A labor union representing security guards stationed at dozens of municipal facilities, including the Staten Island Ferry Terminals and the Municipal Building, has reached a deal with the guards’ private employers that calls for as much as a 26 percent pay raise over three years and for the first time provides the guards with health insurance.

The contract, which will be announced on Monday, followed months of intense negotiations between the union, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, and the companies, FJC Security Services of Long Island and Allied Barton of Conshohocken, Pa. This is the first agreement struck by Local 32BJ on behalf of the guards, who voted to join the union about three years ago.

“Security officers are really the first line of defense in most municipal and commercial buildings throughout the city, yet their pay is low and they have no benefits of any kind,” like paid vacations, health coverage or retirement plans, said Michael P. Fishman, president of Local 32BJ. “The greatest injustice here was that you had taxpayer money essentially funding poverty jobs, and this contract is a big step toward correcting it.”

The deal represents a significant victory for Local 32BJ, which has sought to unionize thousands of security guards as part of what it calls a push to raise living standards among black workers, who constitute the bulk of this work force.

Executives of the security companies could not be reached for comment on Sunday.

In an effort to cut costs by privatizing city services, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani outsourced the security of many municipal buildings during his second term in office. From then on, private contractors set the terms of employment for the guards, who do not carry guns.

Although the city hires the contractors, it has no direct say on the salaries and benefits the guards receive. But Bloomberg administration officials have closely monitored the latest round of talks.

The agreement was hashed out late on Friday and will go into effect on July 1, when the guards’ pay will uniformly rise to $13.25 an hour from about $11. At the end of the three years, their hourly wage will have reached $14.35. Besides the employer-paid family health insurance, the guards will also get paid days off and advanced training for the first time.

Negotiations, which began in November, had hit an impasse in recent weeks. On Wednesday, the guards voted to go on strike if a deal was not reached by Friday night, a potentially disastrous situation for agencies like the Human Resources Administration, Homeless Services and the health department, which rely on the guards to secure the buildings they occupy.

Local 32BJ has about 110,000 members, among them doormen, porters, janitors and some 10,000 security guards, including the 3,000 or so who work for the city.

The union endorsed Mark Green for mayor in 2001, but backed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2005 and supported his successful effort for an extension of term limits last fall. Shortly after that, though, it ran an ad in the weekly labor newspaper The Chief criticizing the mayor’s proposed cuts to the public schools’ cleaning budget.

This year, Local 32BJ adopted an unusual approach to help decide which candidate it will endorse in the mayoral race. Earlier this month, it got Mr. Bloomberg and the city’s comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., his leading Democratic rival, to spend part of a day with one of the security guards it represents.

The idea was to familiarize the candidates with the guards’ daily routine and difficulties, Mr. Fishman said.

“While people know the doormen and cleaners in our commercial and private buildings, they don’t know these security officers and they have a very different kind of interaction with them,” he said. “This was an important time to bring them to the forefront.”

April 26, 2009

NEW YORK - Police say a 23-year-old New York City man died instantly after an allegedly drunken driver smashed into his car.

Authorities say Dion Price’s Honda Del Sol was crushed so badly rescuers had to work for hours to free his body. The crash happened at around 4 a.m. just 10 blocks from Price’s home on Staten Island.

Police say 20-year-old George Baldini, also of Staten Island, was drunk when he crashed his Chevy Tahoe into Price’s small car. He was expected to be arraigned Sunday.

In a separate case, Baldini pleaded guilty this month and is awaiting sentencing for a 2007 child pornography arrest. Prosecutors say he e-mailed child pornography to a police officer who was posing as a 14-year-old girl.

A Staten Island businessman was sentenced Thursday to nearly six years in prison for assisting terrorists by providing satellite television services to Hezbollah’s television station, Al Manar.

The businessman, Javed Iqbal, 45, said in a statement read by his lawyer in Federal District Court in Manhattan that he was “deeply sorry” for what he called a mistake that hurt him “financially, emotionally and physically.”

“I have not harmed anyone in my whole life,” he said in the statement to Judge Richard M. Berman, who sentenced him to 69 months.

Mr. Iqbal, who emigrated to the United States from Pakistan as a teenager, ran his business from a Brooklyn storefront and the garage of his home in Mariners Harbor, Staten Island, which had satellite dishes in the backyard. The United States Treasury Department has designated Al Manar — “the beacon” in Arabic — a global terrorist entity.

Mr. Iqbal’s lawyer, Joshua L. Dratel, had earlier argued that prosecution of his client for providing satellite TV services violated his First Amendment rights, but Judge Berman rejected that view, ruling that the prosecution was based not on the content of speech but on conduct — allegations that he provided material support to a foreign terrorist group.

Although Mr. Iqbal faced up to 15 years in prison, he and the government agreed in a plea deal that a term of about five to six and a half years would be reasonable. He pleaded guilty to a single count in December.

In court, Mr. Dratel asked for the lowest end of that range, saying that his client’s conduct was not the product of ideological support for Hezbollah and was a “discrete and narrow aspect of an otherwise legitimate” business.

He said Mr. Iqbal’s business had offered a variety of programming, including Christian broadcasting and adult entertainment, which he said was “180 degrees from Islamic fundamentalism.”

But a federal prosecutor, Eric Snyder, disagreed, calling Hezbollah a “sophisticated terrorist organization in all respects,” which had used its 24-hour channel to recruit members and suicide bombers and to raise money for weapons and operations.

“He was, in a very real sense, Hezbollah’s man in New York City,” Mr. Snyder said.

The United States has designated Hezbollah a foreign terrorist organization.

“He did all this,” Mr. Snyder said, “to bring the Hezbollah operations to our shores, to allow Hezbollah to have their operations here in New York City. That’s a very dangerous thing. That’s what this crime is about.”

ROCKDALE (April 20, 2009)–An 85-year-old priest has been indicted on charges of sexual assault and prohibited sexual conduct.

In 2008, Father Stephen Mary Valenta was sent to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Rockdale from Staten Island, N.Y., to fill in for the local priest who was sent out of state for training.

The indictment stems from the sexual assault of a woman who police think is a relative during the period when Valenta was here.

A check with the Milam County District Attorney on Monday indicated authorities there are unsure of Valenta’s whereabouts.

Rockdale Police Lt. J.D. Newlin, however, said he believes Valenta has been back in New York for some time.

Newlin said he is confident extradition proceedings will be initiated, but said that actually is up to the Sheriff’s Office.

Another arrest has been made in a savage baseball-bat attack outside a Staten Island movie theater that left a 22-year-old man in a coma.

William LaBarbera, 18, of Howell, N.J., was charged today in connection with the vicious Jan 14 pummeling of John Candela, a New Dorp resident, outside the United Artists All-Staten Island Stadium theater in Mariners Harbor.

Also charged in the new indictment are Steven Walsh, 18, Stephen Gregoreadis, 18, and Amanda Cerullo, 16.

Candela was beaten into a coma during the incident, and spent two and one-half months in the hospital. He was released earlier this month. He suffered a fractured skull, fractured cheekbone, a ruptured spleen, bleeding on the brain and bruises from head to toe.

Prosecutors have contended that Miss Cerullo, who had previously dated the victim, recruited her new boyfriend, Walsh, and others to ambush Candela as he walked to the theater because she felt “scorned” after he ignored her e-mail pleas to get back together.

The charges are first - and second-degree assault, first - and second-degree gang assault, and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree.

LaBarbera pleaded not guilty in front of Justice Leonard P. Rienzi today. He was ordered held on $300,000 bail.

One of the teens awaiting sentencing for beating up a Staten Island man on Election Night is under arrest again, and federal prosecutors want him thrown back behind bars.

Authorities say 18-year-old Bryan Garaventa was charged with vandalizing his girlfriend’s car, threatening to blow up the car and making harassing phone calls to her on Tuesday night.

Garaventa witnessed the ex-girlfriend dropping a unknown man off at the intersection of Remsen Street and Cornelia Avenue at around 10:50 p.m., according to sources.

He then became enraged, kicking and breaking parts of the vehicle, causing dents and a broken right door handle, authorities said.
Later, Garaventa allegedly called his girlfriend’s phone some 10 times.

One time, he apparently said, “If you don’t answer your phone, I’m going to come to your house and blow up your car.”

On another call, he allegedly said, “If you don’t answer your phone, I’m going to come and kick your front door in.”

Then, he was reportedly spotted by the ex-girlfriend’s mother seated in her car at around 1 a.m., rummaging through her vehicle.

Garaventa was charged with felony criminal mischief and misdemeanor charges of menacing, unauthorized use of a vehicle, aggravated harassment and stalking.

Garaventa was one of the four men convicted of going on a racism-fueled Election Night crime spree that left one man in a coma. He was out on $250,000 bail and is awaiting sentencing on federal civil rights violations.

Upon learning of his arrest, federal prosecutors filed a motion to have Garaventa’s bail revoked.

Former Staten Island Congressman Vito Fossella has plead guilty to drunken driving charges.

Fossella’s jury trial was to have begun in a Virginia court yesterday. He had been planning to challenge the breath-test results that police say show his blood-alcohol level to be well above the legal limit.

But his attorney says the Staten Island Republican decided it made sense to “accept responsibility for his actions.” He says Fossella changed his mind in part because of last week’s accident that killed Los Angeles Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart . The driver of the vehicle that hit Adenhart is accused of driving drunk.

Fossella’s arrest in May led to revelations that he had fathered a child in an extramarital affair and ruined his political career.

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Three New York men were charged yesterday with tying up a Stafford County store clerk and robbing her, police said.

The suspects were stopped on Interstate 95 shortly after the heist, Stafford Sheriff Charles Jett said. Someone got the fleeing suspects’ license number and notified police.

Nearly 1,000 cartons of stolen cigarettes, valued at $50,000, were in the suspects’ van, along with a loaded handgun and a 12-gauge shotgun.

Jett said the Sheriff’s Office was notified about the robbery at Cigarettes Unlimited at 712 Warrenton Road just before 8 a.m.

Three men, at least one of whom was armed, used duct tape to tie the clerk to a chair. The men then spent the next 30 minutes or so loading boxes of tobacco products into a van.

When leaving the store, Jett said, the men locked the door and threw the key into the grass.

An employee in a nearby suite heard the clerk yelling after the suspects left and came out of his business. He saw the white van leaving, got the license number and called police.

A deputy arrived within a minute and a lookout was broadcast for the vehicle. Deputies Chris Armitage and Josh Truslow passed the van heading north on Interstate 95 and stopped it at the 150-mile marker in southern Prince William County.

Traffic was shut down on I-95 while the arrests were being made.

The suspects were identified as Ariel Peisahovish, 25, of Staten Island, Vyacheslav Elentulch, 24, of Brooklyn and Drmitry Khavkin, 26, of Brooklyn.

All three were charged with two counts of robbery, two counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony, and abduction. Police said they robbed both the store and the clerk.

The suspects are being held without bond in the Rappahannock Regional Jail.

Jett credited the witness for getting involved and the deputies for anticipating the suspects’ escape route.

“This is just another example of citizens working hand in hand with the Sheriff’s Office to apprehend dangerous criminals,” Jett said.

by Staten Island Advance
Thursday April 09, 2009, 1:52 PM
Two New York senators today announced a $7 million federal grant that will be used to expand the MTA’s Charleston Bus Annex and allow for more bus parking and maintenance.

The long-awaited facility — which will become the borough’s third bus depot — is currently under construction on Arthur Kill Road near the Outerbridge Crossing and should be completed by the middle of 2010.

“This is great news for Staten Island commuters,” Sen. Charles Schumer said. “For many Staten Islanders buses are their lifeline to work. These federal dollars will go a long way in providing the necessary infrastructure and space improvements to keep public transportation on Staten Island running smoothly for years to come.”

In November, an independent engineer discovered a planned sewer line would be run partly through privately owned land. The wait for permits to complete the work could push the project back to July 2010.

Work on the $150 million complex had been moving ahead of schedule, with completion expected by the end of this year.

“This investment is essential to the City’s goal of enhancing mass transit for the thousands of Staten Islanders who depend on safe, reliable bus service every day,” said Senator Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “The Charleston Annex will help relieve overcrowding at Staten Island’s two other bus maintenance facilities, and will continue our mission of reducing traffic and congestion in one of New York City’s fastest growing boroughs.”