Archive for ‘Crime’

Heads Up: Thieves Foraging for Personal Info in Carroll Gardens

By Tobey, 7 May, 2012, 1 Comment

I was passed along this note from a concerned Carroll Gardens neighbor. Wanted to give a heads up because, like many of you, we don’t shred all our personal info before we put it in the recycling bin. True or not, it’s certainly something to be aware of.

All,

We live in Carroll Gardens. On Sunday, May 6th, around 9:45, we walked past two Hispanic women with two toddlers, a stroller, and a shopping cart, going through the trash in front of a brownstone on our street. They were crouched over the trash, which appeared to contain nothing but papers, peering into the bag with the light from a mobile phone.

We should have confronted them there, but we continued on to our house and waited. They kept going through the trash at each house and then moved down the street. When they stopped at a house near ours and started going through the recycling trash, we went out and asked them what they were doing.

A few key points.

– While the women were looking at a blender when we approached and could thus have been simply trash foraging, when we looked at the cart they were pushing, we saw it was full of paper, what looked like personal and banking statements.

– They’d seen us watching them and could have been examining the blender as a distraction from what they really seemed initially intent on — going through paper recycling.

Look — we’re not alarmist, but this seems like a pretty clear case of people looking in a semi-organized fashion for personal information in your trash.

Keep an eye out and shred everything!

Cobble Hill Boutique Hit With Carcass Bomb

By Tobey, 2 April, 2012, No Comment

Local blog Pardon Me For Asking posted a pic of this bizarre prank first, showing a strange piece of meat-looking product hanging from the gates of upscale Cobble Hill boutique, Teddy. In response, the store sent along this comment:

We are as surprised by that nasty little present as anyone who sees the picture. We are checking with the local butcher shop and have informed the police, but we really don’t think it is anything other than some moron with a sick sense of humor. Our cameras will catch them if it happens again. Grossness and stupidity combined! Yuck.

Come on, who doesn’t love a little entrails-based shenanigans once in a while?

Playground Incident: Warning to BoCoCa Parents

By Tobey, 22 March, 2012, 9 Comments

Got an email from a friend today, forwarded by a local mom. Though I think we all try to be vigilant in watching our children at the playgrounds and parks, this is certainly something to be aware of:

Hi everyone,

Something upsetting happened at the park today and everyone needs to be aware of it.
Today, around noon, I was with the kids at Pierrepont playground. We were getting ready to walk out and I stopped about 5 feet from the gate to talk to another mom. My boys were standing at the gate and a man came over and started talking to them, from outside the closed gate. I couldn’t hear what he said but as soon as I started walking over, he looked up and quickly walked off. I asked Henry what he said and Henry said, “he asked if I was allowed to leave the park.” This guy was completely normal looking (could have been anyone’s dad)– jeans, a blue short sleeve T-shirt, about 5′ 10″, caucasian with dark hair. I called the police and gave a description.
This was a major wake up call to me. I am always watching my kids, but I must say, I felt safe at Pierrepont today. There were so many people – kids, nannies, mom’s and friends everywhere – and I was so close to them. But the reality is, anything can happen, any time. The only way to keep our kids safe is for us to be vigilant….all the time. Tell your babysitters too — keep an eye out for this male — anyone alone near the playground is suspicious. Call the police and report it…he’s in our neighborhood and he’s hanging around our park.
Send this to everyone you can think of — I want to get the story out there and get this guy.

Thanks,

Carroll Gardens and Red Hook: Scenes of a Crime

By Tobey, 9 January, 2012, 2 Comments

Hold on to your fancy mobile phones people (ie: iPhones), robberies in the neighborhood are up and the cops are warning everyone to be aware of their surroundings. According to the NY Post,

In Carroll Gardens, patrons of NY Perks, a nightclub on Smith Street on the neighborhood’s Restaurant Row, have been recent targets, as have subway riders at the Carroll Street station, residents and sources said. In Red Hook, crooks from the Red Hook Houses are targeting tipplers and IKEA and Fairway shoppers, police sources said. Both neighborhoods are in the 76th Precinct, which reported 124 robberies in 2011, up from 100 in 2010. As a result of the uptick, the precinct has stepped up its patrols.

I know I don’t think twice before I plug in my headphones or tap texts on the street. But from the looks of it, we all may want to keep our tech out of site–especially after dark. Anyone have any problems recently?

One Teen Turns Himself in for PS 29 Blaze

By Tobey, 18 May, 2011, 1 Comment

Though you might be getting tired of this story, it just keeps surprising us. Soon after a group of teens set fire to PS 29′s new playground equipment early Mother’s Day, their parents decided to pool together a guilt slush fund of $50k to fix the problem. Now we’re learning that one 16 year old boy has actually shown his face and been arrested for the deed. According the Daily News, Max Layton, a Brooklyn private school student and son of film distributor Charles Layton (president of Canadian-based company Alliance Films and has distributed film hits such as “The King’s Speech”), turned himself in to cops early Tuesday.

“I’m absolutely shocked that this happened,” said the boy’s mother, Ursula Alexander, who lives with her son in Cobble Hill. Max Laytan’s lawyer, Sam Gregory, confirmed the arrest. It is unclear what charge or charges the teen is facing. “The first thing these people (the Laytans) wanted to do was to make sure the kids at PS 29 had a new playground,” said Gregory, who added that Ursula Alexander “put together” the group of teens’ parents to collect the $50,000. Sources said four of nine teens involved in the incident attend prestigious St. Ann’s School, where a year’s tuition is about $28,000.

What can I say. I’m not lighting torches and rounding up the towns people–I get it, we all want to protect our children when they do stupid shit. But throwing money at a problem to do it seems more than a little skeevy (and kind of like the movies I watched with boys named Blane and Steff in the 1980s). It’s good to see that this parent had her son face the music. Now how will the other eight react?

Culprits Found in PS 29 Fire

By Tobey, 12 May, 2011, 1 Comment

It hasn’t even been a week since we woke up on a bright, sunny Mother’s Day to find the charred, burnt playground in the PS 29 schoolyard. According to the The Brooklyn Eagle , a group of neighborhood teens set the fire, then ran home to tell their parents it was an accident.

“The parents feel awful,” Brooklyn attorney Sam Gregory told the Brooklyn Eagle Thursday. “They contacted me and said they want to facilitate a way to get the playground replaced. $50,000 was wired into my account today. The kids will be working a long time to pay their parents back. They’re terribly sorry.”
Mr. Gregory said he opened up a checking account specifically for this purpose on Wednesday, and that the money was wired into this account Thursday afternoon.

Though non-profit group Out2Play had agreed to pay to replace the equipment, we’re sure they’re thrilled to hear the culprits are stepping up to the plate with the cash.

Fire Burns Brand New PS 29 Playground in Cobble Hill

By Tobey, 8 May, 2011, 2 Comments

UPDATE: According to the Fire Marshals, The call came in at 12:51am about the fire and trucks arrived within five minutes. The fire was put out in 24 minutes and there were no injuries. No word on who or why. If you have any information, please get in touch with the 76th Precinct Community Affairs Officers at 718-834-3207. Our intrepid co-founder Josh Robertson filled me in on some disturbing news this morning. Seems sometime last night, the playground in the brand new PS 29 schoolyard burned down. The story Josh got this gorgeous Mother’s Day morning was that someone was parking their car last night around 12:30am and saw 20 ft flames emanating from the schoolyard. They called the fire department and the police are now investigating. I’m speechless. I’ve got to doubt this happened through natural causes but stay tuned, we hope to find out more soon. If anyone has any more info, please let us know.

Pizza Vs. Bagel: The Carroll Gardens Stabbing

By Tobey, 18 April, 2011, No Comment

I’m not going to spend too much time on this because it’s all a little lurid, but by now, you’re sure to have heard about the stabbing which took place in the middle of Smith St. last Friday afternoon. Two men from the old neighborhood, Mark Iacono, owner of pizza darling Lucali and Benny Geritano, a bagel-maker from Bagels by the Park on Smith, got into an almost deadly fight outside Joe’s Superette, near Carroll Street (across from PS 58). According to The NY Post,

Seemingly out of nowhere Geritano, a hood who beat two attempted murder charges in the 1990s and is currently on probation, pulled out a long kitchen knife and lunged, sources said. The two had had words at a nearby Dunkin Donuts earlier in the day, sources said.
Iacono, 43, was taken to Lutheran Hospital and treated for puncture wounds. He was listed in stable condition, police said.
“He stabbed him good, the back, neck and legs, but he is stable,” a cousin who didn’t give his name said at the hospital. “We don’t know why this happened.”Geritano, 38, who served three stints in prison, fled after the attack, police sources said.
A short time after the attack he showed up at Long Island College Hospital with stab wounds and slashes to his hand and was taken into custody.
The two men had known each other since childhood.

And all in broad daylight. I think we’ll leave it at that.

Neighborhood Scare: Mugging in Broad Daylight

By Tobey, 7 April, 2011, No Comment

I was sent an email this afternoon about a mugging on Carroll Street in the Gowanus area. Though the victim has asked to stay anonymous, I wanted to share her story to make us all more aware of our surroundings. FYI:
I was mugged on Thursday Mar 31 at 730 pm when I was walking down Carroll between Hoyt and Bond . I didn’t see them coming but I am pretty sure they came diagonally from across the street. By the time I heard something / saw shadows they were already on me. One guy tried to put me in a choke hold while the other went for my bag. My initial reaction was to pull back my bag and scream for help thinking that there should be people around. I ended up on the ground. The guy that tried to choke me kept trying to put his hand on my mouth saying not to scream. I fought back until the other guy started hitting my head with his fist. At that point I thought they may have a knife (they didn’t) and I let my purse go. They then said give us your phone which was in my coat pocket. I had given up and went to get my phone out but then they ran off suddenly. A neighbor had heard me and come out the house from across the street. They left my bag and ran down Carroll making a left on bond. I realized they had stolen my wallet from the bag the next morning after they started with the charges.
It happened right after the scaffolding on Carroll by that tree/fire hydrant. They were 18-25 years old from what i recall and maybe 5’7″-5’9″, maybe 160-200 lbs, black/hispanic. Dressed mostly in dark clothing but i don’t remember what exactly.
Makes me realize how vigilant we all have to be at all hours. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen again any time soon.

Smith St. Not So Safe

By Tobey, 2 March, 2011, 2 Comments

Sometimes, looking at all the upscale shops, restaurants and bars in our neighborhood, we forget we live in a dangerous city. And I suppose the story in the Brooklyn Paper today, about a brutal attack on a 40 year old woman in front of Angry Wade’s on Smith St., should act as a cautionary tale. The woman was robbed and beaten at knife point by two attackers just after midnight on 26 February. Taken was her Louis Vuitton purse with cash, 13 credit cards and cellphone.