The Brooklyn Ink

• Child-Endangering Mother Charged After East New York Fire
  According to a Daily News report, the two male childre, ages 3 and 5, were heavily injured by a fire in an apartment at 6 p.m. Friday in East New York. Fire fighters from NYFD Engine 257 removed the children who were then resuscitated before being placed in New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell for smoke inhalation. The mother, Milagros Perez, was charged with endangering the welfare of a child after she went on a 25 minute walk just before the fire began.
• BB Gun Wielder Shot by Cops
  Police are investigating an incident last Friday when a 61-year old man refused to drop a pistol-shaped object at 1:20 a.m. in front of 364 Linden St. at Myrtle Ave. According to a New York Times report, after ignoring the orders of an officer James Crockett was subsequently shot in the thigh and left side of his torso. The police discovered that the object in question was a BB gun. He is in stable condition at the Elmhurst Hospital Center.
• Boroughs to Receive New Area Code
  NY1 reports that a new 929 area code will be issues for phones in every borough except Manhattan. According a May 2009 report from the Daily News, the newer 718 and 347 area codes were moving so quickly that there will be no available numbers left by 2011—there are already no available 718 numbers.
• Possible Charges to File in Connection with Brooklyn Brawl
  NY1 reports that there could be several arrests over the Brooklyn bar brawl between firefighters and civilians at the Salty Dog last week.
  The charges will depend on the extent of the injuries. Last Friday, off-duty and retired members of Engine 310, Ladder 174 were drinking at the bar in Bay Ridge.
  Sources say a firefighter spilled a drink on one of the bar’s patrons, who reacted by punching him in the face. But the bar’s owner says a firefighter threw the first punch. A surveillance tape of the fight has been handed over to investigators.
• Thieves Caught, Stole $250 000 and Ferrari from Camera Store Owner
  Derrick Diaz and Jason Cuebas, two perps who broke into the Midwood home of Joseph Douek, locked his two kids into the bathroom and made off with jewelry, cash and a black Ferrari last year, were arrested yesterday. Through DNA left at the crime scene the two were eventually tracked down. Read more at the Daily News
• Prospect Plaza to be Torn Down
  For the first time in its 75-year history, the New York City Housing Authority wants to knock down an entire high-rise complex, Prospect Plaza in Brooklyn — a move that has surprised and angered a number of former tenants and advocates for low-income housing.
  Since the 1990s, public housing high-rise buildings have come tumbling down by the dozens across the country as cities replaced them with smaller suburban-style homes that did not carry the stigma of looming urban despair and poverty. New York City has long been the great exception, and red-brick towers still dominate the skyline from the Lower East Side to East Harlem, from Mott Haven to Bushwick. [NYTimes]
• Defense in Suspect Abuse Case Questions Evidence
  Lawyers defending three police officers accused of abusing a suspect in a Brooklyn subway station or covering it up mounted a wide-ranging attack Thursday on the case made by prosecutors, suggesting that forensic evidence may have been faked and that witness testimony did not back up the charges. [NYTimes]
• Atlantic Yards Not Brooklyn’s First Multi-Venue Complex
  

  The Clermont Avenue Rink (Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Collection)

  In 2010, we all have an opinion of the proposed Atlantic Yards Barclay’s Center, but how many people are aware that Brooklyn already had its own multi-venue sports and social center over a hundred years ago? Fort Greene was home to the Clermont Avenue Rink, one of the most important events places in late 19th century Brooklyn. The Rink was built in 1865 on a huge 26,000 square footprint with frontage on both Clermont and Vanderbilt.

  Both the Republican and Democratic parties held large rallies in the space, as speaking venues for candidates for local, state and national office, and for strategy sessions and rallies. The Republicans, who were the dominant party throughout much of the late 19th century, were especially active here. One such event in 1888 caused the Eagle to say, “All elements, from the silk stockings of Clinton and Washington Avenues, to the hardy sons of Myrtle and Flushing Avenues were represented.” The Brownstoner has more.

• Brooklyn Schools Make More Headlines
  The principal of a Brooklyn high school was removed from his post after he was anonymously accused of coming to work drunk. Ira Weston of Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights was reassigned to administrative duties Monday, less than a week after the Education Department got the okay to close his school for poor student performance. Read more at the New York Daily News.
• What we’re following:
  More anti-semitisim in Brooklyn. After Ivalya Ivanov plead guilty yesterday to drawing swastikas on several Brooklyn Heights synagogues, more anti-semitic fliers were found in Park Slope recently. The Brooklyn Ink’s Yaffi Spodek reports.
  Beekeeping goes legal: From next week, keeping bees will no longer be illegal in New York City. Mary Plummer has the story.
• Real Estate Scam BBusts in Brooklyn
  Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes announced the arrests of 12 people in a series of unrelated mortgage and real estate scams in Brooklyn.
  One of the men charged, Todd Graham, was first exposed in an Arnold Diaz Shame investigation in May. Graham was apparently posting Craigslist ads for apartments he claimed to own, but didn’t.
  Read more at my fox New York.
• UPDATE: video report on the Bensonhurst fire that killed 5 people earlier this week.
• Scary Anti-Semite Now Behind Bars
  Prosecutors announced today that Ivalyo Ivanov (not to be confused with the Bulgarian soccer player) pled guilty to drawing swatstikas on several Brooklyn Heights synagogues, as well as hoarding a chache of guns and explosives in his apartment. Ivanov, arrested two years ago, was sentenced to 18 years in prison.By all accounts, Ivanov was a committed Nazi sympathizer. According to YourNabe.com, he went around drawing swatstikas on cars and buildings and blanketing the neighborhood with flyers saying “Kill all the Jews.” That history, plus all of the guns and materials for making bombs in Ivanov’s house, probably made this a pretty easy case to crack.

  By the way, this is not the only story about anti-Semitic attacks targeting Brooklyn’s tonier neighborhoods. Our own Yaffi Spodek will have a report on similar incidents targetting Park Slope just this week.

• Update On What We’re Following
  The fallout continues from that vicious brawl that broke out in a Bay Ridge bar last week. Our Mustafa Mehdi is there now, getting all the details.
• UPDATE: Mustafa went, and found . . . not much. The area seems to have quieted down, and people have moved on.
• Two Stories About Haitians In BrooklynNew York has more Haitian immigrants than anywhere else in the world–and a great number of them live in Brooklyn. On Saturday, WNYC went to Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights to talk to undocumented Haitian immigrants applying for Temporary Protected Status, which will allow them to stay in the U.S. for another 18 months in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti. It doesn’t come cheap, though–it costs $470 for an adult to apply.And from the public radio show “Speaking of Faith,” an audio slideshow documenting a vodou ceremony in Brooklyn–a fascinating look into a religion which has long been demonized but rarely understood.Needless to say, the Ink will be following the story of the Haitian community in Brooklyn closely over the coming months.
• Brooklyn Dems Worth A Lot–But The Ink Knows How Divided They Are
  

  He wants Brooklyn! (AP Photo/Stephen Chernin)

  The Daily News’ Elizabeth Benjamin writes about Harold Ford (pictured left) and Kirsten Gillibrand’s battle to gain the support of New York county political bosses. Why? Because county leaders have considerable sway over the county committee members who actually vote at the state’s nominating convention. It takes 25 percent of the votes to get on the ballot. According to Benjamin, Brooklyn’s votes are worth 9.1 percent of the total. That’s quite a big chunk, which is why Ford has been courting Brooklyn boss Vito Lopez so heavily. (Lopez hasn’t been shy about encouraging Ford’s run.) But, she notes, “there’s considerable division in the Brooklyn Democratic Party.” it’s not clear Lopez would be able to promise the full block of votes.

  Which is a circuitous way of saying that the Ink is all over these divisions. Our own Chris Alessi has been following the growth of a Brooklyn movement to unseat Lopez and his fellow establishment supremos, and we’ll have the full story on that later today.

• NYC Poet Laureate Field Sort of Crowded
  

  Upon reading the news that Tina Chang is to be Brooklyn’s new poet laureate, we wondered what kind of environment she’d be entering. Would she stand alone and represent the entire city by proxy, or would she have to jockey for position amidst a tangle of other wordsmiths?

  As it turns out, it’s a little of both. The only other borough besides Brooklyn to have a poet laureate (at least if Google is correct) is Queens. (We’re not counting the woman in Staten Island who simply declared herself the laureate there. You need government approval!) There is no citywide laureate except Manhattan’s Zora Howard, our Youth Laureate. Apparently, no adult wanted to handle that hot potato. So, kudos to Chang for stepping up to the Brooklyn post. She can’t really speak for the whole city, but she can probably try to represent the Bronx and Manhattan grown-ups.

• Welcome to the new and improved Brooklyn Ink! We are bigger and better than ever, and the Daily Roundup has been transformed into a round-the-clock center for everything that’s happening in New York’s best borough.
  Here’s the biggest news this morning:
• The attorney for Daniel Ignacio, the man arrested for allegedly setting the fire that killed five people in Bensonhurst, says he was actually a hero who saved the life of a two-year-old baby. Police, though, say Ignacio confessed to the crime and told them demons in his head made him do it. The Ink will have a big report on the fire later today. [HuffPo; NYP]
• A baton taken from a police officer could contain the DNA of the man he is accused of sexually assaulting, a witness said at the trial against the officer and two of his colleagues. We’ll be following the trial today, so check back for our take. [NYT]
• The NYPD is investigating an alleged attack by two dozen active and retired firefighters on four patrons of a Bay Ridge bar. At least one of the victims was left with broken bones all over his body. [NYP]
• In non-horrible-crime news: Brooklyn has a new poet laureate, author and professor Tina Chang. [BW]
• A Texas developer is going to renovate and reopen the borough’s fabled and faded movie palace, the Loew’s Kings Theatre (see pic below), turning into a venue for live entertainment. [Eagle]
  
  This theater’s going from drab to fab! (Photo courtesy of Flickr)
• In corporate sponsorship news: the Brooklyn Cyclones, home to everyone’s favorite Mets farm team, will now be playing in Municipal Credit Union Park. We hope the money the team got was enough to wash down the horrible taste of that name. [YrNabe]

Keep checking throughout the day for the latest breaking news and those special Ink stories you won’t find anywhere else!