City & State - New York_07222016

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July 25, 2016

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July 25, 2016

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EDITOR’S NOTE / Contents

Michael Johnson Editorial director

Police officer deaths in the line of duty are not on the rise. FBI statistics back this up.

Police involved shootings, especially targeting people of color, may not be on the rise. The statistics are abysmal on this issue, so it’s hard to know for sure either way, but there is plenty of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence from respected experts that would suggest that civilian deaths at the hands of police have trended down over the decades.

But none of that matters.

The widespread adoption of smartphones and other recording technology has allowed the public to better document the actions of police on video, forcing the American people to witness horrifying incidents of police abuse, which in turn has begun a combative conversation about the issue of race relations and policing.

On the cover of this week’s magazine, we wanted to highlight the divide between the uncertain facts and the current perception, which has generated a genuine concern among many Americans. Many of the state’s more vulnerable populations have often viewed police with distrust. But that perception has eroded further in recent years, even in places where police have worked hard to build trust, which is why we wanted to explore this trend with a series of stories in this week’s issue.

6.

THE RNC

What the New York delegation was up to at the Republican National Convention.

7.

POLICE PERSPECTIVES

What the national conversation on law enforcement means for officers in New York.

19.

SPOTLIGHT: RACING & GAMBLING

The deal on NYRA, online poker, daily fantasy sports, and more.

30.

SLANT

New York University’s David Kirkland on how to combat racial bias in America.

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July 25, 2016

EDITORIAL editor@cityandstateny.com Editorial Director Michael Johnson mjohnson@cityandstateny.com Senior Editor Jon Lentz jlentz@cityandstateny.com

City & State is the premier multimedia news organization dedicated to covering New York’s local and state politics and policy. Our indepth, non-partisan coverage serves New York’s leaders every day as a trusted guide to the issues impacting New York. We offer round-the-clock coverage through our weekly publications, daily e-briefs, events, on-camera interviews, weekly podcast and more.

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MURAL AT THE NEW YORK DELEGATION’S HOTEL DURING THE RNC.

Vol. 5 Issue 29 July 25, 2016

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City & State New York

July 25, 2016

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THIS WEEK ON THE SLANT PODCAST

“A CONGRESSIONAL TRANSFER OF POWER” WITH STATE SEN. ADRIANO ESPAILLAT Topping a field of eight other candidates in NY-13’s Democratic primary, Espaillat is expected to become the first Dominican-American member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

“What I’ve begun to do already is to visit each neighborhood and let them know that I’ll be representing them with the same commitment with no privilege of one neighborhood over the other and to ensure the folks feel represented. I’ve been to Harlem four or five times. I went to East Harlem, to the Bronx … I’ve been doing my due diligence to ensure that rapidly, right after the 28th, I touched base with each and every one of the communities to ensure them that they will be represented by someone that will bring all the strength and energy equitably to all the district. That has to be done.”

“Having a Hillary presidency, I’d have to prepare in one way. How do I leverage the relationship with the White House? How do I leverage the relationship with Hillary Clinton to get the most for my district? … A Trump scenario, a Trump presidency I think propels me to prepare in a totally different scenario and approach, which is, how do I sharpen my elbows to protect the little that we have? So that it’s not done away with. It’s two totally different scenarios. I’m very optimistic that she will win, but this is a democracy. And you sometimes don’t know what really turns out.”

ADRIANO ESPAILLAT

Listen, subscribe and review this week’s podcast by searching for “New York Slant” on iTunes or Stitcher.

Our Perspective Given a Fair Choice, Workers Choose Unions

O

By Stuart Appelbaum, President, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, RWDSU, UFCW

ver 1,000 employees at Spanishowned Zara fashion retail stores in New York City have overwhelmingly chosen to join the RWDSU. It’s the biggest retail organizing win in recent years, and Zara workers can now look forward to having a voice on the job, and changing things for the better in their workplace.

But unfortunately, American-owned companies rarely treat their employees’ legally guaranteed right to join a union with respect, as Zara did. At many American companies, the right to join a union is disrespected or downright ignored. When workers in the U.S. attempt to organize, they often face a barrage of harassment, intimidation, and other tactics to prevent them from exercising their legal right to a union voice.

Bosses hold captive meetings with employees, telling lies about unions and

claiming they are bad for workers. They threaten workers’ jobs, and say that they will end up closing the workplace if they join the union. They’ll make empty promises about changing the way they do things if workers don’t unionize, or even dole out small raises or make other longoverdue changes in the workplace in hopes of keeping the union out.

And, orchestrating it all are so-called “consultants” – union busters – who are paid big money to scare, threaten, and lie to workers. These lowlifes make their living doing whatever it takes to confuse and frighten working people into voting against their own interests. Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump recently spent over half a million dollars on union busters in a failed effort in Las Vegas to keep workers at his Trump International hotel from joining a union.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The RWDSU, the UFCW and Zara reached an agreement earlier this year where the employer agreed to remain neutral and not interfere with the organizing drive at the world’s largest clothing retailer. This agreement allowed workers at Zara the chance to decide for themselves if they wanted a union, without intimidation, harassment, or the usual bag of underhanded tricks. No union-buster showed up to scare them, and nobody threatened to fire them or close the store.

It’s a different approach from U.S.-owned companies, and one that helps make workers and the company stronger.

Zara workers – on a fair, level playing field – chose to join RWDSU Local 1102, and now the company and the workforce will move forward with a strong relationship based upon trust and respect.

American companies should follow the model of Zara and others who respect the right of freedom of association.

www.rwdsu.org

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CityAndStateNY.com

July 25, 2016

THE

SHOW

Donald Trump formally accepted the GOP nomination for president of the United States on Thursday night, concluding a roller coaster ride of a Republican Nation Convention in Cleveland.

At a major party convention unlike any other, Trump and his family and friends were center stage, but each day seemed to bring a new distraction. Some prominent Republicans stayed away while others, notably primary runner-up Ted Cruz, made a point of withholding an endorsement. A rare floor fight over a rules vote was topped hours later by the news that portions of Melania Trump’s address were lifted from a speech by Michelle Obama.

Yet many delegates rallied around their candidate, with his home state delegation from New York enjoying a front-row seat to witness a historic candidacy.

REP. PETER KING

REP. CHRIS COLLINS

STATE SENATE MAJORITY LEADER JOHN FLANAGAN

FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI

HOUSE SPEAKER PAUL RYAN

INDIANA GOV. MIKE PENCE, THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

PENCE, TRUMP AND TRUMP’S FAMILY DISEMBARK FROM THEIR HELICOPTER.

JON LENTZ; JUSTIN SONDEL; DONALD J TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT

TRUMP

City & State New York

MICHAEL APPLETON/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE

July 25, 2016

Color experts (yes, that’s a real thing) will tell you that the color blue represents trust, comfort, sincerity and confidence. These are all qualities that police officers want to represent to the public, so it is apt that blue is the color most often associated with law enforcement.

But, in an era of information where people carry high-quality cameras in their pockets and the world can learn of a shocking incident involving police in minutes, the uniform is no longer enough to instill confidence and maintain trust.

Even though there is evidence to suggest that we are living in one of the safest times in U.S. history, trust between police and the public is in danger.

In this special section, we explore why the credibility of New York police departments are being questioned, and what they’re doing to try to reverse this trend.

CONTENTS

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8

DO POLICE REFORMS STICK IN NEW YORK CITY – AND DOES IT MATTER?

THE NYPD HOPES TO TRAIN OFFICERS TO BE MORE AWARE OF THEIR OWN BIASES

22

7

A Q&A WITH POLICE ATHLETIC LEAGUE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FREDERICK WATTS

16

ARE THE BUFFALO POLICE DEPARTMENT’S TRAFFIC STOPS UNCONSTITUTIONAL?

CityAndStateNY.com

A

July 25, 2016

Cycle Corrup AND Ref Do police reforms stick in New York City – and does it matter?

By BOB HENNELLY

YOUNG POLICE COMMISSIONER THEODORE ROOSEVELT

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; EVERETT HISTORICAL

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City & State New York

July 25, 2016

e OF uption form WITH THE SENSELESS killings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge this month, a long-simmering national debate over the issue of race and policing reached a boiling point. That discussion goes beyond issues of law and order to a deeper question: How much legitimacy and trust do the police have with the people they are sworn to protect and serve, irrespective of their race or socioeconomic status?

For police to refrain from resorting to the

use of force to maintain order, they need to rely on an abiding community consensus that their authority is rooted in integrity and the broader public interest.

To that end, police corruption, like the use of excessive force, can have a truly corrosive effect on police credibility in a way that puts both the cops and the public in greater danger.

New York City has grappled with the issue of police corruption for generations.

Since the founding of New York City

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Police Department in the mid-19th century, six high-profile commissions have taken their turn at holding hearings that made headlines by documenting widespread internal police corruption.

These commissions invariably prompted calls for reform and, on occasion, spurred the creation of a new agency aimed at improving police-community relations and accountability.

A few months ago, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton compared the internal department anxiety caused by an ongoing police corruption scandal involving high ranking officials to what was generated by the Knapp Commission in the early 1970s.

There have been calls for a similar independent investigation of the department in the aftermath of the recent arrests of veteran NYPD officers on corruption charges and the retirement of others who have been disciplined.

At the time of the Knapp Commission, the New York City Police Foundation was created as a nonprofit tax-exempt charity that could raise money to spend

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on projects supporting NYPD reform and modernization efforts as well as helping improve its relationship with the broader community.

Twenty years later, in the aftermath of the Mollen Commission, another body tasked with investigating the NYPD, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani used an executive order in 1995 to create the Commission to Combat Police Corruption.

Both the New York City Police Foundation and the Commission to Combat Police Corruption are still in operation.

Yet, as evidenced by the recent arrest of an NYPD deputy chief, a deputy inspector and a sergeant, as well as the internal disciplining of several other officers, corruption within the department remains.

New York City’s history of police corruption goes back more than a century.

In the 1890s, the Rev. Charles Parkhurst, described in the People’s Almanac as “a scholarly Presbyterian minister,” went on a fiery crusade “against police corruption, political connections and the underworld and all forms of urban vice.”

Parkhurst went undercover to saloons and prostitution houses to substantiate his case that the city’s police force was on the take. His campaign prompted Albany to form the Lexow Committee, named for Clarence Lexow, the state senator who led it.

The Lexow hearings generated a 10,000page record that included testimony from saloon owners and prostitutes, who described a well-oiled machine that ran on paying off the police. The disclosures set the stage for a defeat for Tammany Hall with the election of William Strong as mayor, who ran on a reform platform.

Strong then picked a young Theodore Roosevelt to be police commissioner.

Roosevelt, who had already lost a bid for mayor before his appointment, spent less than two years on the job as police commissioner, but he had a major impact.

His strategy of going out into the city during the overnight shift to roust sleeping police officers, who were supposed to be on duty, made him a tabloid sensation.

Roosevelt forced out one senior detective who had amassed a fortune under the table from patrons on Wall Street.

Roosevelt ran into political headwinds when he tried to have the police enforce a Sunday closure law on the books for the city’s popular saloons. Yet his decision to have police officers distribute ice to the families living in the city’s hottest and most vulnerable slums during a punishing heat

July 25, 2016

MAYOR JOHN LINDSAY ESTABLISHED THE KNAPP COMMISSION IN RESPONSE TO AN EXPOSÉ IN THE NEW YORK TIMES ON POLICE CORRUPTION.

wave was an early example of what would become known as community policing.

Subsequent police corruption panels after Roosevelt’s brief tenure include the 1912 Curran Committee, the 1932 Seabury Investigation, and the Helfand Investigation, which ran 1949 to 1950.

They were followed by the Knapp Commission in the early 1970s and the 1994 Mollen Commission.

The pattern has varied little. Press reports of a major police corruption scandal forced elected officials to act. Sometimes arrests would be made or implicated officers were forced to retire early. Reforms would be implemented, a few decades would pass, memories and resolve would fade, and the

self-correcting cycle would start anew.

The Knapp Commission was established

by Mayor John Lindsay after an exposé in The New York Times that reported police corruption was being ignored by the administration and by NYPD brass.

The commission’s star witness was Frank Serpico, a police officer turned whistleblower, who, along with Sgt. David Durk, had brought their well-documented claims of systemic police corruption to the Times.

Serpico and Durk had encountered resistance and hostility from within the NYPD. Serpico described a department in which 10 percent of the officers were corrupt, another 10 percent were honest,

City & State New York

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

July 25, 2016

and the rest “wished they were honest.”

It was the willingness of that 80 percent to remain silent about the misdeeds of the small percentage of their corrupt colleagues that defined the culture of what was shorthanded as “the blue wall of silence.”

“Narcotics dealers, gamblers and businessmen make illicit payments of millions of dollars a year to the policemen of New York, according to policemen, law‐enforcement experts and New Yorkers who make such payments themselves,” the Times wrote in a story that rocked the city in April of 1970.

Perhaps even more disquieting was Times reporter David Burnham’s conclusion that the highest levels of the NYPD and the Lindsay administration had turned a blind eye to the corruption, even after it was repeatedly brought to their attention.

Almost a year after that bombshell series hit, Serpico was shot in the face while trying to make a drug bust in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. According to his firsthand account in posted in Politico in 2014, Serpico had been abandoned by his fellow officers after he was shot by a drug suspect.

“I heard a voice saying, ‘Don’t worry, you be all right, you be all right,’ and when I opened my eyes I saw an old Hispanic man looking down at me like Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan,” Serpico recounted.

“My ‘backup’ was nowhere in sight. They hadn’t even called for assistance – I never heard the famed ‘Code 1013,’ meaning ‘Officer Down.’ They didn’t call an ambulance, either, I later learned; the old man did.”

Serpico says the officers were never called to account for their actions, but were given awards for saving his life. Years later, Serpico says he confronted the former Commissioner Patrick Murphy, whose tenure included that tumultuous period, but Murphy walked away. Murphy died in 2011.

Among the recommendations of the Knapp Commission was the establishment of special prosecutor to pursue police corruption cases. Such an office was opened in 1973, but it was abolished in 1990 by then-Gov. Mario Cuomo and the state Legislature.

On Mayor David Dinkins’ watch, it was not a Serpico-type whistleblower from inside the NYPD who prompted the appointment of yet another panel to investigate police corruption. It was the arrest in the spring of 1992 of NYPD

officer Michael Dowd and five fellow NYPD officers, who were caught up in an undercover drug operation run by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Narcotics Bureau.

Dowd and his crew of fellow officers, operating out of the 75th precinct in East New York, Brooklyn, earned as much as an additional $8,000 a week targeting drug dealers for their money and drugs, while at the same time providing protection for other drug dealers.

In response to the screaming tabloid coverage of Dowd and his crew, Dinkins selected Milton Mollen, a retired state Supreme Court judge, to head up what would be the sixth independent panel to investigate internal corruption with the NYPD. At the Mollen hearings, the public learned that Dowd had been on the NYPD’s radar for at least six years prior to his arrest by Suffolk County police. Yet, despite being the subject of 16 complaints over that period for robbing drug dealers and selling cocaine, NYPD brass looked the other way. Internally Dowd was described in his personnel file as having “good career potential.”

The Mollen Commission concluded that “while the vast majority of police officers” did not engage in corrupt behavior, there were pockets of corruption in 10 of the city’s most crime-ridden precincts. In these areas, anywhere from a handful to as many as 20 officers were a law unto themselves.

The commission reported that for at least a decade, “from the top brass down to local precinct commanders and supervisors there was a pervasive belief that uncovering serious corruption would harm careers and the reputation of the department.”

“We find as shocking the incompetence and the inadequacies of the department to police itself,” said Mollen, the panel’s chairman.

But the Mollen Report’s findings were rejected by then-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who at the time was serving his first stint as commissioner under Dinkins.

“It besmirches the reputation of the department with a rather broad brush that I don’t think is appropriate or warranted,” Kelly said.

One of the key recommendations of the Mollen Commission was the creation of an independent agency with subpoena power to oversee how the NYPD policed itself internally.

The proposal gained traction in the New York City Council, which moved to create

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MILTON MOLLEN

such an agency with subpoena power that could legally compel the NYPD to produce documents. But incoming Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, himself a former federal prosecutor who enjoyed strong police support at the time, succeeded in blocking the Council’s move in the courts.

As an alternative, Giuliani used an executive order to create the Commission to Combat Police Corruption. The commission had a handful of staff lawyers with a six-figure budget, but no subpoena power.

A decade later in 2005, Mark Pomerantz, the CCPC’s chairman, and himself a former federal prosecutor, resigned because he said the volunteer post required more time than he could commit.

He cited the difficulty the watchdog agency was having in getting documents from the NYPD without subpoena power.

Before he left the post, Pomerantz testified before a City Council committee that his panel had been stymied by the police department in its efforts to examine issues like fraudulent NYPD overtime claims, allegations of sexual misconduct, and how domestic violence cases involving members of the department were handled.

Pomerantz said his agency also wanted to investigate allegations that supervisors within the NYPD regularly downgraded the seriousness of crimes that were reported to improve the department’s performance statistics.

At the time, the NYPD denied Pomerantz’s claims and asserted that the commission had gotten all the files in every case in which the NYPD deemed there was an instance of serious misconduct.

Three years later, the commission was once again in the headlines after Willa Bernstein, one of its four staff attorneys, went public with claims she was terminated for having an anti-police bias.

At the time, the Daily News reported that

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Bernstein had called for an investigation into the decision of arresting officers to use a Taser on a teenage suspect who was already shackled and handcuffed.

Based on internal memos obtained by the Daily News, the commission leadership had determined that Bernstein had lost her credibility with the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Division after she compared the Taser incident to the 1997 Abner Louima police brutality case. That case involved the brutal precinct house beating of Louima by one officer and the subsequent cover up by a handful of other officers. The assaulting officer, Jason Volpe, was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in jail, while Louima was paid over $8 million by the city.

Despite the lack of subpoena power, the Commission to Combat Police Corruption’s internal disciplinary process continues to play a role. According to the CCPC’s last annual report in 2015, the panel conducted a detailed examination of 129 NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau cases and 540 disciplinary cases from 2014.

In the 40 cases involving allegations of domestic violence involving members of the department, the CCPC concluded that in seven of the cases the departmental penalties were too lenient. Similarly, in two related cases described as “profit motivated misconduct” involving veteran officers who received a $100 gratuity for providing an off-duty police presence at the same contentious corporate board meeting the CCPC also found the NYPD’s internal disciplinary response too light.

According to the annual review of the 32 instances in which officers were found guilty of department charges of false entries in NYPD records in the time period under review, only two of those cases resulted in termination from the force.

The latest round of police accountability reforms have come in the wake of the political battle over the Bloomberg administration’s reliance on the controversial stop and frisk policy. At one point under Bloomberg and Kelly, police were making several hundred thousands stops a year, overwhelmingly of young men of color, while 95 percent of them did not produce an arrest or even a summons.

Ultimately, a federal judge ruled the practice unconstitutional.

In the 2013 mayoral race, Bill de Blasio, the eventual winner, campaign against the tactic, which had become a defining issue. In August of 2013, the New York City Council voted to create the Office of the NYPD Inspector General, under the auspices of the city’s Department of

July 25, 2016

Investigation. The new oversight office has subpoena power, and in its first two years has focused on issues like the NYPD’s use of force on civilians and the efficacy of the strict enforcement of minor quality of life crimes as a way to reduce the overall number of serious felonies.

While the special prosecutor that the Knapp Commission called for in the 1970s to investigate police corruption has been disbanded for over 20 years, the New York City Police Foundation has prospered.

Since the 1970s it has raised more than $120 million on behalf of the NYPD from the city’s power elite. In one case, the government of the United Arab Emirates donated $1 million.

According to its website, the Police Foundation was established in 1971 “to reduce corruption and support innovative programs that the NYPD could not readily fund.” Its first grant was a scholarship, and “when financial hardships threatened the Mounted Unit, the Police Foundation stepped in and donated every horse in the Mounted Unit for the next 20 years.”

One of the Police Foundation’s earliest projects was a multimedia campaign that “aimed to improve communications between the police department and the New York Community,” according to a media account from the period.

In 1974, the Civil Service Leader reported on the Police Foundation’s publication of a brochure entitled the “100 Hats of Officer Jones,” which recounted how in one year, in addition to fighting crime, city police officers had delivered 46 babies and helped extricate 361 people caught in machinery and responded to over 1,500 stuck elevators.

In recent years, the foundation’s annual gala, with a price tag well in excess of a halfmillion dollars, is considered one of the premiere events in the city’s high society social calendar. The foundation’s board is made up an impressive intersection of Wall Street, the media, law and real estate.

If the “One Percent” needed a local steering committee, the foundation’s board would easily fill the bill. The membership also includes longtime philanthropists whose consistent generosity and engagement with the charities they support have made them pillars of the

POLICE COMMISSIONER RAY KELLY REJECTED THE MOLLEN REPORT’S FINDINGS, SAYING “IT BESMIRCHES THE REPUTATION OF THE DEPARTMENT.”

nonprofit world.

The 2016 gala at the Waldorf Astoria was hosted by Matt Lauer of the “Today” show and honored Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America. Two years earlier, Bank of America agreed to pay $16.65 billion to settle Department of Justice allegations that it had sold billions of dollars of mortgage backed securities without disclosing the inferior quality of those offerings.

Such securities offerings were considered a major contributing factor to the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, which resulted in millions of Americans losing their homes, massive pension fund losses, and the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The Police Foundation has a handful of employees. The highest paid employee is Susan Birnbaum, the president and CEO, who earns $190,253 in salary and $44,213 in additional benefits. Based on its last filing, the foundation brought in $6.2 million in annual revenue. Roughly $1.1 million goes to salary and benefits for the foundation staff.

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In 2014 the foundation brought in $425,000 in licensing fees from paraphernalia bearing the NYPD logo.

According to the foundation’s website, in July of 2001 when Bernie Kerik was police commissioner, it was granted the right to license and use the NYPD logos and trademarks as a way to raise money and reduce the widespread counterfeiting of NYPD souvenirs and apparel.

The Police Foundation’s contributions have funded uncontroversial purchases like bulletproof vests, gun buybacks and “crime stopper” rewards as well as scholarships.

Other expenditures have been more controversial, like the membership dues for the police commissioner to the Harvard Club and funding the living expenses of NYPD detectives stationed overseas on counterterrorism assignments.

According to the last publicly available documents from 2015, the foundation also funded two management consulting contracts that totaled close to $600,000, which was divided between Robert Wasserman and John Linde, both advisors to Police Commissioner Bill Bratton.

The foundation’s chairman is R. Dale Hemmerdinger, one of the city’s most successful real estate entrepreneurs, who volunteers his time. In 2007 he was appointed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer to be chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Agency. At the time of his Albany confirmation hearings, the Times described Hemmerdinger as “a real estate developer who has helped raise money for the Democratic campaigns” who was going to “need a crash course” in the MTA’s finances.

In addition to chairing the Police Foundation, Hemmerdinger is a trustee of the Citizens Budget Commission and has served as an NYU trustee. Hemmerdinger did not reply to a phone call and an email with questions about the Police Foundation. The media representative who handles press inquiries for the Police Foundation said the Foundation also declined to respond to City & State’s query.

According to a detailed review of the income tax and financial disclosure documents on file with the New York State’s Attorney General’s Charities Bureau, in 2009 the foundation signed a 10-year lease of its office space at 555 Fifth Ave., which is a signature property of of Hemmerdinger’s real estate company. The annual rent ranges somewhere between $160,000 and $170,000 annually over the life of the lease.

According to the filings, “the lease was

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POLICE COMMISSIONER BILL BRATTON RECENTLY COMPARED THE INTERNAL ANXIETY CAUSED BY AN ONGOING CORRUPTION SCANDAL TO WHAT WAS GENERATED BY THE KNAPP COMMISSION.

deemed an arm’s length transaction by the trustees not involved in the ownership of the building.”

The Police Foundation’s close ties to Wall Street became an issue in November of 2011 when the Occupy Wall Street movement was forcibly removed from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan after nearly a month-long occupation aimed to protest the financial sector’s role in the nation’s growing wealth inequality.

Critics charged that the NYPD had been unduly influenced by a $4.6 million gift from JP Morgan, via the New York City Police Foundation, that funded patrol car laptops as well as security monitoring devices that had been initiated a year earlier.

Advocates for the Police Foundation insist there are no strings to these corporate gifts and that they are made only out of civic pride and to show support for the NYPD. “This gift is especially disturbing to us because it creates the appearance that there is an entrenched dynamic of the police protecting corporate interests rather than protecting the First Amendment rights of the people,” Heidi Boghosian of the National Lawyers Guild, told Salon in 2011. The National Lawyers Guild had legal observers posted at all the major Occupy Wall Street marches. “They’ve essentially turned the financial district into a militarized zone,” Boghosian added.

Chris Dunn, senior counsel with the New York Civil Liberties Union, says

soliciting private donations for police work raises serious red flags. “Private financing of government operations is generally problematic, and private financing of police operations is particularly problematic given the lack of accountability and transparency,” Dunn said. “As the current NYPD scandal demonstrates all too well, mixing private money and police officials is a recipe for trouble.”

Eugene O’Donnell, a member of CUNY’s John Jay College faculty and a former NYPD officer and prosecutor, says there needs to be a bright line between public policing and corporations.

“We have to be sensitive to even the appearance of a conflict of interest,” O’Donnell said. “The integrity of the police department has to be priceless, so taking contributions from a JP Morgan puts that at risk. We are a super-rich city and we should publicly fund all police functions.”

But perhaps more importantly, O’Donnell says, having the New York Police Foundation solicit funds on behalf of the NYPD sends the wrong signal to rank-and-file police officers who are told to meticulously avoid using their uniform to get special consideration from local merchants looking to ingratiate themselves with the NYPD. “You can’t privatize the funding of police projects,” O’Donnell said. “It sends the wrong signal to the young cop who’s regularly given the speech about the danger of taking a free lunch when they are out in the community.”

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July 25, 2016

COPS BIASED?

According to new NYPD training, almost everybody is

ON A SUNDAY MORNING in mid-July, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio marked the second anniversary of Eric Garner’s death at First Central Baptist Church, about a mile from where the black Staten Islander died after an officer attempting to arrest him for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes placed Garner in a chokehold.

De Blasio told the congregation that the city, like the country, has grown less discriminatory over the past few decades. But issues linger, he said, and the NYPD was working hard to become an institution that engaged in “policing of, by and for the community” through neighborhood policing and training initiatives.

Earlier that day, when asked about statements by Garner’s widow that officials were dragging their feet on holding those involved accountable, de Blasio said that the training would help police identify and overcome biases. “The real issue is preventing these tragedies,” the mayor told a 1010 WINS reporter.

“That’s the discussion that’s happening all over America, and I have to say, the NYPD is doing some of the very best work in the country in terms of retraining our officers in how to de-escalate incidents and to avoid the use of force when possible, and into how to recognize that all of us as human beings have bias, have blind spots. The NYPD is systematically retraining the entire police force to recognize those implicit biases, overcome them, and protect everyone including, of course, our officers in the process.”

Implicit bias training hinges on the theory that the brain groups objects – and people – together in an effort to create shortcuts and decrease its workload. And even when people consciously hold egalitarian beliefs, they are often unaware that their mind categorizes people based on their race, religion, gender or other demographic characteristics

and, in doing so, views individuals through the prism of stereotypes.

“It’s basically meant to make people – and so in this instance, cops – aware of the fact that they have the potential to be influenced by biases that operate at a relatively spontaneous, automatic, non-conscious level,” explained Destiny Peery, a social psychologist who teaches criminal law at Northwestern University. “And the first and biggest step to dealing with those biases is being aware that it’s possible for you to be influenced by things you don’t realize you’re being influenced by.”

Efforts to help personnel identify their implicit biases and counteract them have made so-called implicit bias training more and more commonplace: The U.S. Department of Justice announced last month it would put through staff through such a program, the federal government’s task force on policing recommended the tactic to other law enforcement officials and one industry leader – Lorie Fridell – said she fields at least one call a day from police departments across America and Canada.

In New York, a federal judge noted it may be appropriate for officers to undergo training on the effect of unconscious racial bias while ruling in 2014 that the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk violated the rights of New Yorkers and calling for a court-appointed monitor to map out a reform plan. The most recent update from the monitor, dated February 2016, reports that the NYPD recognizes the value of implicit bias training and has retained Tracey Meares, a professor at Yale Law School, and Phillip Atiba Goff, an associate professor of social psychology at UCLA, to help devise the training.

The NYPD did not respond when asked to confirm the consultants had been retained. But Commissioner William Bratton recently said the department will begin go-

ing through a new three-day training cycle this September that focuses on de-escalation techniques and racial bias issues, including one day on implicit bias.

Some social psychologists have questioned the efficacy of implicit bias training, but in New York organizations that have been through such training, including the state court system, the Legal Aid Society and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, universally offered praise for the program.

However, they acknowledged that police reform advocates are right in saying training alone cannot curtail improper behavior motivated by bias or ameliorate tensions between communities of color and cops.

For years, the Judicial State Institute, which handles education and training for the court system, has brought in professors from across the country to lead implicit bias training, according to the institute’s dean, Juanita Bing Newton. She said the education has taken the form of lectures, setting up hypothetical scenarios (for example, would trainees award the same amount of money to a poor, minority litigant in a civil case as they would to a wealthy person?) and offering digital exams that use faces and positive and negative adjectives in an attempt to gauge a preference for any particular demographic. Newton, a middle-aged African-American woman, said she her results showed she had a slight preference for white men, a discovery she noted had hallmarks of what was found during the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education.

“Dr. Clark’s test on African-American children showed that little black girls had a preference for blonde, white dolls, and that’s a message that they’ve probably been taught,” she said. “It’s important for us to all work through it in an attempt to better real-

MICHAEL APPLETON/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE

By SARINA TRANGLE

City & State New York

July 25, 2016

ize the notion of justice for all without regard to race, creed, color, etc.”

Back when the debate about whether the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk was discriminatory was simmering, newly elected Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. had the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit criminal justice group, examine his offices’ practices. The institute’s ensuing report found differences in how his staff handled matters based on the defendant’s race. In response, Vance’s office underwent implicit bias training and is now working with consultants to evaluate the offices’ practices and devise ways to mitigate bias at points where it may pop up.

Vance said that, initially, some personnel viewed the training as an indication supervisors thought they were prejudiced. But, after the training, he said that even those skeptics gave positive feedback about the initiative.

“We all have implicit bias, and implicit bias does not equal racism, and that’s where, sometimes, I think people get caught up,” Audrey Moore, chief of the Special Victims Bureau and chief diversity officer in Vance’s office. “We need to be aware of these points where it could be influencing our decision-making.”

Vance said that the training was worth serious consideration from other agencies as well. “The way through the challenges we have in America today with race and criminal justice is to move at them and to work through them, rather to avoid them,” he said. “If you avoid them, ultimately it will be perceived that you either don’t care or you don’t want to know the answer.”

Indeed, when de Blasio began discussing the upcoming training, his comments were criticized by Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins, who contended the de Blasio administration was always tak-

ing the approach that the police are biased.

SBA did not return calls for comment, and and a spokesman for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which represents NYPD officers, declined to comment.

But Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain and the founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, said that as an officer, he had to remind himself not to view people based on their ethnicity or the area he was patrolling.

He said it was important that the NYPD was ready to acknowledge the existence of implicit biases and had abandoned a slogan popular during his NYPD days, “We don’t see color; we see crime.” After the training, Adams said the NYPD should ensure the message resonates by trying to work it into the department’s culture of using a reward system built on promotions and work assignments.

“These recent actions and activities have compelled the city to understand we have to stop living in this mythical universe where people don’t see color,” Adams said. “This training is a final acknowledgment that because you become a police officer does not mean you’ve left the human race and the biases that are associated with being human. … Not only the training is important, but how do we continue to reinforce what is being taught once these police officers hit the street, where the informal training kicks in?”

Research, however, has shown that implicit bias training has its limits, Peery explained. Peery said she’s had a hard time finding out many specifics about the practices used in implicit bias trainings, but that most seem to be relatively brief, one-time sessions focused on making individuals aware that they – and their peers – contend with biases they’re unaware of. She said the

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only research shown to reduce biases came after participants spent eight weeks with researchers focusing on breaking underlying stereotypes day-in and day-out.

“I have no idea what they’re doing because in 30-plus years of research on this in social psychology, there are not any kind of interventions that have been developed that would allow us to say that we know how to get rid of implicit bias in any kind of individualized way,” Peery said. “The interventions that we do know work, based on research, are things that have more to do with processes and procedures and the way that an institution or system runs.”

For instance, Peery said, having officers fill out reports that prompt them to describe why they stop people would help them notice when they may not be stopping people due to a reasonable suspicion, but based on a bias. She said implicit bias trainings can help propel people over “quite a big hurdle” in understanding they have biases, which can function as a “tiny piece” in a much bigger puzzle of improving policing through several strategies.

Still, the mayor’s tendency to tout the training initiative has some criminal justice advocates, such as Police Reform Organizing Project Director Robert Gangi, worried de Blasio is expecting too much from it.

“The issue isn’t implicit bias, the issue is institutional racism. Broken windows, in the way it’s applied in New York City, is de facto racist,” Gangi said. “The most dramatic example of that is Daniel Pantaleo, who the video for the Eric Garner incident demonstrated applied a chokehold to Eric Garner that led to his death. … Every one of those officers who engaged in that incident – reckless, excessive use of force, ignoring a man’s pleas when he says he can’t breath – they’re all on the police force.

And people in the community know that.”

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July 25, 2016

CHECKPOINT: BUFFALO Are the BPD’s traffic stops unconstitutional?

By JUSTIN SONDEL and AARON LOWINGER

ABOUT TWO YEARS AGO, Thomas Lovelace was driving his blue 1984 BMW 325i down Bailey Avenue in Buffalo when he encountered a cluster of police vehicles with flashing lights and officers in the street near the local station house.

Lovelace found himself in the net of one of the Buffalo Police Department’s checkpoints, which have become commonplace in the city, especially around public housing and on Buffalo’s East Side. At a checkpoint, police vehicles and personnel constrict traffic and use automatic license plate readers to scan for expired registrations, lapsed insurance, overdue state inspections or outstanding warrants. In theory, police then detain any motorist that the scanner flags.

Lovelace, who is African-American, claims his status as a driver was in good order, but he was asked to pull over anyway. “I didn't know my rights then, they said something about it being a suspicious vehicle that might be transporting drugs,” he told City & State. “They literally ripped my car apart looking for drugs. They broke my laptop.

(The computer) just happened to be in my trunk and they just threw it on the ground.”

Realizing that what he endured could have been much worse and fearing that the police were focusing on revenue generation rather than public safety, Lovelace created a Facebook group to raise awareness and track the kind of checkpoints that ensnared him in 2014.

Lovelace is just one of many thousands who have gone through a BPD checkpoint, and one of many hundreds who has been detained or arrested as a result. But as Buffalo has made the tactic common practice in certain parts of the city, critics argue that checkpoints like the one Lovelace encoun-

tered violate fundamental constitutional rights while information made available suggests that these checkpoints disproportionately target African-American neighborhoods.

Since at least 2013, the BPD has periodically conducted such traffic checkpoints, concentrating heavily on the East Side and several Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority sites. Court documents, data, and BPD records – collected over the past year by a research project led by SUNY Buffalo law professor Anjana Malhotra and assisted by students and professors at the SUNY Buffalo and Cornell University law schools – indicate a pattern of checkpoints allegedly in violation of Fourth Amendment rights.

“Buffalo residents have routinely been racially profiled, detained, and arrested without probable cause, stopped without individualized suspicion, and been subject to patently unconstitutional sweeps, raids and checkpoints,” Malhotra writes in forthcoming study summarizing her research.

Mike DeGeorge, a spokesman for Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and the BPD, said the mayor’s office and police department would not comment on the allegations that checkpoints violate the Fourth Amendment until they had a chance to fully review the study, which has not yet been published.

For Malhotra, the federal and state court decisions around checkpoints clearly indicate that BPD has engaged in illegal policing.

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court in Indianapolis v. Edmond found that vehicle checkpoints “absent individualized suspicion” were a violation of the Fourth Amendment protection from illegal search

and seizure. Further, in the 2006 People v. Trotter decision involving the Rochester Police Department, a state court ruled that police checkpoints for “general crime control” were unconstitutional.

The checkpoints have had an unclear effect on crime deterrence – the city’s violent crime rate has stayed relatively flat – but when the circumstances of checkpoint arrests have come to light in court, some have been dismissed.

On Sept. 11, 2015, a man driving through a BPD Housing Unit checkpoint near Riverside’s Schaffer Village housing projects was arrested for driving while intoxicated, according to the court decision. The arresting officer “observed an open container of beer in plain view in defendant's lap.” The officer, William Robinson, testified under cross-examination that checkpoints have become routine for the department, noting that “when we're told to do a checkpoint, it's do a checkpoint here at this time because we've done, I don't know, a hundred of them … We stop every single car for safety and equipment violations, make sure we have our overhead lights on, and it's got to be a safe spot.”

Buffalo City Court Judge Kevin J. Keane

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July 25, 2016

“target and eliminate high crime areas in the city” and to “strictly enforce” Brown’s zero-tolerance law enforcement plan, according to information on the city’s website.

In early 2014, Derenda told The Buffalo News, “Our Strike Force officers are conducting daily roadblocks at multiple locations and surprising the criminal element.

Because of that people are now less likely to carry guns knowing that they may be stopped at a safety checkpoint.” The article mentions that such law enforcement initiatives were put into place by the “urging of Mayor Byron Brown.”

The bulk of Buffalo’s checkpoints have been carried by the BPD’s Strike Force and the BPD Housing Unit, according to Malhotra’s research. The Housing Unit is a group of 21 officers assigned to police the population living in Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority projects. The Housing Unit shares office space on Perry Street with Strike Force, and they often collaborate on checkpoints.

According to a Housing Unit monthly log obtained by Malhotra and shared with The Public and City & State, the police force conducted more than 20 checkpoints in and around BMHA sites between May 2013 and April 2014, many of which were assisted by Strike Force.

Malhotra suspects that many of Buffalo’s checkpoints have been executed unlawfully. The 6,000 tickets issued at 60 checkpoints detailed in the Operation Strikeforce study lays that bare, in her estimation. The

AARON LOWINGER

agreed with the defense to suppress all evidence gained by the stop, including the blood-alcohol test, as BPD “failed to establish that the checkpoint was established and operated in a manner that complied with constitutional requirements,” and that the police “had no right to stop and to arrest the defendant.”

Another study published in May 2016 provides additional context in the Buffalo Police’s use of the tactic. Undertaken in part by SUNY Buffalo State criminal justice professor Scott Phillips, the “Operation Strikeforce” study found that “while officers made arrests for individuals they stopped who had outstanding warrants, confiscated several firearms and vehicles, and they also wrote over 6,000 traffic tickets, the primary goal was to deter crime and disorder.”

During Operation Strikeforce, the BPD, with assistance from state police and the Erie County Sheriff, conducted more than 60 checkpoints across 46 locations. Each checkpoint remained in place for 90 minutes and all but eight of them occurred on Buffalo’s predominantly African-American East Side.

Mayor Byron Brown and Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda have made checkpoints a key strategy in their efforts to crack down on crime. The efforts have been led by the department’s Strike Force unit, a special outfit formed by Brown and then-Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson in 2006 to combat gang-related crime but also to

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plate-reading “technology does not detect routine traffic offenses, but rather is limited to detecting cars with suspended licences and outstanding warrants,” Malhotra wrote in an email.

“And as of 2014, there were 6,247 outstanding warrants (countywide), and it is highly doubtful that the roadblocks captured all individuals in the county with outstanding warrants, especially given their selective locations in communities of color,” Malhotra continued. “Rather, (the study’s) arrests and numbers are more consistent with Judge Keane's decision last month finding that the BPD officers conducted checkpoints with discretionary and nonuniform procedures, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

The scrutiny comes at a time when the tension between police and the communities they serve are running high across the nation. After the death of two black men at the hands of police officers last week and the ambush and murder of eight police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, cities across the nation, including Buffalo, have seen protests, forums and vigils, all aimed at addressing the underlying issues that create that tension.

While some are thankful for the checkpoints and see the value in them, others feel uneasy. Earlier this month Philando Castile was shot and killed by a police officer in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, after being pulled over for a broken taillight. Multiple media outlets have reported that Castile, who had a legal gun in the car, was stopped by police 52 times in 14 years.

Complaints have been raised closer to home, as well. Last year, East Side resident Madelyn Smith wrote a letter to The Challenger, a community paper based in a largely African-American neighborhood of Buffalo, saying that she and her law-abiding neighbors are made to feel like criminals because they live in the most heavily policed neighborhood in the city.

Mentioning Strike Force by name, she wrote that the “roadblocks I keep seeing by the Buffalo police are not helping the fight against crime. All I see is the police wasting time when they could be looking for those that commit crime. Thankfully, after being faced with police during the inspection, I haven’t received a ticket YET. I’ve been through the roadblock thing almost a dozen times.”

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BUFFALO POLICE STOP DRIVERS AT A CHECKPOINT, A TACTIC THAT HAS BECOME COMMON PRACTICE IN CERTAIN PARTS OF THE CITY. CRITICS ARGUE THAT THE CHECKPOINTS DISPROPORTIONATELY TARGET AFRICAN-AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOODS.

This story is a collaboration between City & State and The Public, an alternative media source covering politics, culture and lifestyle in Western New York.

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connecting

COPS

and

KIDS

A Q&A with Police Athletic League Executive Director Frederick Watts POLICE ATHLETIC LEAGUE Executive Director Frederick Watts is pretty certain he’s been illegally stopped by the cops. And he would know: He earned a law degree from Columbia Law School and spent more than 30 years working in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. But creating positive interactions with officers has been a primary goal of the Police Athletic League since it was founded in 1914. As the nation grapples with video footage of black men being fatally shot by the police, demonstrations in the streets and retaliatory violence against officers, Watts joined New York Nonprofit Media for a conversation about PAL and its work to improve police-community relations.

NYN: Within your programming, where do the actual police-child interactions happen?

FW: There are two types of interactions: one are defined police-child programs, and then there’s the more informal. Probably the biggest one that touches the most children are our “Cops and Kids” sports programs. Those are programs where, for older kids, the police actually play on the same team with teenagers; and for the younger kids, the police officers coach the kids. The great part about that is the kids really get to know the police officers as mentors or coaches or sometimes as teammates, and that communication is really valuable.

In addition, we have centers throughout the five boroughs. We try to connect. We get every commanding officer in the precincts where those centers are and every PAL center director – and they come for breakfast.

The PAL employee sits at the table with the police officer responsible for that geography, and the beauty of that is they can interact casually and sort of build and reinforce the informal part of our interactions.

NYN: Bearing those interactions in mind, we’re having this conversation at a time when police-community relationships across the country are very tense.

What adjustments has your organization made?

FW: You will either view this as a great answer or a terrible answer. I don’t think we’ve had to adjust very much because the foundation was in place. Take me, for instance – and again, I’m an adult and I have different life experiences. My father was a police officer.

I worked with police officers for 30 years at the DA’s office. When those charged events happened, I had a context. I understood how awful those events were but also what they were in the context of human police officers and human citizens that found themselves in these tragic circumstances. Context is everything. Knowledge is everything. The teenagers are going to ask questions. I understand.

But I think we’re responding – trying to give them the context – based on experiences we’ve been giving them for years, namely: You have anger, you have fears, but put it in the context of this police officer, the one you know, the one that came to our center and helped us do certain things.

In the end, to me it’s simple: the first encounter you have with a police officer should be a positive one. If you can have that, the context for other interactions will be different.

NYN: Many African-American parents have “the talk” with their children about how you should carry yourself during an interaction with a police officer. What would you advise a parent to say in that talk to help encourage that first interaction with a cop to be a positive one?

FW: As an African-American myself, I had that conversation with my parents, and I’ve had that conversation with my children.

Some take that as a negative statement about the police. I don’t think so at all. I think it’s a reality of human interaction. The same way you call people Mr. or Ms. because you’re showing them respect, the same way you say, “Good morning,” before you do certain things – out of respect – you should do the same with a police officer out of some regard for their authority. To me, not because you have to, not because you owe it to them. It’s just good human interaction.

There are two considerations: One is getting through this moment, and two is your larger feelings about policing or community.

The most important is that first moment. So to me, you have to counsel your kids that the goal is to show someone respect and to leave that interaction with him having a regard for you and you having a respect for him. The second part of that interaction – whether you should have been stopped, or why they pulled me over, why they asked to look in my backpack – you have that conversation someplace else. That to me is an important and real conversation – but not to be had on the street with a police officer.

NYN: Have your staff felt any discomfort lately while representing the Police Athletic League?

FW: We have a young staff, largely people of color, largely New York City residents who are dealing with the day-to-day of interacting with not only the police but with other institutions as well. The staff is proud of the work we do. They’re very committed to the kids. I just think people are proud enough of the work that some of the tricks about, “I’m a young person who could be stopped myself,” I think is overridden by the pride they have for the work they do.

I mean, I was once stopped. I’ve been stopped more than once. I have a law degree – I’m pretty sure I was stopped illegally. At the end of the day, with context, and a belief that I’m still proud of the work I did as a prosecutor, I’m proud of my father who was a police officer in Harlem for 20 years – I can balance. I think as we get older, we can balance the problems with our interactions with our overall feeling about ourselves and the work we do … but it’s hard.

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City & State New York

July 25, 2016

SPOTLIGHT:

RACING & GAMBLING

This past weekend the summer meet at Saratoga Race Course got underway. For more than 150 years, the track has been home to some of the world’s best thoroughbred horse racing, serving as a getaway spot for the super rich and a gathering place for those with only a few bucks in their pocket. One of the draws of the track is the timeless feel of its grounds, as if you are walking into a place that is still the same as it was decades or even a century ago.

This experience stands in contrast to the quickly changing landscape of gaming. The days of going to the track or hitting up a casino are rapidly being replaced by the ease of online gambling. Additionally, more and more entertainment choices have cut into the market share of betting and racing.

In this special section, we look at how well New York is adapting to the evolving times.

QUICK TAKES WITH STATE SEN. JOHN BONACIC, ASSEMBLYMAN GARY PRETLOW, NYRA PRESIDENT CHRISTOPHER KAY AND STATE GAMING COMMISSION EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ROBERT WILLIAMS

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WHAT THE LEGISLATURE IS DOING TO LEGALIZE DAILY FANTASY SPORTS AND ONLINE POKER

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WHAT THE STATE’S EXTENSION OF ITS CONTROL OVER NYRA MEANS FOR THE FUTURE OF HORSE RACING

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LIKE POKÉMON GO WITH CASH PRIZES: THE NEW YORK LOTTERY ADOPTS AUGMENTED REALITY

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CityAndStateNY.com

July 25, 2016

SPOTLIGHT: RACING & GAMBLING

Raw Deal

What a pair of online gaming bills could mean for New York

By GABE PONCE DE LEÓN

AMONG THE MOST talked-about pieces of legislation in Albany this year was a bill that legalized daily fantasy sports (DFS) just months after Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, to much fanfare, declared it gambling, forcing the two largest operators to shut down. Amid that fantasy sports frenzy, another online gaming bill, which pitted local casino owners against out-ofstate interests, quietly gained momentum.

The champions of that bill, which would legalize online poker in New York, deployed the same legal argument as the DFS operators. The legal battle surrounding the two bills could impact the future of New York’s gaming industry.

Just days before the Legislature gave DFS a legal stamp of approval, the online poker bill passed the Senate by a 53-5 margin; its twin Assembly bill, however, never got out of committee.

Gambling, with limited exceptions, is barred under the New York state Constitution. A 2013 law authorized an expansion of the casino sector, which so far has resulted in the licensing of four new venues upstate. It was also in 2013 that the first attempt to legalize internet poker, through an attachment to the state budget,

emerged. In subsequent years a standalone bill was introduced; its supporters, like those of DFS, argued that poker is a “game of skill” – rather than a “game of chance” – and, therefore, not subject to the constitutional prohibition.

That poker players possess varying degrees of ability is beside the point for those who believe it should be treated as gambling – and regulated as such, regardless of its legality. In a November filing against FanDuel and DraftKings, the two largest DFS operators, the attorney general’s office disputed the “game of skills” argument on two grounds: “First, this view overlooks the explicit prohibition against wagering on future contingent events, a statutory test that requires no judgment of the relative importance of skill and chance – they are irrelevant to the question … Second, the key factor establishing a game of skill is not the presence of skill, but the absence of a material element of chance.”

“A few good players in a poker tournament may rise to the top based on their skill; but the game is still gambling. So is DFS,” the statement concluded.

Some experts, however, believe the constitutional wording allows a mea-

sure of leeway for interpretation. “Nobody really knows how the courts will adjudicate this, because there’s no clear jurisprudential standard on what constitutes a ‘game of skill’ or a ‘game of chance,’” said Bennett Liebman, interim director of the Government Law Center at Albany Law School. “It’s almost a smell test to individual judges: does this smell like gambling? Is it more like chess than a raffle?”

But Liebman added: “The courts in New York, as a general rule, have found that almost all card games are gambling, but whether they would hold that in the face of a legislative finding that certain games of poker are ‘games of skill’ is certainly up to debate.”

Proponents of regulating online poker argue that many New Yorkers already participate in illicit poker games, whether through offshore websites or in underground card rooms, and the state would be wise to tap into a potential revenue stream while enforcing stronger consumer protections and industry oversight. They point to a 2011 federal crackdown on offshore poker sites, which exposed the misallocation of funds that should have been available

City & State New York

July 25, 2016

for payouts. (Some industry experts dismiss claims about the widespread use of offshore websites, within New York state, as exaggerated.)

The two sides dispute the extent to which online platforms can enforce protections against underage and problem gambling.

Critics, however, emphasize the potential social cost to permitting around-theclock betting – from laptops, tablets, and smartphones – on a card game that can be addictive.

And as a moneymaker, online poker thus far has a lackluster track record in the three states that have legalized it – one more reason, skeptics say, that New York state should think twice before betting on the game.

Despite a recent uptick in the market, online gambling in New Jersey, which was legalized in 2013, has fallen well short of expectations, with poker reporting just $1.97 million in revenue last month. In Delaware and Nevada, the other two states that have legalized the game, online poker has been even less successful.

Like in other peer-to-peer games (including DFS), poker players take money from each other rather than wagering against the house. Operators collect a “rake” – a very small percentage of each pot. For that reason, poker generates less in revenue than other online casino games (which are harder to sell as “games of skill”). Nonetheless, Internet poker companies believe that entering a major market like New York would go a long way toward creating larger pools. Higher jackpots and tournament prizes would attract more, and bigger, players. States are currently cordoned off by “electric walls,” so a resident of New York is barred from participating in an online game in neighboring New Jersey, but lifting such restrictions in the future could lead to a critical mass of players – and increased “liquidity” in games.

“The only way it works is if you grow in size,” said Alan Woinski, president of Gaming USA Corp. “They envision the entire country legalizing online gambling.”

Irrespective of whatever profit the games themselves turn, online platforms double as marketing tools that draw customers to the actual casinos, which was one reason New York’s gaming venues initially opposed the introduction of online poker. Earlier iterations of the bill, which was backed by MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment, would have opened up licensing for online poker to out-of-state operators.

“That’s (MGM’s) way of taking all the

business away from New York and promoting it over to the (MGM-owned) Borgata and their Maryland and Massachusetts casinos, without spending a dime in New York or hiring people or anything else,” Woinski said.

New York Gaming Association President James Featherstonhaugh told City & State that the earlier bill would have been detrimental to the existing gaming venues, which are already facing the addition of new commercial casinos to the market.

“We thought it was a mistake not only for the industry, but for New York itself not to have (online poker) tied to existing New York brick-and-mortar facilities,” he said.

“Eventually, after lots of discussions with some of the out-of-state and large gaming interests that were promoting iGaming, we reached an agreement and accommodation with them to amend the bill, so that in order to be licensed you would have to already be licensed as a New York brick-andmortar facility” Though no such partnerships have been announced, Featherstonhaugh confirmed that some NYGA members now “have either formal or informal agreements with out-of-state providers of iGaming.”

Like brick-and-mortar businesses in other industries, casinos fear that online platforms will strip away their customer base. In 2014, billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson launched a lobbying campaign for a national ban on online gambling, claiming it harms both casinos and gamblers.

State Sen. Liz Krueger, who opposed the 2013 legislation authorizing casino expansion, is skeptical of casinos as engines of sustainable economic growth, yet acknowledged that brick-and-mortar venues create many more jobs than online platforms. “Each of these (online gaming) bills should be looked at publicly, in the light of day, in total, as part of a package of major changes in the gambling industry in New York state going forward,” she said.

State Sen. John Bonacic, chairman of the Senate Committee on Racing, Gaming and Wagering, views the internet poker bill, of which he is a sponsor, as an “extension” of the popular will expressed in the 2013 casino referendum. “I believe that if the state of New York has approved, in the referendum in 2013, that they want commercialized gaming, that’s an indication that they don’t have a problem with seeing gaming happen,” he said. (Bonacic, it should be noted, cited “consumer protections, revenue enhancement and to monitor the industry” as his primary motives for sup-

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porting the internet poker bill.)

The concern of Krueger, and others who opposed the DFS and internet poker bills, is that the parallel expansion of brickand-mortar casinos and online platforms will accelerate, without adequate due diligence, the transformation of New York’s gaming landscape into something more expansive, and omnipresent, than people currently realize. The construction of new casinos and erosion of barriers that previously existed between online and landbased gaming, they argue, could pave the way for various forms of legalized internet betting, including on video games and even sports.

“There is so much money in that, so much more than there is in casinos,” said Stephen Q. Shafer, chairman of the coalition against gambling in New York. “I think it’s the dream not of the casino proprietors – they don’t want it – but it will be the dream of all those who now have some kind of internet betting platform.”

Though forced this past session to take a back seat to the DFS bill, whose swift passage Albany lawmakers prioritized (and which local casino interests opposed), internet poker seems a good bet to pop up again in the near future.

“We are going to pursue it next year and hopefully it gets done early in the session and not later in the session,” said Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, chairman of the Assembly Committee on Racing and Wagering and sponsor of the bill.

Without going into specifics, however, Pretlow alluded to a constitutional roadblock. “The programming counsel who overlooks all the bills to make sure that everything is doable, and passes constitutional muster, still had some questions on it,” he revealed.

Indeed, among the concerns that the industry may have going forward is whether the attorney general will take an official position on internet poker’s legality, along with the possibility of the state’s tribes deciding to enter the market. Perhaps more importantly, the same DFS companies that held it up this year might prove pivotal to online poker’s momentum in the coming year. “If DFS starts off slowly, if there are blockages, if the governor puts up some road blocks, then the way forward for poker is much slower,” said Liebman, who was appointed deputy secretary for gaming and racing by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2011.

“I am sure that’s not what they wanted,” he added, “but their ultimate success is now tied into how well DFS companies perform.”

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CityAndStateNY.com

July 25, 2016

FANTASY SPORTS INDUSTRY FRETS AMID CUOMO’S INACTION ON BILL WHILE DAILY FANTASY SPORTS (DFS) have been approved by the Legislature, other legislation has passed over the DFS bill en route to the governor’s desk.

Though there is nothing inherently odd about the governor prioritizing his own legislation, and speculation around why he has not called for the high-profile DFS bill may amount to much ado about nothing, there are signs that concern is starting to rise in the fantasy sports world.

“The governor has been playing this really close to the vest, and we don’t have any indication one way or the other,” an industry source familiar with the process told City & State July 18. “The only thing that we do know is his assistant was out on vacation last week, a big group of bills was just delivered to him, and our bill was not one of them. So the bill is not on his desk yet.”

The NFL, which will kick off its 2016 season in September, accounts for approximately half of DFS revenues, and New York ranks as the second-largest market in the country. According to Eilers & Krejcik, an industry research firm, the state generated an estimated $267 million in entry fees last year. The inability of the two major operators, FanDuel and DraftKings, to offer their most popular product “would weaken both companies at a critical point, and leave both more vulnerable to whatever challenges come next,” said Chris Grove, a partner at Narus Advisors, a consultancy that specializes in DFS and iGaming.

Eilers & Krejcik estimated that the two companies, both of which have received billion-dollar valuations, lost more than $400 million combined last year, leading some experts to question whether DFS will ever generate significant revenue for the state, assuming the governor does sign the bill.

“They lost money when they didn’t have to pay anybody,” said Alan Woinski, president of Gaming USA Corp. “Now they’re going to have to pay taxes and

regulation fees, so the money they’re going to be losing anyway will be magnified.”

Moreover, those additional costs of doing business “sit aside the not-insignificant ongoing legal and lobbying costs major DFS operators are shouldering to advance and influence additional legislation in other states,” Grove said.

The industry attributes its financial results to high advertising costs and other expenditures associated with “hyper growth.” Last year, DraftKings and FanDuel spent $100 million on ads in just the first week of football season.

And their New York legal problems may not be over: Despite agreeing to defer to the Legislature on the question of whether DFS constituted a “game of skill,” Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has vowed to pursue false advertising claims against both operators.

The industry source confirmed reports that the governor’s office conducted a technical review and offered some input before the DFS bill passed the state Senate and Assembly by votes of 45-17 and 91-22,

respectively. Those margins, if maintained, would be enough to override a veto. But the governor is not required to even call the bill before the end of the year.

One of the bill sponsors, Assembly member Gary Pretlow, who is chairman of the Assembly Committee on Racing and Wagering, told City & State on July 14 that the bill was “a priority on our list for the governor to call for, but as of today he has not called for it.”

Once he calls for a bill, the governor has 10 days to sign or veto it, after which it automatically becomes law.

“We have no reason to be alarmed, but we also have no reason to feel that it’s particularly in the bag,” the industry source said. “We’re just not really getting that much information at all.”

A governor’s office representative said that it had “no update” on when the bill would be called for.

DFS operators could return to market within a day of the bill passing into law, but would prefer lead time to prepare for the upcoming NFL season.

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City & State New York

July 25, 2016

23

QUICK TAKES

ON THE PROGRESS BEING MADE ON NEW UPSTATE CASINOS …

ROBERT WILLIAMS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR NEW YORK STATE GAMING COMMISSION

“Construction for three newly licensed destination resort casinos is moving at full speed. Rivers Casino & Resort in Schenectady and del Lago Resort & Casino in Tyre are both expected to open in the first half of 2017, with Montreign Resort Casino in the Catskills opening in 2018. A fourth facility, Tioga Downs Casino, Racing and Entertainment in Nichols, is awaiting licensure from the commission. These major construction projects in economically distressed areas have generated hundreds of good-paying construction jobs. When complete, they will have thousands of full-time jobs and spur economic development for the surrounding communities.

“Recently, the casino operators’ license fees for the projects were delivered to the counties in the respective regions, delivering millions of unrestricted dollars to local governments well before the casinos open. All of this economic development and government support is being done with private money. No taxpayer dollars are being expended.”

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City & State New York

July 25, 2016

SPOTLIGHT: RACING & GAMBLING

Reined in

With NYRA’s board still under state control, what’s next for New York horse racing?

By MATT RYBALTOWSKI

HORSE RACING ENTHUSIASTS awaiting a resolution to the longstanding conflict between the New York Racing Association and the governor’s office on state control of the thoroughbred industry saw their hopes quickly fade in the final hours of the 2016 legislative session.

Instead, the impasse will likely continue for the next 15 months. In June, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state legislators announced that NYRA, the nonprofit that runs the three largest racetracks in the state, would remain under state control until Oct.

18, 2017, marking the second consecutive one-year extension of control for the NYRA Reorganization Board of Directors. In 2012, NYRA trustees relinquished control of the board to the state for a three-year term in the wake of a 15-month takeout scandal, in which investigators determined that the association defrauded bettors of $8.5 million in race winnings. At first, many racing insiders did not expect the arrangement to last beyond 2015.

“This agreement preserves the valuable public window into the operation of racing

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and wagering at New York’s premier racing facilities, and into the use of statutory racing support payments,” Cuomo’s office said in June.

Days earlier, Cuomo proposed a bill that could have led to the privatization of NYRA in exchange for increased supervision from the state’s Financial Oversight Board, which was formed as a seven-member committee appointed by the state and charged with managing the association’s operations.

Cuomo’s bill also intended to set a cap on revenues directed to NYRA from video lottery terminals at Aqueduct Race Course at $46 million, down from $58 million in 2015. At the same time, the state Senate and Assembly passed a bipartisan bill that would have established a new 15-member NYRA board, headed by CEO Chris Kay. “We kept trying to negotiate, there were a lot of things we negotiated that we could both live with,” said state Sen. Kathleen Marchione. “What we couldn’t live with is that the governor was capping NYRA at $46 million. It’s very difficult to cap them at $46 million when their expenses keep going up and their retirement (costs) keep going up.

I felt they would be doomed for failure, we just couldn’t come together on the money aspect of it.”

Kay, meanwhile, told City & State that he is encouraged by the overwhelming bipartisan support NYRA received from the Legislature in its attempt to return to private control.

Experts have identified three potential working models on how NYRA could proceed on a long-term basis. The association can return to private control as it did prior to the state’s takeover in 2012, or the nonprofit organization could operate entirely without state assistance, as Monmouth Park and Meadowlands Racetrack in New Jersey have in recent years. Alternatively, NYRA could adopt a comprehensive public-private partnership that is prevalent in most states that offer horse racing.

Todd Shimkus, president of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce and a member of Concerned Citizens for Saratoga Racing, notes that the bipartisan legislation included NYRA board appointments from the governor, the Assembly and the Senate, as well as representatives from the New York state’s horsemen and breeders’ associations.

It also called for three representatives from Saratoga, Nassau and Queens counties, where Saratoga Race Course, Belmont Park and Aqueduct are located.

“It’s a shared responsibility for the operation in protecting the fiduciary responsibility of the organization,” Shimkus

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CityAndStateNY.com

said. “A private entity is beholden to the shareholders, a public entity is beholden to the taxpayers. If you take those three options, clearly when you’re talking about horse racing in New York we want the stakeholders in the community to be at the table in the governing. That’s why the notfor-profit model for us is the only one that makes sense.”

Proponents of NYRA’s privatization efforts, however, point to a key distinction from a 2008 reorganization plan approved by a federal bankruptcy court, which separates it from other states that may require government assistance to remain afloat. Under a 25-year franchise agreement passed by the state Legislature in 2008 and later approved by the bankruptcy court, NYRA relinquished its ownership claims on Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga in a ground lease agreement with the state, which leased back the tracks through 2033. New York state also provided NYRA with a $105 million bailout as part of the agreement to help cover operating expenses and millions of dollars in debt forgiveness.

“The state received a billion dollars in land, it’s not like NYRA is asking for a handout. It’s asking for the mortgage to be paid out over the 25 years of the agreement,” Shimkus said. “It’s very different in terms of what New Jersey or others might have done in terms of siphoning revenues off from casinos to horse racing.”

In terms of video lottery terminal revenues, the agreement also entitled NYRA to a statutorily required 4 percent of net winning percentages from the Aqueduct gaming facility for capital expenditures, along with 3 percent of the winnings for operating expenses, according to the reorganization plan. NYRA also receives a percentage of the gaming funds to help increase purse totals and for a further stipend for breeding awards.

“When we were looking for the proper way to plan the future of getting out of bankruptcy and planning the future of our stewardship of the three New York tracks, coupled with the fact that we were contemplating and ultimately made the decision to turn over the land under those three tracks, we wanted to make sure we were only willing to do that land transaction if there was going to be proper funding for racing operations for the physical facilities, the breeders and the owners of the farms and purses,” said former NYRA CEO Charles Hayward. “That’s why the effort was made by NYRA’s lawyers, NYRA’s outside bankruptcy council and NYRA’s board to negotiate with the state and secure guarantees for the next 25 years that would allow NYRA to get out of bankruptcy

July 25, 2016

and operate the future of racing with great optimism.”

Saratoga Race Course, among the nation’s oldest sporting venues, is coming off a record year with a total NYRA handle of $656.1 million for the six-week meet, 14.1 percent more than the same period a year earlier.

With a daily average handle of $16.4 million, Saratoga became the first non-Breeders Cup meet in American racing history to eclipse an average of $16 million on a daily basis. In 2014, an economic and financial impact analysis of the Saratoga Race Course conducted by Camoin Associates and the Saratoga County Industrial Development Agency found that the meet generated nearly 2,600 jobs and a regional economic impact of $237 million.

Overall, NYRA reported an operating profit of $4 million last year, above projections for $2.2 million in the 2015 budget. It also represented the first time since 2000 that the agency finished with operating profits in consecutive years. The figures, though, contrast starkly with an audit from the New York State Comptroller’s Office, which found that NYRA lost $11.5 million in 2014 when expenses such as health care benefits for retirees, pension contributions and depreciation were factored. Dating back to 2010, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli determined that NYRA lost $109.3 million over a five-year period, excluding video lottery terminal revenues. Kay disputed the figures in a July editorial in the Albany Times Union, where he emphasized that NYRA has consistently received a “clean audit” from KPMG in recent years.

“NYRA excluded both (video lottery terminal) revenue and non-operating expenses including taxes, depreciation, interest, pension and post-employment benefit expenses (from the assessment),” Kay wrote. “This is a common board practice; it is clearly noted in our financial reporting, which reflected profits from racing operations in 2014 and 2015; and is consistent with our commitment to complete transparency in our financial statements.”

In the meantime, NYRA has worked arduously to incorporate innovative mobile and digital platforms into its wagering menu. The start of the Saratoga meet will coincide with the launch of the NYRA Bets program, which expands mobile and online wagering to customers out of state.

Recent industrywide data could provide Kay with optimism as NYRA launches the initiative. At TwinSpires.com, an advanced deposit wagering site operated by Churchill Downs, online wagering on this year’s Kentucky Derby jumped by 22 percent for the race itself. TVG.com, another leading

online betting site, reported a secondquarter handle of $222 million, according to data compiled from the Oregon Racing Commission, falling just below the amount handled by TwinSpires.

“Certainly, you see more and more people are wagering online and with apps as we are becoming more of a mobile society,” Kay said. “This gives us an opportunity now to connect with horseplayers and fans in a way we have not been able to do so in the past.”

Rick Violette, a member of NYRA’s Board of Directors, said there are still numerous ways in which NYRA can streamline costs and operations at the three tracks. Had NYRA been privatized, the association could have stepped in and opened a host of betting parlors throughout Manhattan after New York City OTB shut its doors six years ago.

Violette also believes NYRA can do more to reach out to bettors in Europe and other international markets.

“I do think that while our industry is changing and there is some built-in contraction to it, it’s still very, very viable.

I’m proud to be a member of it,” said Violette, who also serves as the head of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association.

“We’ve made incredible progress on a number of areas including aftercare for our horses, the integrity in testing and trying to ensure a level playing field. We could always do more and the goal is to do more every day, but I think we’ve made great strides statewide and nationally.”

Still, even the most ardent New York race fan is unsure what the developments mean for NYRA. Shimkus argues that if Saratoga or Belmont is sold to a company such as Churchill Downs Inc., nothing prevents the corporation from diverting money away from a profitable enterprise in order to prop up a struggling venture. With ample community representation, akin to the shareholder model employed by the City of Green Bay’s ownership of the Green Bay Packers, the threat of placing Saratoga Race Course in the wrong hands may diminish. Moreover, if political leaders are intent on avoiding another stalemate, Marchione would like to start negotiations in early 2017 – much sooner than lawmakers did in the previous legislative session.

“We need to get all of the information to the governor making sure that he has every piece of information necessary to perhaps convince him of the position where we’re standing and then to continue negotiations with hopefully a resolve – and a resolve that is good for all of New York state, the horse racing industry and certainly NYRA,” Marchione said.

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City & State New York

July 25, 2016

27

QUICK TAKES

ON WHAT STEPS NYRA HAS TAKEN TO ENSURE ITS LONGTERM HEALTH …

CHRIS KAY PRESIDENT & CEO NEW YORK RACING ASSOCIATION

in half the number of equine injuries. We also initiated a building program to provide backstretch workers with safer, better living quarters. The superior quality of our racing is reflected in the amount wagered on our races: We generated record-setting wagering at the 2014 Belmont Stakes and the 2015 Saratoga meet.

“We have invested substantial sums to make all of our racetracks more enjoyable sporting venues. NYRA now promotes several ‘special event’ days that feature world-class racing, outstanding entertainment and different types of dining experiences. One of those special events, our 2015 Belmont Stakes, was named the Sports Event of the Year by the Sports Business Journal.

“We operate NYRA as a sustainable business. We implemented extensive “best practices” and financial controls, which resulted in NYRA earning profits each year. We use a ‘Big Four’ accounting firm to audit our financial records. In these ways, we are ensuring accuracy, trust and stability in our organization – not only for today but also for the future.”

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CityAndStateNY.com

July 25, 2016

SPOTLIGHT: RACING & GAMBLING

THE LOTTERY GOES VIRTUAL (DON’T WORRY,

YOUR WINNINGS ARE STILL REAL)

Designer Liana Kadisha THE RECENT CRAZE over Pokémon Go, an augmented reality smartphone game that launched this month, has pretty much cemented 2016 as the year of the rise of virtual and augmented reality technology.

Numerous video game companies have brought improved virtual reality products to market in the past year, and the rise of augmented reality – which mixes views of the real world with computer-generated images, graphics and sounds – has captivated millions.

Some people are dismissing the new technology as a fad for techies and millennials, but it has caught the eye of government.

Already we have seen statements from the state Department of Motor Vehicles warning against playing Pokémon Go while driving.

And Assemblyman Felix Ortiz has raised concerns that the technology could be used by predators to lure victims into unsafe places. The government is not just protecting against the new technology, one division is embracing it.

The New York Lottery has just released a scratch-off game that can be played in augmented reality using your iPhone or Android smartphone. It’s called Gold Castle, and it is the first of its kind in the country.

You simply scratch off a small section for “3-D Play” and scan the barcode into an app.

A castle pops up out of your ticket, and you can tap glowing windows to see if you won.

City & State recently spoke with the head designer of the new game, Liana Kadisha, who is the chief products officer at Paymaxs.

The following is an edited transcript:

C&S: What inspired this game?

LK: We had this augmented reality technology and we felt the lottery needed a little bit of an upgrade to make their games more engaging for customers. We pitched them on it, but they were happy to partner with us and take a step forward. They are the first state in the U.S. to have an AR lottery game, and it was inspired by just trying to get a piece of the state-of-the-art technology.

C&S: Is this designed to just target millennials or all age groups?

LK: All age groups have been loving it. Even people who are not technologically inclined are loving it. And part of the concern with virtual reality or people being on their phone too much is that they are not engaging with their surroundings. But augmented reality actually lets you engage with your surroundings, but you still need the ticket, you still have to buy the ticket in the store, but you get to interact with it.

C&S: Government has been raising safety concerns about augmented reality games. When you are designing these games, what considerations to you take

into account to address these inevitable questions?

LK: I think with any new technology there are things that have to come into the awareness of society. Of course, people should pay attention to their surroundings.

But specifically with augmented reality and Pokémon Go, it gives people a chance to walk around, go into new businesses; it has actually spiked a lot of business for small businesses because you can attract people to physical locations. I think safety is always a concern and people should pay attention to where they are when they are driving, or not looking down on their phone when they are walking on the street. But I am very optimistic. I think it brings people out of their phone to play and interact with the world in a new way.

C&S: Where do you see the augmented reality technology moving in the near future? Anything in the works?

LK: Hopefully we are going to be able to come out with new games. We already have some demos behind the scenes for sports games and some other fun games, so we just want to keep everyone excited and on their toes.

■

July 25, 2016

City & State New York

29

QUICK TAKES

ON NEW YORK’S RESPONSE TO THE POSSIBILITY OF A NEW CASINO IN NORTHERN NEW JERSEY …

“In response to that, before the end of session I did a resolution calling for the governor and the Gaming Commission to re-examine the law that we passed to authorize casinos with a seven-year waiting list. And if the New Jersey referendum passed, then we would authorize casinos in downstate New York. Right now they are only authorized upstate, the closest one to the city being in Sullivan County. But if that referendum were to pass, then we would revisit that and would more than likely authorize casinos in the downstate area, closer to New York City residents, so they would not have to go across the bridge to go to New Jersey.”

GARY PRETLOW CHAIRMAN ASSEMBLY RACING AND WAGERING COMMITTEE

ON WHEN THE STATE’S NEW CASINOS WILL OPEN …

“I am pretty sure the first one will be online sometime the end of next year or beginning of the year after, I would imagine. They were given two years to build, so they’re in their second year now. So I am looking at the end of this year or the middle part of next year.”

ON HOW CASINO EXPANSION IS IMPACTING PRE-EXISTING VENUES …

“What we have to be careful of is that we don’t hurt the revenue stream that nine racinos give now. … For example, the Finger Lakes is concerned with Lago in Tyre, which are only like 25 miles apart, where they are saying the racino is going to be devastated. … So there is a problem there, and what we have to do is we could look to try reducing their rates that they pay New York so they can still be profitable.There’s free play, capital vendor awards. So all of these are things to try to minimize impacts on revenue losses by a racino. It is a balance, and I can’t tell you right now for sure how that will be played out, because we have to see the casinos up and running and get knowledge of results with the revenue picture.”

JOHN BONACIC CHAIRMAN, STATE SENATE RACING, GAMING AND WAGERING COMMITTEE

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NYSlant.com

July 25, 2016

A fresh perspective on opinions/ Edited by Nick Powell

THE WAR AGAINST RACIAL BIAS MUST BE WON IN THE CLASSROOM

O

n November 17, 1999, a Michigan jury found then-13-year-old Nathaniel Abraham guilty of second-degree murder for a killing committed when Abraham was 11. At the time, the African-American boy was believed to be the youngest American ever charged and convicted of murder as an adult. Abraham’s story reflects the heightening, yet longstanding, public spectacle of viewing Black bodies through prisms of racial and developmental bias – lenses through which Black innocence evaporates into the (il)logics of prejudice.

Such prejudice is often masked socially in a painful ritual of rhetorical charades.

For example, many media accounts used sensational turns of phrase such as “adult crime equals adult time” to justify the erasure of Black innocence in Abraham’s case.

In the more recent cases of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, some media outlets have used descriptors such as “petty criminal” and “dangerous thug” to justify the murders of these young men.

By now, it is common knowledge that, over the course of two days in July, two Black men lost their lives to police terror.

A KATZ

By DAVID E. KIRKLAND

One was Sterling, a father and family man gunned down by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There is graphic video of two police officers pinning down the 37 year-old Sterling before shooting him as he lies on the ground. The other is Castile, who while sitting in a car with his girlfriend and her 4-year old daughter, was gunned downed by a police officer after being asked for his identification.

With tragic events of police killings of Black people happening almost daily across our country, we are reminded of how powerfully perceptions play out in the real world. Thus, there is no longer room to deny the power of perceptions, as in ignorance, in maintaining racial biases that cost us daily innocent life. In the context of unchecked bias, skin color argues as convincingly as words for some, where in the American imagination race can condition one’s perceptions of innocence and guilt.

For example, a recent report from the

Human Rights Watch found that, in Florida, 12,000 children – a disproportionate number of whom are Black – have been moved from the juvenile court system to the adult court system in the past five years. While they make up 27 percent of those who enter Florida’s juvenile justice system, Black boys account for more than half of all transfers to the adult system. Florida isn’t alone in this tragic neutering of Black innocence.

In Cook County, Illinois, Black boys are much more likely to be tried as adults in criminal court as well. The Juvenile Justice Initiative reports that, although only 44 percent of the children in Cook County are Black, 83 percent of its juveniles tried as adults were Black. Given such instances, it came as little surprise to many when innocent Black teens such as Trayvon Martin are gunned down by armed and hostile vigilantes, such as George Zimmerman. In contexts of over-policing and hyper-punishing the Black body, perceptions of Black

July 25, 2016

City & State New York

ACTIVISTS RALLY EARLIER THIS MONTH IN NEW YORK CITY TO PROTEST POLICE-INVOLVED SHOOTINGS IN MINNESOTA AND LOUISIANA.

innocence would likely disappear beneath the erasure of a public gaze, distorted by silent systems of prejudice prevalent in the American mainstream.

It is meaningful, then, that Trayvon Martin, like Nathaniel Abraham, was merely a boy when he perished. The same meaning rings true for 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who while wielding a toy gun, was murdered by a Cleveland police officer who saw Rice as older and less innocent than he actually was. Not unlike Zimmerman or the Cleveland officer who gunned down Rice, a significant population of Americans, including a vast number of White Americans, fail to recognize the innocence and humanity of their fellow Black citizens. The language ascribed to Black people tends to frame them as, in the cases of Sterling and Castile, hostile and criminal, and, in the case of Martin and Rice (and a litany of others), vicious and less innocent.

In our quest to achieve greater equity in society, we must better contextualize humanity beyond race and in spite of (and to interrupt) systems of disparity that are likely reinforced through racial stereotypes.

In so doing, I have been wondering about the role of schooling in shaping better people. For example, how does one finish school still holding discriminatory perceptions of people? Are we not doing our jobs as educators?

Just as we wouldn’t allow students to finish school unable to read, write or calculate, why must we let them finish school unable

to love and accept others? What if we made being human, like being literate, a prerequisite to graduation? What if our school systems made it a priority to ensure that each student leaves more human and more respectful of life than when they entered?

These are important questions that we must ask in this time of national reflection – questions that deal with fostering fully humanized citizens sensitive to other humans. In asking and daring to answer such questions, we demand more of our schools and also of ourselves. Perhaps equally important, we position education as a site of hope to eradicate all forms of ignorance and nurture people who are fully responsive to how we can best share our world.

In order to redress the consequences of racial bias – which, I believe, are at the root of the murders of Sterling, Castile, Martin, Rice, and many others – we must promote a counter-campaign for ideological justice, where we renew the importance of heightening our humanity through formal systems of education. With this, it is important that we begin to demand that formal education endorses standards (such as Common Core Human Standards) and curricula (such as anti-bias curricula) that challenge longstanding racial biases and the logics associated with discrimination (and all of their consequences, including racism, misogyny, patriarchy, xenophobia, colonialism, and so on).

But the use of education to eradicate racial bias cannot be limited to communities

31

concentrated with people of color, because the origins of racial bias are rooted in homogenous settings and White privilege.

Privilege is when you don’t think something is a problem because it’s not your problem.

While it has become vogue to teach about race, social justice and equity to students of color, White students who attend schools that are overwhelmingly White may need this kind of education the most. Exposing such students to new standards, curricula and pedagogies will broaden their worldviews.

What I am proposing is a paradigm shift in education, transferring the focus of instruction from skills, content, and capacities to relationships; from disparity and discrimination to a focus on our needs and capacities as human beings to bridge empathic, cooperative and social gaps that hinder learning, development and societal harmony. This is an education for greater compassion because it affirms all students equally, whereby challenging us to commit ourselves to the hard work of interrupting biases and dismantling systems of historic violence against our nation’s (and our world’s) most vulnerable citizens. Left unchecked, such systems promise to play out in patterns of death and destruction rehearsed repeatedly each day (as we are now seeing).

Then let us commit space and time in formal education to reconciling that the true value of learning is in greater compassion and saved lives. Though histories and institutions of inequity and oppression are deep and resilient, our courage and resolve cannot only match the depths of this particular kind of despair, they can exceed them.

However, change will start in classrooms with teachers seeing, treating and listening to all students so that no one graduates our school systems unable to trust, respect and understand people who do not look like they do.

We will need an education first, but in the end love will win.

■

David E. Kirkland is the executive director of the NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, and an associate professor of English and urban education at New York University. Dr. Kirkland can be reached by email at: davidekirkland@ gmail.com.

32

NYSlant.com

July 25, 2016

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES JULY 25, 2016

NOTICE OF FORMATION of East 14th MK LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. Of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/14/2016. Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to principal business address: 511 Canal St. Ste. 600, NY, NY 10013. Purpose: any lawful act.

IS NOW PUBLISHING PUBLIC AND LEGAL NOTICES. REACH NEW YORK’S MOST POWERFUL AND INFLUENTIAL NEWSPAPER AUDIENCE. FOR RESERVATIONS AND RATES PLEASE EMAIL: legalnotices@cityandstateny.com OR CALL 212-268-0442, ext. 2017

Notice of Application for Authority of RCC TRS, LLC filed with the Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/5/16.

Formed in DE 1/31/05.

Office loc.: New York County.

SSNY is designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The address SSNY shall mail copy of process to is 712 Fifth Ave., 12th Fl., New York, NY 10019. The office address required to be maintained in DE is 110 S. Poplar St., Ste. 101, Wilmington, DE 19801.

Cert. of formation filed with Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of G’S DELIGHT LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/13/16.

Office location: NY County.

Princ. office of LLC: c/o Proskauer Rose LLP, Eleven Times Square, NY, NY 100368299. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Attn: Jay D. Waxenberg at the princ. office of the LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of GLEN COVE RESTAURANT II LLC Arts. of Org. filed with

Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/12/16.

Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of RMA INVESTORS, L.L.C. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/12/16.

Office location: NY County.

Princ. office of LLC: 20 E. 9th St., NY, NY 10003. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Robert D. Adler at the princ. office of the LLC. Purpose: To conduct any lawful business activities or investment activities permitted or authorized to be conducted by a limited liability company under the New York limited liability company law or the corresponding provisions of any successor law.

Notice of formation of UESMEX LLC Art. of Org. filed with the ssny on July 15 2015 new york county ssny designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC 1685 1ST AVE NY NY 10128.

Purpose: any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of NMNY GROUP LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/22/16.

Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 350 Fifth Ave., Fl. 68, NY, NY 10118. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall

mail process to Kudman Trachten Aloe LLP at the princ. office of the LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of JEWISH APPLIED RESEARCH CENTER, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/14/16.

Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 07/06/16. Princ. office of LLC: 1350 Broadway, Ste. 2101, NY, NY 10018.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808.

Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. #4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of MUDRICK DISTRESSED ENERGY CO-INVESTMENT FEEDER, L.P. Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/14/16. Office location: NY County.

LP formed in Delaware (DE) on 03/06/15. SSNY designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Mudrick Capital Management, L.P., 527 Madison Ave., 6th Fl., NY, NY 10022.

Name and addr. of each general partner are available from SSNY. DE addr. of LP: c/o Corporation Service Co., 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of LP filed with Secy. of State of the State of DE, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of Roxy Ruby, LLC. Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on May 24, 2016. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The Post Office address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC served upon him/her is: 10 West End Ave, Apt 8H, New York, New York 10023. The principal business address of the LLC is: 10 West End Ave, Apt 8H, New York, New York 10023.

Purpose: any lawful act or activity.

Notice of Formation of Carlson Design & Planning, LLC Arts of Org filed with the Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on May 31, 2016. Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: PO Box 14 NY, NY 10276. Principal Business Address: 270 Lafayette St. NY, NY 10012. Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of Shaw PR. Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on April 13, 2016. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The Post Office address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC served upon him/ her is: 225 5th Avenue.

The principal business address of the LLC is: 225 5th Avenue.

Purpose: any lawful act or activity.

Notice of Formation of FIUME LLC Arts. of

July 25, 2016

Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on June 02, 2016. Office location: NY County.

Princ. office of LLC: 118 Chambers St., Apt. 5, NY, NY 10007. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Eric Schwimmer at the princ. office of the LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of Inspirational Nest LLC. Arts of Organization filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on June 14, 2016. Office location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to principal business address: 804 West, 180th Street Apt 65, NY, NY, 10033.

Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of 171 EAST 84TH OWNERS LLC. Art. of Org. filed with the SSNY on June 27, 2000. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, c/o Gordon Hamm, 124 East 63rd Street, New York, NY 10021, which is also the address for registered agent. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of AARON SAVEDOFF, M.D., PLLC. Art. of Org. filed with NY Secretary of State (SSNY) June 23, 2016.

Office location: New York County. SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against PLLC to principal business address: 7 Dey St, Ste 400, New York, NY 10007.

Purpose: To practice medicine, or any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of LEVEL EQUITY ASSOCIATES III, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed

City & State New York

with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on May 03, 2016. Office location: NY County.

LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 03/16/16.

Princ. office of LLC: Two Grand Central Tower, 140 E. 45th St., 39th Fl., NY, NY 10017.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 122072543. DE addr. of LLC: 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Investment management.

Notice of Qualification of PEG POOLED GLOBAL PRIVATE EQUITY INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS VI LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/27/16.

Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/02/16. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. DE addr. of LLC: CSC, 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of 2733 CHURCH LLC. Art. of Org. filed with the SSNY on November 18, 2005. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, 2733 Church Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11226. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of 2229 UNI AVE LLC. Articles of Org. filed

with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on December 04, 2014.

Office located in New York County. SSNY has been designated for service of process.

SSNY shall mail copy of any process served against the LLC to: THE LLC, 9117 31st Ave. East Elmhurst, NY 11369: Purpose: Any lawful activity or purpose.

Notice of Qualification of ROBERTA’S COMMISSARY I EMPLOYER, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/30/16. Office location: NY County.

LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/29/16.

Princ. office of LLC: 655 Madison Ave., 11th Fl., NY, NY 10065. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of ROBERTA’S COMMISSARY I MANAGER, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/30/16. Office location: NY County.

LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/29/16.

Princ. office of LLC: 655 Madison Ave., 11th Fl., NY, NY 10065. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of PEG GLOBAL PRIVATE EQUITY INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS VI LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/27/16.

Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 05/15/15. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. DE addr. of LLC: CSC, 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of LDV NoMad, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/07/16. Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of PENINSULA (US) LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/06/16. Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of FERA MORINGA LLC. Art. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 5/18/2016. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to the LLC, 7014 13th Ave #202, Brooklyn, NY 11228. Principal business address:

232 W 14th St. NY, NY 10011. Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Qualification of Horizon Actuarial Services, LLC. Authority filed with Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/20/2016. Office location: NY County.

LLC formed in DE on 10/2/2007. SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to principal business address: 900 Ashwood Parkway, Ste. 170, Atlanta, GA 30338.

DE address of LLC: 1313 N. Market Street, Ste. 5100, Wilmington, DE 19801. Certificate of LLC filed with Secretary of State of DE located at: 401 Federal St. Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: any lawful act.

NOTICE OF FORMATION of SBJCT LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. Of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/30/2016.

Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to principal business address: 435 W 23rd St. Ste. 1BB, NY, NY 10011. Purpose: any lawful act.

IFARCO 349/119 LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 12/04/2015. Office in NY Co. SSNY desig. agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to c/o Timothy O’Donnell, Esq., 40 Exchange Place, 19th Fl, NY, NY 10005. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Principal business location: 301 East 69th St., NY, NY 10021.

33

Notice of formation of HFBRE LLC filed with the Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/24/16.

Office loc.: New York County.

SSNY is designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The address SSNY shall mail copy of process to is Fox Rothschild LLP, c/o Leonard Budow, Esq., 101 Park Ave., 17th Fl., New York, NY 10178.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of SITELIFT LLC. Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on July 08, 2016. Office location: NY County.

Princ. office of LLC: 333 Pearl St., NY, NY 10038.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against him or her may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Danielle Djokic, Registered Agent at the princ. office of the LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of Pearl Gamma Funding, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/22/16. Office location: NY County.

LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 05/22/16. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Pearl Gamma Funding, LLC, 100 William St 9th Fl NY NY 10038. DE addr. of LLC: CSC, 1209 Orange St.,Wilmington, DE 19801. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

FOR RESERVATIONS AND RATES PLEASE EMAIL: legalnotices@cityandstateny.com OR CALL 212-268-0442, ext. 2017

34

CityAndStateNY.com

July 25, 2016

LOSERS CHRIS COLLINS - When he became the first member of Congress to endorse The Donald, a lot of political observers wrote off Collins’ political future. But just as the Republican Party has been turned upside down by Trump, so has Collins’ importance. The Western New York representative got a primetime slot at the Republican National Convention, and regardless of the results in November, Collins’ stock has certainly risen this cycle.

THE BEST OF THE REST BARRY DILLER - appeals court allows work to continue on Pier 55 LETITIA JAMES - makes the city run A/C on school buses for special-needs kids STUART RABINOWITZ - Hofstra to host first of three presidential debates MITCHELL SILVER - Surprise! City pools are clean

OUR PICK

OUR PICK

WINNERS

One convention down, one to go. While Cleveland didn’t experience the unrest that many expected outside the Quicken Loans Arena, the Republican National Convention sure featured plenty of chaos inside, leading to a lot of winners and losers. But did any members of the New York delegation make our list?

BILL DE BLASIO – The mayor’s own investigatory arm said that administration officials were “aware of and involved” in the discussion to remove deeds on the Rivington Street property. The report cited an email from First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris to de Blasio that discussed the disputed property (though the mayor told investigators he didn’t recall receiving it). Now one city councilman has called on the DOI to sue the city’s Law Department and the editorial boards are fired up - with the Post (a) paging Preet Bharara, (b) contending the mayor failed to dole out consequences, and (c) arguing things must really be bad when even frequent de Blasio ally Speaker Melissa MarkViverito describes the situation as “very troubling.”

THE REST OF THE WORST LISA COICO - City College prez accused of living high off college cash JOHN FLAHERTY - Erie’s acting D.A. shares petitioners with close Steve Pigeon associate MICAH LASHER - Espaillat, Rodriguez lining up behind opposition for Senate seat DEBBIE MEDINA - Senate candidate admits beating son who went on to kill a toddler

WINNERS & LOSERS is published every Friday morning in City & State’s First Read email. Sign up for the email, cast your vote and see who won at cityandstateny.com.

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