaves, she goes around the cemetery and collects it all again, squirreling it away until they’ve gone.

Emily Toro holds a sign commemorating her son, Isaac Cortes, who was killed in Iraq in November, 2007. Photo by Michael Ratliff

Emily will drive back to her apartment in Queens where she lives by herself, surrounded by the objects of her son’s service. She’s careful not to bang the door open into the tile mosaic on the wall that the Bronx borough president gave her to commemorate her son’s sacrifice. She steps past Isaac’s two black military issue trunks, full of his combat uniforms and undershirts. Sometimes when she needs to be close to him, Emily takes out his desert camouflage boonie hat and breathes in Isaac’s scent.

At the archway that leads into her living room, she lingers over the five-shelf bookcase full of the things she’s collected after her son’s death. His Bible and a pack of his Marlboro Reds sit next to a few bullet casings from an M-16 assault rife, the kind of weapon Isaac was so proud to show his dad and brother before he left. A G.I. Joe figurine stands valiantly in 10^th Mountain Division regalia on the fourth shelf. He comes equipped with a rifle, a grenade launcher, a helmet and a pair of skis.

On the far wall of the living room hang the medals that Isaac earned in his 10 months of military service, including his bronze star and purple heart, the last two he was awarded. They hang behind glass next to the brass casings that were shot in a three-volley salute at his funeral.

Pulling her plush armchair up to the small makeshift desk she calls her office, Emily checks her Facebook page for updates, and navigates to the tribute page she has made in Isaac’s honor. She scrolls through the pictures she’s uploaded with a small smile, remembering. Isaac playing with Cheyenne and Chance, whom he called his little hippo because she was such a chubby baby. Isaac giving his mom a kiss on the cheek, her brown eyes brimming with tears, at his 2007 swearing-in ceremony. And one of her favorites, Isaac and Chris as kids, their foreheads pressed together, their hands on each other’s shoulders caught between an attack and an embrace, both of them grinning.

After almost two and a half years, Emily can look at pictures of her son without crying. But it’s hard to stay dry-eyed when she watches a slide show of Isaac that her friend helped put together. Maybe it’s the music he picked out, the fitting Jo Dee Messina song.

“I guess heaven was needing a hero. Somebody just like you. Brave enough to stand up for what you believe, and follow it through.”

Emily lowers her head and wipes her eyes, but she watches the slideshow to the end.

In a way, Emily knew she’d end up here.

A week before Isaac deployed with his infantry unit to Iraq Emily had a dream. She saw the humvee that Isaac was in explode. Then, two military officers were knocking at her door, holding a white sheet of paper. One began to read, “I’m sorry to inform you…”

She woke up crying and called Isaac even though it was four in the morning. She told him to be careful. He brushed the vision off, told her not to worry, and said nothing would happen to him.

Emily never thought her oldest son would end up in the military. He was a stubborn kid from the Bronx, and didn’t like to follow rules. When Isaac was about five years old, they went to Orchard Beach. Emily told Isaac and his younger brother Chris to stay under the blue and yellow sun hut so she could see them, but within five minutes Isaac had vanished. Emily panicked, and asked everyone around if they had seen a chunky little kid. Soon, she saw a policeman coming down to the beach with Isaac in tow, his fat belly hanging out over his green Speedo. Isaac had told the officer that his mother was lost and was waiting for them to find her under a blue and yellow hut.

Emily was used to dealing with his mischief. When she put hot water on the windowsills to kill the ants that invaded their Parkchester apartment, Isaac would sneakily scoop the bugs into a cup and hide them under a piece of linoleum in the floor so they’d be safe. He loved all the animals that found their way to the apartment- the parakeets, the turtles, the ferrets, the parrots, and the 18 or 19 baby hamsters he would put into toy cars and zoom around on the floor until a fat one got stuck, and required a makeshift jaws of life to extract it.

But he always knew how to cheer Emily up. It was something small, a wiggling of his fingers up by his chubby cheeks, a scrunching up of his face and a goofy phrase that no one could remember where it had come from. “Fiddling you say!” It made her smile every time, and even when he was grown, Emily would plead with him to say it for her. But he wouldn’t.

Isaac wasn’t a child anymore. More and more, he wanted to be a father. When he started dating Lamonica Williams he was only 18. But he knew he wanted to help raise her three month-old daughter, Amaria. Isaac became a dad to her. He watched her grow, took her to the aquarium and the zoo and even to get her hair done. Amaria called Emily “Nana” when she visited, and called Isaac “Daddy.” He cared for her as he held a series of odd jobs; working as a ride operator at Playland Amusement Park in Rye, and as a security guard at Yankee Stadium. But Isaac wanted a job that Amaria would grow up to respect, a job he could feel proud of. He wanted to be a New York City police officer. But without any college credits, he’d have to find another way onto the force.

Emily was upset when Isaac told her he was joining the military. She asked him why, why now? He said there was no better time. It was early 2007. Emily and Isaac both knew there was a good chance he’d get shipped out to Iraq as part of the surge of troops sent to combat sectarian violence.

“Just be proud of me, Mom,” Isaac said. She was.

She watched in admiration as Isaac dedicated himself to losing 80 pounds so the Army would take him. Isaac walked anywhere he had to go, even if it took him hours to get there. He went from a size 40 pants to a 32, and one day as Emily waited for him in front of a club, a handsome young man stepped in front of her. She couldn’t believe it when she realized it was her own son.

Emily was the last mother standing by the bus that would take Isaac to Fort Hamilton for basic training. He begged her to leave. She was embarrassing him in front of the other recruits. They took one last picture together, the one of Isaac kissing Emily on the cheek as tears filled her eyes, and Isaac whispered in her ear that he had signed up for the infantry. That’s when she knew in her heart that her “gentle giant” wasn’t just getting onto a bus. He was going to be sent to Iraq. It was the last picture they ever took together.

Emily wrote to Isaac every day while he was in training. She covered the post cards she mailed with cartoon character stickers even though she knew his drill sergeant forced him to do extra pushups every time he received one. They sent him on 12 and a half-mile marches with a heavy rucksack until he bled through his boots. After one march, the platoon medic Andy Brooks said the front half of Isaac’s foot was practically ripped off. Isaac and another soldier, Specialist Benjamin Garrison, tried to take a shortcut but were caught and forced to do the whole march again. Isaac wrote to Emily three times a day, homesick. He asked her to send him something from home, something that belonged to his “little hippo,” Chance. Emily sent him Chance’s bib. He kept it in a Ziploc bag in his combat pants pocket. When training got really hard and he needed a reminder of home and the people who loved him, he would take out the bib and breath it in.

At his graduation ceremony at Ft. Benning, Georgia, Emily saw a different man. He stood in formation, straight and stoic in his dress uniform, his eyes fixed ahead. At first he didn’t notice Emily standing five feet in front of his face. It wasn’t until she coughed that his concentration broke. Isaac glanced over and knew she was there. After the ceremony, he showed her the ribbons he earned in training, and proudly explained how to wear the rank and insignia. He was so worried about creasing his uniform that he wouldn’t sit down. Isaac told his mom he had changed his mind about becoming a cop. He said the military was his calling.

Isaac came home to say goodbye before he went to Iraq. He said goodbye to his father, to his brother Chris, his daughter Amaria and his friends. Emily waited and waited, but Isaac never showed. Finally, she got a call from her son saying he wasn’t coming to say goodbye. She was hurt and upset, and couldn’t understand why Isaac had done that to her. It was Chris who told her later that Isaac just couldn’t bring himself to say goodbye to his mother. This time there would be no sticker-covered post cards and letters. Emily could not bring a pen to paper knowing her son was in a danger zone. She needed to hear his voice to know he was okay.

He called every weekend. Emily waited by the phone and wouldn’t leave the house until he had called. It didn’t matter what time it was. Emily asked Isaac what it was like over there, but he wouldn’t tell her. He didn’t want her to know what he was seeing.

“You showed me how to see with my heart,” he said, “not with my eyes.”

Their squadron was doing a lot of combat patrols. They brought military leaders to meetings with Iraqi officials and escorted the teams who destroyed weapons caches. They had been on three or four raids even though most of the guys had never deployed before. They were all nervous and scared but they didn’t talk about their feelings. Instead, they joked around and made fun of each other, talked about sex and the zombie apocalypse, harassed Isaac for drinking Corona beer and making “fifteen-point turns” in his armored humvee. Specialist Benjamin Garrison put mousetraps in their beds.

On Thanksgiving, Emily waited all day for the call she knew was coming, and when Isaac finally called around 8:00 p.m., he said he was going to tell her something and she could never ask him to do it again. It was something she’d longed to hear for years, something that always made her feel better.

“Fiddling you say!” Isaac said for her, one last time.

The next day, Isaac called back unexpectedly. He sounded tired. Emily knew there was something wrong when Isaac said over and over again that he loved her, and told her to take care of herself. He asked her to look after Cheyenne and Chance, to make sure his dad took his medication, to tell his daughter Amaria and his brother Chris that he loved them. Emily could hear the concern in her son’s voice. It sounded like a goodbye call.

In her heart, she knew it was.

Isaac’s troop hit improvised explosive devices often, but usually the blasts just spider webbed the glass and rattled their truck. On November 27^th, Isaac was driving the third of four trucks in a convoy near Amerli, Iraq, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, when an IED exploded underneath them.

It was the first mission that medic Andy Brooks hadn’t gone out on. He was supposed to go on leave, and Private Robert Pinkham took over that day as the convoy medic. But before Andy left, he heard a report over the radio that one of their trucks had been destroyed.

“Two litter, two expected,” he heard.

Two wounded, two dead. Isaac and Benjamin had been killed instantly.

Finally, one of the soldiers who survived the attack made it back to camp. Another stunned sergeant ran up to Andy with blood on his pants. They hurried back to the platoon tent where everyone was in shock.

”Some guys were crying, some just staring off into space, everyone smoking cigarettes. Private Pinkham came up to me and said I’m sorry man, I couldn’t save them,” Andy said.

A few days later when she was at home, Emily heard the doorbell buzz. She opened the door and saw Chris coming up the stairs. A few steps bellow she saw the hunter green of an Army dress uniform. It was a military officer, just like in her dream, holding a white piece of paper. The casualty notification officer began to speak: “I regret to inform you…”

Emily barely remembers the day she buried her son. Isaac had told Chris before he left that if anything happened to him, he didn’t want their mom to see. But when everyone but the family had left and Emily opened the casket, it looked like Isaac was just sleeping. All she saw was a little bruise under his eye.

Back in her apartment, Emily waited for the phone call from Isaac that she knew would never come. She felt like he was giving her the silent treatment. Isaac knew she hated the silent treatment. She needed to hear his words one more time. And then she realized, she already had them. Isaac had sent her a card a few weeks ago that she hadn’t understood.

“Why are you sad?” it read. “You have me.”

Now Emily felt that Isaac had meant for her to read the card after his death. Another greeting card addressed to her came back with Isaac’s things, along with the care package she’d sent full of Yankees memorabilia and lemon pies. The pies had turned rotten and green. On the cover of the card was a rainbow arching up to the heavens over a rolling green mountainscape. It read, “I can C U already, I love you brighter than any color of the rainbow. – Ur soldier son. P.S. I am always here.”

Emily vowed she’d make it so. She started researching the explosion, trying to find out every detail about that day in Iraq. Isaac’s obituary appeared in a Puerto Rican newspaper and showed the mangled remains of a humvee, the driver’s side crushed and bent. She made call after call to the military, trying to find out if that was really the truck her son was driving when he was killed. Finally an answer. It wasn’t. She started contacting people he might have known in Iraq, anyone that could give her information. She spent 12 to 15 hours online a day. She emailed over 100 soldiers from his regiment. She made the tribute page on Facebook, and one on Myspace.com, Legacy.com, and another page that plays the song “Unforgettable” as the flag of New York and Puerto Rico ripple over Isaac’s serious face. Even with all the pictures of her son online, it took her a year to be able to hang anything of his on her walls.

Chris couldn’t bring himself to touch anything in Isaac’s Bronx bedroom. He won’t even clean it. Now everything in it looks grey, covered with two years of dust. He refused to throw anything out either, even a little button of Isaac’s that he keeps in a box. An old battered table that Isaac gave him became the centerpiece of a prized workbench in his new home in the Poconos. He decorated his basement ‘man cave’ with every piece of memorabilia he could find, from Isaac’s boots to military buttons.

Isaac had told Chris that he wanted to be cremated, his ashes spread at a campsite on the Delaware River they used to go to as kids. The first time Isaac went camping he was just six months old, a fat-cheeked baby in a stroller beaming up at his mom and dad. The campsite was right on the water, by rushing rapids, where the boys used to cut down wood and build fires, go swimming and roughhouse. They’d practically grown up there. But Emily couldn’t bear to have Isaac scattered to the wind, out of reach. She needed her son nearby, even if it was just a slab in the ground. She needed to be able to talk to him.

After the street has been renamed, and the friends and family have left, Emily will return to the florist on Hillside Avenue. She’ll buy three dozen roses, and she’ll drive to the cemetery to talk to Isaac. She’ll tell him about the ceremony, which of the guys from his squadron showed up in uniform, the buttons she handed out, the problems getting the city to provide a public address system. She’ll tell him about the donated pizza she served at the party she threw him afterward. And then she’ll start dreaming about the next thing she can do for him. She wants to do something else, something even bigger to make sure he’s remembered. She promises him she’ll come back next Sunday.

The allegations that Gov. David Paterson lied about scoring free tickets to the 2009 World Series fueled the chatter of the day on Thursday, and in the borough where the Yankees earned the World Championship, some weighed in on the convergence of sports and politics, and the soaring price of Yankee tickets.

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Democrat, is a baseball fan who said that he had attended one of the World Series games and that he had paid his way to attend. But Dinowitz, who says that “everybody should pay for tickets,”  agreed with countless Yankees fans who complain that the price of tickets puts the Bronx Bombers’ games out of reach for many.

Yankee Stadium -AP

“That’s another reason why I don’t go to too many games anymore,” he said. “When I was a kid you could get tickets at the bleacher for $1.”

Former Yankees public relations director, Marty Appel, said 30 years ago a box seat cost $3.50.

“The price jump has been enormous, but it really suggests that baseball does a better job of marketing itself and is more attractive,” he said.

Paterson may face criminal charges after the State Commission on Public Integrity ruled that he lied under oath about soliciting five free tickets, which had a face value of $425 each, according to The New York Times. The case was turned over to the Albany County prosecutor’s office and the state attorney general for further investigation.

Dinowitz addressed the political firestorm currently surrounding Paterson.

“I think that the governor should do his job,” Dinowitz said. “He hasn’t been accused of any crimes or hasn’t been indicted. There’s a lot of talk, and I don’t think someone should be hounded from office simply because there are accusations out there.”

Twenty-five-year-old Yankees fan, John Stover, bartends at the Yankee Tavern and says Paterson’s actions were unfair.

“You see it time and time again,” Stover said. “People use their positions to get things for free. I don’t have anything against the guy — I don’t really follow his policies. It’s not the first time somebody’s done it.”

Several other local politicians said they didn’t go to the World Series games.  State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr., who is a Pentecostal minister, said: “I don’t like baseball. I go to church.” City Councilman James Vacca’s press officer told the Bronx Ink, Vacca “would not go if he was given tickets. He’s not a baseball fan.”

State Assemblyman Michael Benjamin said he had watched the games at home on television. Chuckling over the phone, Benjamin said his office sometimes gets calls from constituents hoping to get free tickets.

“We have to write back saying, ‘No, Assemblyman Benjamin is unable to procure tickets for the World Series Games,’ ” he said. To those really persistent fans, he said he is more direct: “Those are the sorts of things that get officials in trouble.”

The ticket scandal comes in the wake of a damaging report by The New York Times that revealed that the governor might have intervened in a domestic abuse case involving a top aide, David Johnson, who attended the World Series game with the governor.

On Thursday, Paterson’s communications director Peter Kauffmann, resigned. In a statement he said, “As recent developments have come to light, I cannot in good conscience continue in my current position.”

On Thursday night, the Rev. Al Sharpton was scheduled to meet at Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem to discuss with other politicians the governor’s political future.

Paterson also got some support from a small group of African-American law enforcement officers who gathered in Harlem to defend him today.

Red Sox fan Joseph Palladino joked that the Yankees might be behind the mess surrounding the governor, but later took on a more serious tone about what Paterson’s latest problems say about ticket pricing in professional baseball.

“Is this another sign of pricing out the lower and middle classes?” he said. “Do you need to know someone to get a ticket?”

“Education is a right. Fight, fight, fight,” chanted the crowd as they listened to speeches from students and representatives from organizations fighting to defend the right to free education. Today’s protests also included walkouts at Hunter College, NYU, and the New School, while other rallies took place at City Hall, Queens College, CCNY, the CUNY graduate center, and Lehman College.

Protesters rallied against budget cuts in education. (Ian Thomson / The Bronx Ink)

Activists’ Web sites said they are demonstrating against CUNY tuition hikes, the elimination of free student Metrocards, mayoral control of the board of education, and the privatization of public schools. A loose coalition of political groups sponsored the protests including the CUNY Professional Staff Congress Union and groups at NYU and the New School that were responsible for the occupation of school buildings last year.

A blog created to promote the protests listed the diverse interests of the participants apart from supporting public education: “Money for… Hospitals, Housing and Jobs, No Budget Cuts, No Layoffs, No CUNY Tuition, No More Money for War, No Money for the Military Occupation of Haiti, No More Money for Corporate America!”

Paterson’s education policies have been sharply criticized in recent months. At the beginning of this school year, CUNY tuition went up $295 per semester. In October of last year, the state legislature rejected Paterson’s proposal to cut $686 million in state school aid. At the end of 2009, the governor withheld $190 million in state payments from the public school system, about $84 million of which was due to New York City schools. Paterson has said these drastic measures were necessary to keep the state from insolvency.

Matt Anderson, a spokesman from the governor’s budget office, said that the proposed cuts were ” a difficult choice in terms of closing the budget deficit,” which he said was now approaching $9 billion. He said that reductions were being made across every area and not being targeted solely at education.

“What we’re proposing is to provide flexibility to SUNY and CUNY to provide more rational tuition increases based on inflation,” Anderson said. He said the proposed system would prevent students from facing tuition hikes during fiscal crises when the state needs to close the budget shortfall.

Additional reporting by Ian Thomson

Cruz, 38, had pleaded guilty to Murder 1 and gave testimony against his cousin, Devon Miller, who is also on trial. Under the terms of the agreement, the plea deal could not be withdrawn at a later date by Cruz and any violation would lead to an unrestricted sentence instead of a possible minimum 20 years.

A New York City detective leads Carlos Cruz, 36, of Southbridge, Mass., away from the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, April 15, 2008, after he was arrested and charged with murder in the shooting death of 18-year-old girlfriend, Chelsea Frazier. Cruz was charged along with his cousin, Devon Miller, 25, of the Bronx, in the murder of Frazier, who was gunned down Sunday after driving to the Bronx's Castle Hill neighborhood with Cruz and their infant son, according to police. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

According to the prosecuting lawyers, Cruz later stated that he was completely innocent — a declaration they said was a direct violation of his plea and should lead to a life sentence without parole.

Cruz and his 18-year-old girlfriend, Chelsea Frazier, had driven from their home in Southbridge, Mass., for a day of shopping in the Bronx on April 13, 2008, when, according to Cruz’s initial account, they pulled over on Barrett Avenue in the Castle Hill neighborhood to attend to their 1-year-old son Elijah. Cruz claimed that a robber appeared at the car door and, during the subsequent struggle, fatally shot Frazier as well as shooting Cruz in the leg.

A witness described seeing the attacker, a man with dreadlocks who was driving a green SUV, being chased down the street by Cruz, who was shouting, “You forgot to shoot me.” The description and vehicle matched those of Miller.

Cruz’s lawyer chose to reserve comments to the court until the new sentencing hearing on March 22.

“I walk down St. Ann’s Avenue and people come up to me – grown men, men in their 20s – and they hug me. And they thank me,” the 48-year old Bronx native said. “They thank me because I talked to them when they were kids, which other people didn’t do. And they thank me for the work that I do.”

Cruz has spent the last five years as the leading voice in the South Bronx against gun violence. But unlike other gun activists, Cruz has focused her activism on the specific issue of random gun violence, defined as the injuries, deaths and rippling devastation caused by a stray bullet. Cruz conducts her work through the New Yorkers Against Gun Violence (NYAGV) group. She founded the Bronx chapter in 2006.

“She has her ears to the ground,” Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz said in a statement released to the Bronx Ink through his press office. “She has relationships with everyone in her community – and knows how to speak to our youth about the danger of gun violence.”

Gloria Cruz holds a portrait of her niece, Naisha Pearson, who was the unintended target of a stray bullet in 2005. Dan Fastenberg / Bronx Ink.

So when the New York Police Department and the Bronx District Attorney’s Office teamed up to organize a gun buyback earlier in the year, it was no surprise the office turned to Cruz to spread the word. Once the drive was completed, almost 2,000 firearms were traded in for $200 each.

Cruz looked back on the gun drive.

“People are more comfortable walking into a church to hand over a gun than a police precinct,” she said in an interview at her headquarters, located in the St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in the Morrisania section of the Bronx. Operating out of the church’s partially oak-paneled basement, Cruz has transformed the pastoral property into a bunker for a multipronged campaign in which news clippings of the latest acts of random gun violence pass for wallpaper.

For the mother of three and grandmother of one, the gun buyback event was just another day on the job of a five-year crusade against gun violence inspired by the death of her niece, a victim of a stray bullet fired during a neighborhood block party. Cruz’s niece, Naisha Pearson, was on her way to play on a scooter at a Labor Day barbecue when a fight broke out, sending an errant bullet into her chest along 137th Street and Brook Avenue in the South Bronx. When Pearson was taken to Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx, the 10-year old was announced dead on arrival.

Five years on, as Cruz plans to pull back from her full-time commitment as a gun violence advocate and go back to earning a full-time salary, she took time to assess her years of activism.

“I’m sure I’ve made a difference,” she said. “I’ve had young people come up to me and say, ‘Wow, after what I’ve seen from you today, I don’t want to be in a gang.’ That means a lot to me. My niece’s killer got 50 years, and he’s only 18. He had a baby that he’ll never see.”

Crime rates throughout New York’s northernmost borough are down from the Bronx’s darkest days in the 1970s and 1980s. According to the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, homicides have dropped 80 percent over the last 20 years, going from 19,326 in 1990 to 3,516 in 2008. Burglary, grand theft auto and other acts of violent crime tell the same story. And while the district attorney’s office also reports an 11 percent drop in incidents of shootings from 2001 to 2009, the number of actual victims of gun violence over the same time period is up 16.1 percent. Moreover, last year’s total of incidents of gun violence stood at 404, an average of more than one shooting a day in the Bronx.

To try to beat back the onslaught of gun violence, Cruz has assembled an army of 63 supporters – the members of her New Yorkers Against Gun Violence chapter, most of whom have lost family members to random gun violence.

Much of Cruz’s life revolves around the members of this group and its work. The roughly 20 people contacted for this story were at a loss when trying to provide details of Cruz’s life outside of her activist work. And even when discussing her own interest in science fiction books, and watching movies like “Titanic,” she made sure to deplore the 1983 movie “Scarface,” which she says glorifies gun violence.

Apart from advocating for stronger gun laws, gun turn-ins, increased education and other attempts at trying to rally against gun violence, Cruz serves as a grief counselor for survivors and family members affected by gun violence. Every Thanksgiving, she organizes a fellowship dinner for people who have lost someone to a shooting to come together and console one another.

And when 25-year old Aisha Santiago was killed in September after putting herself in the line of fire to protect her son while walking out of a self-service laundry on 146th Street between Willis and Brook Avenues, Cruz came to her family’s side.

“Gloria was there from the start,” said Santiago’s mother, Yvette Montanez. “She went so far as to even accompany me to all my daily appointments after my daughter died.”

Her drive to respond to gun violence through civic action has caught on among the members of her chapter.

“It’s a calling for any of us, “ said Bronx chapter member Davina Perez, herself a survivor of random gun violence. “When groups like the [National Rifle Association] are up against you, it’s not easy. We could sit at home and watch soap operas, but this is something that’s been ordained to us.”

In keeping with the spirit of the gun buybacks, the chapter openly promotes throughout the South Bronx the turning in of “community guns,” a term used to describe a firearm passed around by gang members to hide the weapon from the authorities.

“Cooperation with the police is not new, not in this area, and not in New York,” said 40th Precinct Capt. Elias Nikas, during an interview in his cinderblock office located on Alexander Avenue in the South Bronx. “But around here we are seeing enhanced cooperation. No doubt about it. Not just from active community members, but from everyone. People are coming up to us all the time and trying to give us tips.”

Gloria Cruz flips through newspaper clippings in her office in St. Ann's Church. Dan Fastenberg/The Bronx Ink

As the public face of a campaign that calls for the turning in of neighbors through phone hot lines, what some would deride as “snitching,” Cruz is undoubtedly putting her own life on the line.

“I think her life is in danger everyday,” said Bronx chapter member Annette De Jesus. “Her activism shows where her heart is. We all know about the Crips and Bloods. Well someone should start the Gloria Cruz gang, because she needs backup.”

For Cruz, a woman whose demeanor is about as menacing as a librarian, the choice of not acting poses the greater threat.

“Yes, I am afraid for myself,” she said. “But if we don’t do this, my niece will have died in vain. We make sure everything is anonymous, all the calls and tips. We speak and connect families. If we put a face to this stuff, maybe it will stop the nonsense. Bullets, after all, have no destination and they don’t discriminate.”

No relevant body, neither the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services in Albany nor the New York Police Department, has ever gathered statistics specifically devoted to cases of random gun violence.

But after losing her niece, Cruz began to do just that.

The year following the loss of her niece, David Pacheco Jr., a 2-year-old boy became the unintended target of a stray bullet on the way to an Easter dinner. That event was followed just a few weeks later by the death of 18-year-old Samantha Guzman, a prom queen who was shot in the middle of a street on Mother’s Day.

“A lot of people are afraid to speak,” Cruz said. “I am not. I believe God has put me on a mission to save lives.”

In the wake of the deaths, Cruz decided in 2005 to leave her job as an office manager for Toys ‘R Us. Through financing provided by the Trinity Foundation of the Trinity Cathedral located in downtown Manhattan, she became a full-time activist against gun violence. Her efforts took off a year later, when she organized her first Walk Against Gun Violence, a rally that has become an annual event, and was soon complemented by an annual April Gun Lobby Day in Albany.

The two marches have become the cornerstones of Cruz’s lobbying calendar. This spring will mark the final time Cruz will oversee the marches while heading up the Bronx chapter of the New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. She’s also leaving behind the Bronx chapter of the Million Mom March that she’s overseen for five years.

For Cruz and many others, the local gun violence problem can be traced to the lax gun laws that allow firearms to enter New York.

Bordering states do have much looser gun laws, according to New York State Assemblyman Robert Castelli, an expert on guns and law enforcement who is also a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

But, Castelli said, “It’s a non sequitur to say if we had more laws we’d have less violence.”

“When we see criminality, what we naturally clamor for are more laws,’’ he said. “New York City already has the toughest gun laws in the country. So the issue comes down to enforcement and education. We need to get into the schools and educate not after a crime has occurred but before.”

Schools are exactly where much of Cruz’s remaining energy is spent.

This year’s gun marches will be run in partnership with the Harlem Children’s Zone. Cruz hopes one of her legacies to a new generation of activists will be a closer link between the anti-gun movement and schools. She regularly attends after-school programs and other educational events to talk about violence and pass out cards that list phone numbers for places to hand in guns.

For Cruz, like Assemblyman Castelli, the focus is on reaching youngsters before they start mixing with the wrong crowds, before they get into trouble.

“You have all these kids who are the aftermath of the crack era,” she went on. “So they have no parents. Some of the parents are gone because of AIDS or drugs. Or they’re in jail …. They’re looking for a place to belong and that’s where the gangs come in. And we’d hope they’d join our gang.”

Video produced and reported by Rania Zabaneh.

Michael Greys, co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, a group of court and police officers, was one of 10 members who stood outside the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office building in Harlem.

“All that has been said until now are pure allegations,” he said. “Nothing has been proven, so asking for his resignation is simply premature and unfair.”

The organization decided to  publicly defend Paterson who has faced mounting allegations after The New York Times reported that he intervened in a domestic abuse case involving a top aide. A few days later a state ethics panel accused the governor of lying about accepting free tickets to a World Series game.

“After more than 25 years of public service without a stain, all this sudden scrutiny, we just think it’s suspicious and outrageous,” Greys said.

Greys did not assign blame to any specific faction or individual for the controversy surrounding Paterson but said: “Some people want the state budget to go the way they want it to go. But we are not here to make allegations ourselves. All we are saying is that we should let the objective investigation follow its course and examine the facts.”

He added, “If by any chance these accusations turn out to be right, then we’d understand his being asked to step down.”

Last Friday, Paterson said he would not run for re-election because the accusations surrounding him were too much of a distraction from his mission to right the finances of New York State. “If he also wants to resign, based on these accusations, it’s his right, it’s his decision to make,” Greys said. “But it should not be forced on him.”

Noel Leader, another member of the organization, said that the members “don’t necessarily support Paterson” but that they support “the idea that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.”

The members of the 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care  say the accusations  against Paterson don’t have to do with race. “If it’s a trap, it has to do with state politics, but all we are saying is that we don’t know anything yet and he shouldn’t be asked to resign!” Greys insisted. “Would you resign on mere allegations? No! Me Neither! Nobody would! And nobody should!”

Liver transplant recipient Maryann Steinbock told a throng of reporters she had a "second chance" at life, then held her nurses' hands as she walked back to her room at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

Surrounded by a throng of reporters and cameras, Maryann Steinbock kept on smiling. It seemed every time she spoke, there was someone else to thank.

The donor of the liver that happened to be a match. The medical staff from Buffalo, N.Y., who shepherded her new organ to the airport Friday morning in the midst of a snowstorm. The police officers who mobilized on short notice to clear a path from her Long Island home to the Bronx’s Montefiore Medical Center. The doctors, nurses and anesthesiologists who spent six hours in the operating room during her life-saving transplant surgery later that day.

“It was just like watching a movie on TV,” Steinbock, 59, told a pack of media on Tuesday. “Everything fell into place. It was wild.”

Steinbock, a wedding coordinator and avid New York Mets fan who lives with her husband in Atlantic Beach, had been on the liver transplant waiting list for about a year after her hepatitis C was diagnosed. Doctors told her she had carried the disease unknowingly for decades. Tumors had grown on her liver, and she needed a new organ to survive.

While she waited, doctors twice had to operate. If the tumors had grown too large or spread too far, a liver transplant would not have saved her. Surgeons twice burned tumors off her liver’s surface to control the cancer’s expansion.

Then, after a year of waiting, it was a race through a blizzard and against time.

“The longer the liver is outside of the body, the less chance that it is going to function perfectly,” said Dr. Milan Kinkhabwala, chief of Montefiore’s liver transplant program.

After doctors determined the donated organ was a match and arranged for it to ride downstate on an emergency flight, Montefiore staff woke Steinbock, who friends call “Mak”, and gave her the news.

“I think she went into shock,” recalled Steinbock’s husband, Corey. Outside, the couple’s cars had been buried by the pre-dawn snow. By 6 a.m., Corey had dug out their vehicles and had both engines running in the driveway. Montefiore staff, however, insisted that she wait for a police escort to navigate the wet driving conditions.

Nassau County’s Fourth Precinct agreed to pick up Steinbock. The New York Police Department’s Highway Patrol scrambled to meet her at the city line.

“We usually know what’s coming ahead of time,” Highway Patrol Officer Stephen Brooks said, referring to cross-border police escorts. “This was a play-it-by-ear kind of thing, and usually it’s not in a snowstorm.”

Once her car neared Queens, Steinbock could not help but chat up Nassau County’s Officer Robert Prince about that borough’s hometown baseball team. But her mood became serious once she arrived at the hospital and doctors began to explain the details of the surgery.

Maryann Steinbock told her story to New York-area media Tuesday in a packed hallway in Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

Upon hearing the procedure required a neck incision to keep fluids flowing to her body, “she jumped off the table,” her husband said. Steinbock calmed after a phone call from her son, a doctor near Boston, who explained the surgery was a matter of life and death.

After six hours of work by three surgeons, two nurses and two anesthesiologists, Steinbock had a healthy liver and what she called “a second chance at life.”

Smiling and shaking her head, Steinbock repeated one explanation before the outstretched microphones: “If it wasn’t for God, none of this would have happened.”

Joseph Ryan stepped backwards into what he thought was the elevator on the lobby level as he and his wife were moving a mattress up to their seventh floor apartment, but the elevator car wasn’t there, police said.

Ryan was pronounced dead after he was rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital. The New York Daily News reported that Ryan was an elevator repairman who pried the door open himself earlier in the evening to help with the move.

The apartment building,  located at 1749 Grand Concourse, has had issues in the past with the elevators,  residents said.

Olga Ayala, a 27-year resident of the complex, said her 13-year-old son wouldn’t use the elevator because he doesn’t like it.

“It’s always getting stuck,” Ayala said, “and then you have to ring the emergency bell.”

She said the elevators in the building break down often and one wasn’t working for a month.

There is an open complaint from last month, according to records on the Department of Buildings Web site, regarding one of the building’s main elevators. Another complaint from January was closed out with no violation issued.

Maria Mojica, who has lived in the building for more than five years, said the freight elevator is only supposed to be used for moving in and out of the complex, although sometimes people use it as an emergency elevator if the others aren’t working.

“There are a lot of residents who have handicaps,” Mojica said. “They need the elevator.”

A building official said the freight elevator runs until about 5 p.m.

Twelve-year resident Daryl Poe said the freight elevator must be opened in order for it to be used.

“I don’t understand how no one noticed that there was no elevator,” Poe said. “It had to have been pitch black inside the doors.”

Poe said the apartment has had accidents in the past including an Easter fire in 2007.

“It must have been horrible for the wife,” Poe said. “Can you imagine watching your husband fall to his death?”

Many of the residents hadn’t been notified of the incident Tuesday morning. Ayala found out about Ryan’s death by watching the news.

“We weren’t notified at all,” she said. “I would have liked to know.”

The superintendent of the building declined to comment, but a spokesman for the owners of the building extended their condolences.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim of this tragic accident and with his family,” said Bud Perrone, a spokesman with Rubenstein Associates. “We are cooperating fully with all relevant government authorities and will continue to do so until their investigations are complete.”

The police are still investigating.

A rendering by Richard Kaplan of the proposal to keep Gate 2 in Heritage Park. Photo: Courtesy of Save the Yankee Gate 2 Committee

For the self-described “army” of baseball fans fighting to save Gate 2 of the old Yankee Stadium it’s the ninth inning– and things don’t look good. Last Monday, the New York City Design Commission gave preliminary approval to a plan that calls for the stadium to be completely demolished by June. It will be replaced with a park called Heritage Field.

Yankee Stadium currently sits covered in snow, surrounded by scaffolding, the seats have been stripped out and auctioned off by the team. Many of the walls are already knocked down. Across the street is a gleaming, new $1.5 billion ballpark that Yankees management built after years of trying to gain public approval for a stadium that would accommodate more high-priced luxury boxes and the profits that come with them.

The old stadium was built in 1923 and served as the home of the Yankees until the end of the 2008 baseball season. In those 81 years, the park was home to 26 World Series teams, the highest number of championships won by a single franchise in sports history. Plans to build a new stadium and destroy the old one were officially approved in 2006. At the time, many of the Yankees’ faithful were heartbroken that the historic “House That Ruth Built” might be torn down. As the years passed, and after the Yankees christened their new stadium last year with their first Series win in nearly a decade, much of the resistance quieted down. However, for one group of fans, the battle to preserve part of the old stadium never stopped.

Mark Costello is a 57-year-old from New Jersey who is one of the leaders of the “Save the Yankee Gate 2 Committee,” a small group of passionate baseball fans fighting to preserve part of the old stadium. According to Costello, they came together via the message boards on a Web site called Baseball Fever in April last year.

Costello said the members of the Save the Yankee Gate 2 Committee all “have careers that are not related to baseball” and are working to preserve the gate in their spare time because they believe the old Yankee Stadium deserves a fitting memorial. “Basically, we start off as Yankee fans, but it’s much more than that,” he said. “We’re also very appreciative of history… and recognizing that Yankee Stadium is such an iconic ballpark where so much took place.” Costello works at an insurance brokerage firm and said he spends about five hours each week working on committee business. His efforts have earned him unexpected foes in the Parks Department and the South Bronx community where the Yankees play ball.

On Feb. 18, Costello and about 10 men from his group attended a briefing on the situation at Heritage Field sponsored by District 16 Councilwoman Helen Foster. Representatives from the Parks Department and the Empire Development Corp., which are responsible for the site, gave updates on the progress of the construction. At the briefing, Hector Aponte, the Parks Department’s Bronx borough commissioner said the city has “two issues” with the Gate 2 proposal; “parkland” and the cost of the project. According to the Parks Department, preserving the gate would come with a $15 million price tag. Costello said his proposal would only take up about one thousand feet of space in Heritage Field. He also said that his group produced cost estimates showing that the gate could be preserved for just $1 million, but Aponte said “there’s no way that’s possible.”

Area residents and community activists are eager for Heritage Field to be built as soon as possible. Ralph Frissora, the commissioner of a local program called United Youth Baseball, was also at the briefing to press for the old stadium to be demolished as soon as possible.

“They took away our fields when they built the new stadium,”Frissora said. “We had 700 youths, now we’re down to 400 because of the fields.”

Many of the people who are eager to see construction on the site finished see the debate about Gate 2 as an unnecessary delay.

Geoffrey Croft is the president and founder of the NYC Park Advocates, a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding park space in the five boroughs. At the briefing, Croft criticized the Committee to Save Gate 2 as “tourists” and said their proposal is “going to take away park space and it’s delaying the whole project.” He also suggested that they are latecomers to the debate about the Yankees’ construction project, asking “where were these people when we were trying to fight the stadium?”

Costello said his group only formed in the past year because the original plans for Heritage Field involved keeping substantial portions of the old stadium. “We got involved when we found out the whole stadium was going to go away,” he said.

Costello thinks the criticism that his group comes from outside the neighborhood is irrelevant. “The idea should be debated on the merits of the idea, not who’s proposing it and where they’re from,” he said. He added that at least one member of his group comes from the Bronx. Regardless of where they live, all of the members feel they have a deep connection to the team. Costello said he has been a Yankee fan since 1961 and has fond memories of going to games in the old stadium. He has partial season tickets and a collection of team yearbooks dating to the 1960s.

The opposition from area residents came as a surprise to Costello who said that he initially went to the local community board and received a positive response from the chairperson.  “We started by reaching out to the community,” he said. “We thought it was a win-win for everybody and most of all the neighborhood. We thought it would make for a better park.”

Costello’s group also sought support from the Yankees organization without success. “Several of us tried to contact the Yankees in various ways and basically received little to no response,” he said.

Alice McGillion, a team spokeswoman, said the controversy over Gate 2 is “not a team issue, it’s a city issue, a Parks Department issue.”

Costello and his group clung to the hope that that the Feb. 22 meeting of the design commission was their best chance for success. Initially, the commission rejected the Parks Department’s designs for Heritage Field because it didn’t contain sufficient commemoration of the original Yankee Stadium. The Parks Department presentation at the earlier briefing included new elements that have been added to their plans to address the issues raised by the design commission, including a fence made from a piece of the frieze from Yankee Stadium, plaques with historical info, viewfinders that will show images of the old stadium and the preservation of the giant baseball bat statue located outside the old Gate 4.

John Trush, another one of the group’s leaders, said the Parks Department’s new plan has “nothing” that adequately commemorates the old stadium. Along with the others, he was confident that the design commission would agree.

Costello and Trush went to City Hall last Monday along with four other members of their group. The six committee members and the Parks Department both made presentations to the design commission, which then voted to give preliminary approval to the city’s plan for Heritage Field.

Despite the defeat at the meeting, the committee to Save Gate 2 isn’t giving up just yet. “It wasn’t what we were looking for, but we haven’t decided what our next step is,” Costello said.  John Trush was resolute about the gate as well.  “Until it’s down,” he said, “it’s not over.”