REMEMBERING a FALLEN HERO & FRIEND… NYPD Officer Chris Hoban!

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May 032012

REMEMBERING a FALLEN HERO & FRIEND… NYPD Officer Chris Hoban!

Bio & Incident Details

Age: 26

Tour: 4 years

Badge # 25547

Cause: Gunfire

Incident Date: 10/18/1988

Weapon: Handgun; .357 caliber

Suspect: Shot and killed

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Officer Hoban was shot and killed during an undercover drug buy. During the operation the three suspects began to suspect that Officer Hoban and his partner were police officers. When they searched Officer Hoban’s partner they located his service weapon. Officer Hoban immediately pulled out his gun and a shootout ensued in which Officer Hoban and one of the suspects were fatally wounded. The other suspects were sentenced to 25 years to life.

Officer Hoban had served with the agency for 4 years. He was survived by his parents and two brothers.

Direct Link: http://www.odmp.org/officer/6554-police-officer-christopher-g-hoban#ixzz1tsZVGEhw

Documents Show NYPD Surveyed L.I. Jewish-Owned Businesses In Anti-Terror Effort

Articles of Interest, Law Enforcement, National security, Terrorism, Cyber Terrorism & Related Crimes, Social Media, Technology & Digital Security No Responses »

Feb 272012

Documents Show NYPD Surveyed L.I. Jewish-Owned Businesses In Anti-Terror Effort

CBS New York News

February 24, 2012 9:08 PM

Great Neck Glatt (credit: CBS 2)

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) —

NYPD Video Segment

The search for radical terrorists took the NYPD to kosher butchers and candy stores on Long Island.

Friday night, CBS 2 learned Jewish-owned businesses were put under surveillance, along with mosques and businesses that cater to Muslims.

The NYPD is under fire from critics for putting mosques and Muslim facilities under surveillance. On Thursday, Rep. Peter King offered this response: “If you’re going after radical Muslims, you don’t go to Ben’s Kosher Deli.”

But what about Great Neck Glat, a kosher meat shop, which proudly flies the flag of Israel inside?

Secret documents obtained by the Associated Press show Great Neck Glat is one of almost a dozen Jewish-owned businesses the NYPD surveyed in Nassau County.

The anti-terror effort was focused there because many in the Great Neck Jewish community trace their roots back to Iran, CBS 2′s Tony Aiello reported.

Locals say they support the NYPD in general, but don’t know what to make of the surveillance.

“I hope they are not wasting their time,” said one local resident.

“I think we’re wasting time by spying on places like kosher butchers and kosher hair salons, basically Great Neck to begin with,” said business owner Benny Rafailov.

Congressman King, however, said to trust the NYPD.

“Something that may on the surface not necessarily be connected can make sense to them,” King said.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the program earlier Friday, saying it was not “a political statement or a political football to play with.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union says it’s clear the police surveillance program has crossed a line.

“The NYPD is just putting people under surveillance by virtue of ethnicity, by virtue of national origin, by virtue of religion, but not by virtue of suspicious behavior or evidence of wrongdoing,” said Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU.

The NYPD surveillance also happened in New Jersey. Governor Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker both said it raises serious concerns.

Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly say the surveillance continues.

Direct Link: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/02/24/documents-show-nypd-surveyed-l-i-jewish-owned-businesses-in-anti-terror-effort/

TRAGIC STORY: Intervening After Robbery, an Off-Duty A.T.F. Agent Is Killed

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Jan 012012

Intervening After Robbery, an Off-Duty A.T.F. Agent Is Killed

The New York Times

By AL BAKER and TIM STELLOH

December 31, 2011

Paul Mazza/Associated Press

A police officer stood on the sidewalk in front of Charlie’s Family Pharmacy on Merrick Road in Seaford after a robber was killed while fleeing the store. An off-duty special agent was also fatally shot while trying to stop the robber.

An off-duty special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was fatally shot on Saturday afternoon when he, along with at least one other law enforcement officer and a retired officer, tried to stop a robber who had just held up a pharmacy on Long Island, the authorities said.

The apparent robber was also killed.

Details of the shooting, which occurred outside Charlie’s Family Pharmacy on Merrick Road in Seaford, remained murky on Saturday night as the authorities seemed unsure how it unfolded and who fired the fatal shots.

Senior Special Agent John Capano, an explosives specialist who was in his 40s, had been a special agent for 23 years, said Joe Anarumo, a special agent with the bureau.

“Today, doing his job in an off-duty capacity, he intervened in an armed robbery and subsequently was shot,” Special Agent Anarumo said, adding, “He is a hero.”

Joseph G. Green, a spokesman for the New York office of the bureau, said he had worked closely with Special Agent Capano in the early 1990s when they were assigned to a joint firearms task force with the New York Police Department.

“It is a sad and tragic way to end the year,” Mr. Green said. “Over time, he became a certified explosives expert for A.T.F. who oversaw and assisted in conducting explosives training for law enforcement here in the United States, but also volunteered to travel overseas to Afghanistan and Iraq as part of A.T.F.’s explosives training for our troops in the military and police in those countries.”

Special Agent Capano was married, lived on Long Island and had two children, a daughter who is in high school and a son who is in college. His father is a retired law enforcement officer, Mr. Green added.

It was just before 2 p.m. on Saturday when a man walked into the drugstore, said Officer Maureen Roach, a Nassau County police spokeswoman. She did not say if the man was armed.

“He was demanding OxyContin and cash,” said Lt. Kevin Smith of the Nassau County police, adding that he did not know how much was stolen.

There were customers in the store at the time of the robbery, Lieutenant Smith said, though he said he did not know how many.

A law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was unresolved, said the preliminary accounts indicated that after the man left the pharmacy, he went to a parking lot, and people pointed him out as the possible robber. Special Agent Capano then confronted the man.

Somehow in the struggle between Special Agent Capano and the robbery suspect shots were fired, “and that is when the agent is shot,” the official said.

Next door to the pharmacy is a deli that, according to the official, was believed to be owned by a retired Nassau County police officer or detective. Some people from the pharmacy ran into the deli and told the people there what had happened. Also in the deli was an off-duty member of the New York Police Department, the official said.

“They come out and see these guys struggling,” the official said.

The official said it was believed that either the retired Nassau officer or the off-duty New York officer shot at the struggling men. The suspect was hit by gunshots and was fatally wounded.

It is not clear if Special Agent Capano was shot then or if he had been wounded in the struggle with the suspect. He was taken to Nassau University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Ryan Lecertosa, 24, was on his way home when he drove past the pharmacy Saturday afternoon and heard several gunshots. He said he saw a large man in front of the shop with a blood-soaked shirt.

“He was holding his chest, and then he collapsed,” Mr. Lecertosa said, adding that the man was instantly surrounded by about six people.

As the authorities try to establish just what happened, they will have to collect whatever guns were present, and try to figure out who fired, and how many shots. They will check the ballistics. Autopsies will be performed. Among the questions will be what bullets caused what wounds. Eyewitness accounts will be gathered, as well as any admissions made spontaneously, if they were.

Asked for details about the shooting and whether New York police officers were somehow involved, Detective Brian Sessa, a New York Police Department spokesman, said: “We are looking into it. It is not our investigation; it is Nassau County’s investigation. We’re looking into it.”

The episode aroused memories of the shooting deaths last June of four people inside a pharmacy in Medford, N.Y., several miles east of Seaford, in Suffolk County. The killer, David S. Laffer, 33, pleaded guilty in September to first-degree murder. After killing the four — a pharmacist, a clerk who was still in high school and two customers — he fled the store with thousands of pain pills.

That crime, described by prosecutors as one of the most horrific in the history of Suffolk County, appeared to have been a severe example of a national epidemic involving drugstore robberies by prescription drug addicts.

Direct Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/nyregion/off-duty-atf-officer-is-killed-intervening-after-robbery.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29

After Officer’s Killing, a Focus on a North Carolina Warrant

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Dec 172011

After Officer’s Killing, a Focus on a North Carolina Warrant
The New York Times
By MOSI SECRET
December 13, 2011

Community members, residents and officials joined a candlelight vigil for Officer Peter J. Figoski that was organized by the 75th Precinct community council in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Tuesday.
Photo: Hiroko Masuike / The New York Times

Despite his being wanted for a shooting in North Carolina, the man accused of killing a police officer in Brooklyn on Monday was twice released from jail in New York this fall because the authorities in North Carolina declined to have him extradited, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Tuesday.

Officers outside court in Brooklyn on Tuesday before the arraignment of Lamont Pride, who is also accused in a North Carolina shooting. Photo: Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times

The New York police had arrested the man, Lamont Pride, twice since September, first for possession of a knife and a second time for possession of crack cocaine and for endangering the welfare of a child.

Each time, Mr. Kelly said, the police noticed that Mr. Pride was wanted for the shooting in North Carolina, but that the arrest warrant could be served only in that state. A New York police officer called the authorities in Greensboro, N.C., after the second arrest, in November, Mr. Kelly said, because of “a concern about a violent felon going back on the streets of New York City,” though a spokeswoman for the Greensboro police disputed Mr. Kelly’s chronology.

In any case, by the time the Greensboro police requested extradition, Mr. Pride had already been freed, Mr. Kelly said. “He should not have been out on the streets,” Mr. Kelly said at a news conference. “He should ideally have been extradited to North Carolina. But that did not happen.”

Mr. Pride, 27, was ordered held without bail Tuesday on charges of first- and second-degree murder, aggravated murder of a police officer, and criminal possession of a weapon. “He made a choice to end the officer’s life,” a prosecutor, Kenneth M. Taub, said in a courtroom packed with about 100 standing police officers, officials and relatives of Officer Peter J. Figoski, who was killed on Monday.

The police said that they had also arrested Kevin Santos, 30, who they said was Mr. Pride’s accomplice in the break-in that led to Officer Figoski’s death, and three other men called accomplices: Ariel Tejada, 22, Nelson Moralez, 27, and Michael Velez, 21. All four face charges of second-degree murder, and each also faces weapons charges, with the exception of Mr. Moralez, according to the police.

Mr. Tejada and Mr. Moralez were found near the scene and were initially “treated as witnesses,” but when their stories began to unravel they were placed under arrest, the police said. Mr. Velez, the authorities said, was supposed to act as a getaway driver.

All four were ordered held without bail, and as they were led out of the courtroom to jail, the crowd of officers erupted in cheers.

Police officers responded to a call of a robbery in progress early Monday, and the first officers who arrived at the basement apartment in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, found a tenant bloodied from a beating, the police said. They had no idea that the robbers were still there, hiding in a dark room behind them. When the robbers tried to slip out, they were met by two more police officers. Mr. Pride raised a pistol and fired, striking Officer Figoski, a 22-year veteran, in the face, the police said. Officer Figoski died five hours later, at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center.

Mr. Pride, who was quickly arrested by Officer Figoski’s partner, has a lengthy arrest record in North Carolina dating back to 2007, when he was arrested for drug possession, according to the authorities there. In 2009, he served prison time for robbery, and he later served jail sentences for assaulting a woman and for misdemeanor assault. Then, in August of this year, he was involved in the nonfatal shooting of a Greensboro man, the police there said.

Mr. Pride went to New York, his birthplace, and was arrested near Coney Island on Sept. 22, for public possession of a blade longer than four inches, a misdemeanor charge. Mr. Pride pleaded guilty to a violation and was released from jail the next day.

Mr. Kelly said that the police had run a background check and found the North Carolina warrant, but that the warrant could be executed only inside North Carolina.

Mr. Pride was arrested again on Nov. 3, in an apartment near Coney Island where the police executed a search warrant. Two children, 11 and 16, were in the home. Prosecutors later described the condition in the apartment as “deplorable, with cockroaches, filth everywhere.”

The police said they found six bags of crack cocaine on a desk and four bags of marijuana on another defendant; they arrested Mr. Pride and two others. Mr. Pride did not live there, but the arrest happened inside the building where he had been arrested for carrying a knife earlier in the fall.

How a Robbery Led to a Killing

Mr. Kelly said that after the November arrest, the police again checked on the outstanding warrant against Mr. Pride and found that it could be executed only in North Carolina. Mr. Kelly said a police commander called the authorities in North Carolina after the November arrest. “I assume that what he tried to do is have it cleared up over the phone,” Mr. Kelly said.

Mr. Kelly speculated that the Greensboro police did not initially pursue extradition because of “resources.” It would have been up to the Greensboro authorities to pay for detectives to travel to New York and to transport Mr. Pride to North Carolina.

Susan Danielsen, a spokeswoman for the Greensboro Police Department, said in a statement Tuesday night that the district attorney there determines the type of warrant to issue. “In-state extradition is appropriate and reasonable when officials have no reason to believe that the suspect is a flight risk,” she said. “This was the case with Pride.” However, Howard Newman of the district attorney’s office in Guilford County, where Greensboro is located, said Tuesday that the police did not request extradition until Nov. 8.

Ms. Danielson disputed Mr. Kelly’s chronology as to when the police commander called the Greensboro police, saying that it was on Nov. 8 — four days after Mr. Pride had been freed. Paul J. Browne, the spokesman for the New York Police Department, said its records showed that “there was a contact made on Nov. 3,” the day before he was released.

According to a transcript of Mr. Pride’s Nov. 4 court hearing, Judge Evelyn Laporte of Brooklyn Criminal Court was told that there was an active warrant for his arrest in connection with a shooting in North Carolina. The prosecutor on the case, Evan Degrees, requested $2,500 bail.

“Anything recovered from Pride, Lamont?” she asked the prosecutor, referring to drugs.

“Nothing,” he responded. “There is no indication anything was recovered from him.”

She decided to release him without bail. He did not show up for his next court appearance, in November.

Mr. Browne, the New York police spokesman, said, “The person responsible for Officer Figoski’s death is the one who pulled the trigger, not the authorities in North Carolina.”

At his news conference, Mr. Kelly did not criticize the Brooklyn judge for the decision, but he did note the prosecutor’s $2,500 bail request, implying that it was relatively low.

Judge Laporte did not respond to a message seeking comment. A spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney did not respond to messages Tuesday, but earlier said that $2,500 was relatively high for the charge Mr. Pride was facing.

Al Baker, Liz Robbins and Tim Stelloh contributed reporting.

Direct Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/nyregion/after-officers-killing-a-focus-on-a-north-carolina-warrant.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29

Underwater Drones Giving More Eyes to Police Harbor Unit as Searches Grow

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Dec 062011

Underwater Drones Giving More Eyes to Police Harbor Unit as Searches Grow
The New York Times
By AL BAKER
December 4, 2011

With President Obama in town last Wednesday, things were busy for the New York Police Department’s Harbor Unit. Federal security agents were disseminating lists of city locations that had to be swept for bombs, cleared and guarded.

The New York Police Department’s Harbor Unit demonstrating one of its remote-operated vehicles in the Gowanus Canal.
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

That meant that coastal areas near touchdown points for Marine One, the presidential helicopter, demanded extra inspection. Police divers splashed down to scrutinize underwater sections of piers and seawalls for improvised explosive devices. Radiological sweeps were done. Each of the bridges spanning waters that Mr. Obama’s motorcade might cross got a top-to-bottom going over.

All of that underwater security has resulted in an increasing reliance on a relatively new tactical weapon for the police: an unmanned submersible drone, often referred to as a remote-operated vehicle, or R.O.V.

The remote-operated vehicle.
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

It is the Harbor Unit’s version of the mirrored device used by their colleagues on land to check for explosives under vehicles’ chassis. The department has six of these underwater drones, similar to those in use by the United States military and by oil companies with offshore operations.

Four, valued at $75,000 each, were acquired by the police in 2007, with federal grant money from the Urban Area Security Initiative. The police acquired two more sophisticated drones a year later with federal port security grant program money, for $120,000 apiece.

On Thursday, aboard the Anthony Sanchez, the largest of the Harbor Unit’s 34 vessels — it is named for a police officer killed on duty in 1997 — Capt. Anthony J. Russo directed his six-member crew to demonstrate the abilities of one of the drones, affectionately and perhaps unimaginatively called “No. 1” by the officers.

To do it, Detective Robert Harris, a boat pilot and diver, steered the 55-foot boat away from its dock at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. He passed some industrial sites and a derelict building at the water’s edge. He stopped alongside the rusted hull of a mammoth tanker, which is moored there and is now used to mix concrete. The little yellow R.O.V. — a 16-pound submersible with lights and sonar — was plopped into the 50-something-degree water, and off it went, tethered to a 100-foot cable running into the boat’s cabin.

There, Detective William P. Devine, a tall, lanky officer who is a scuba diver and the unofficial master of the R.O.V., sat at a table in the cabin, with a black briefcase before him that serves as the drone’s control pad and brain. He worked a toggle to maneuver the device and watched the images its camera beamed back, showing the barnacled bottom of the ship. The tether, or umbilical cord, carries 12-volt electricity to the R.O.V. and transports data and video images (in color) back up from the depths.

“This comes natural,” Detective Devine said, describing how he “flies” the R.O.V. along, almost like a helicopter but underwater. Sometimes if the currents are swift, the officers navigate their boat alongside the drone, moving in tandem as they sweep an area.

Detective Devine stares into the water, then back to the computer. His face is weathered, and somewhat tan even in late fall, like those of the other Harbor Unit officers who spend time outdoors. These officers are more fit than a typical officer and keep up rigorous training exercises. Their jobs demand they be dropped out of helicopters. They must be able to swim, manage themselves and their gear, help a partner and a possible victim and keep their head all at the same time. Many run triathlons while off duty.

Detective Devine has studied what biological or radiological weapons might look like, or where underwater explosives might be hidden under a boat. And if the problem is not explosives, it might be narcotics: traffickers will attach a load of drugs in PVC pipe and clip it along the keel under a giant tanker.

These days, counterterrorism duties make up about 50 percent of the Harbor Unit’s work, which has increased exponentially since 9/11. The unit still carries out rescue and recovery operations: aiding distressed boaters or retrieving bodies that float to the surface. The officers search for evidence in the silky muck of the river bottoms ringing the city. There, with usually zero visibility, they feel around for a gun or knife that some accused suspect has told a detective he tossed into the water to hide.

“I close my eyes, and your hands become your eyes,” Detective Harris said of those types of evidence searches.

But more and more, Detective Harris and others said, the mission is counterterrorism. These days, the briefing papers pour in from the Police Department’s Intelligence Division, through its Special Operations Division, sometimes at the rate of several bulletins a day: Check a suspicious boat under the Brooklyn Bridge; sweep an incoming cargo ship’s hull at the Coast Guard’s request; steam around by the Statue of Liberty to check on what a caller to 311 has described as an unidentified floating package. The officers of Harbor devise plans to deal with the myriad threats.

The officers realize just how critical they are in the defense of a port whose terrorism vulnerabilities have been well chronicled; roughly 10,000 cargo ships a year come into the port, with millions of containers landing on the Brooklyn piers.

In 2005, a Pakistani man, Uzair Paracha, was convicted in federal court of providing material aid and financial support to Al Qaeda terrorism. A law enforcement official said a concern arose during that investigation about a desire to establish a business in the city’s garment district as a way to ship items through the port to the city.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, even before he took over for a second stint as commissioner in 2002, was concerned about the adequacy of the port’s contraband detection system — whether for drugs or the tools of terrorism. He cited the drones in a speech in April 2009 to the Council on Foreign Relations.

“We have a little submarine that we use to go under and take a look at ships that are coming in,” the commissioner said at the time. “We even board the Queen Mary, believe it or not, when it’s coming into the harbor.”

So far, the R.O.V.’s have never hit on a bomb. If they did, they would call in the Navy, said Detective Devine, a former Navy sailor himself. “We mark the location, get out of the water and call them,” he said.

Direct Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/nyregion/drone-submarines-add-eyes-for-nyc-harbor-police.html