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WEEK OF MARCH
24-30 2016
STILL SEEKING ANSWERS IN A NINE-YEAR-OLD CASE NEWS State senator intervenes in NYPD records request BY KYLE POPE
For nine years, Ryan Casey has been trying to figure out how he fell out of a fifth-floor window in Chelsea and nearly died. Now, a state senator has stepped forward to help him get some answers from the NYPD. The effort by Manhattan Sen. Brad Hoylman comes in response to a first-person story Casey wrote for this newspaper in November about what happened on Nov. 12, 2006. That night, Casey, then 18 years old, went
mother says, “People don’t just crawl out five-story windows.” The police tell my mother, “This is what happens to young men in Chelsea who go off and find themselves.” Casey, now an actor and model in the city, has spent recent years doubting, to himself, the official version of events. The notion that he intentionally jumped, he wrote, doesn’t make sense, raising the very scary notion that he could have been pushed. Here’s what I know: I was far from suicidal at this moment in my life. As I said, I had just started to identify as a gay man and was exploring New York City after leaving the only town I had ever known. The last thing I wanted to do this night was die.
to a party with friends, then left for a nearby apartment along with a man he didn’t know. Casey’s next memory was of waking up at St. Vincent’s Hospital two weeks later, with injuries so extensive that he was placed in a medically induced coma for several days. The police report at the time quoted the man he was with saying he had jumped out of the window, and his parents were told the same thing. Casey writes in his piece: The police tell my family what happened. My brother shows the police a business card of an established lawyer based in Manhattan. The police tell my brother and father, “It’s better if you leave this alone.” The police mutter the words mafia to my father. My
Beginning in the weeks immediately after the fall, Casey has fought the NYPD to get information about his own case. The only copies of the police report he has seen, for instance, blacked out the name of the man he was with, and Casey was told in his initial visits to Chelsea’s 10th Precinct that there wasn’t much that could be done to help him. “They said it’s your word against his,” he said in an interview this week. “I didn’t puruse it after that.” In August of last year, after he had to go back to the hospital to have pins removed from his leg as a result of the fall, he began working again to piece
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SEAPORT MUSEUM SETS SAIL AGAIN Downtown institution reopens more than three years after Hurricane Sandy’s devastation BY EMILY TOWNER
When Hurricane Sandy pummeled the Coastal Mid-Atlantic in October 2012, lower Manhattan’s historic South Street Seaport Museum was among its casualties. While staff and others clocked hundreds of man-hours into piling sandbags and securing the museum’s fleet of historic ships, no one expected that more than seven feet of water would eventually flood the museum’s lobby. “There’s really nothing you can do at that point,” the museum’s executive director, Jonathan Boulware, said recently. “Our buildings flooded in the basements before the streets even flooded. The streets are so porous; this
section of Manhattan is a sponge.” The collection, housed in storage on the third and fourth floor, was spared damage from the storm. But the hurricane exacted serious structural damage to the museum’s building and destroyed all its mechanical and electrical facets, including elevators, escalators and heating and cooling systems. The museum would remain largely inaccessible for more than three years. A $10.4 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency last year enabled a restoration to quickly take shape and on March 17, the museum opened its first exhibition since the storm. “Street of Ships: The Port and Its People” is on display in the lobby, as refurbishment of the upper floors continues. It’s nevertheless a critical first step in the institu-
tion’s revival. “We are still in a very much postSandy era,” Boulware said. “The larger project is still in the works.” Boulware called the federal grant “a great start, but not a complete project.” Administrators are still looking for additional funding to get the museum fully operational, he said. Sandy was the latest in a series of challenges. “9/11 had a multilayered impact. We had zero visitors for nearly two years,” Boulware said. “Additionally, we struggled after the economic downturn of the late 2000s and then Hurricane Sandy was a very devastating blow. But we are very much on the right track now. This is the next phase of the museum’s life.” The reopening exhibition aims to
The South Street Seaport Museum has reopened, more than three years after Hurricane Sandy devastated the Fulton Street institution’s basement, lobby and much of its infrastructure. Photo: Emily Towner
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FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration view,” of a lay point lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing blog the to Visitors at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want whether they unreally want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiMan, Arbitration suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
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MANHATTAN'S APARTMENT BOOM, > PROPERTY, P.20
2015
In Brief MORE HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The effort to help small seems to businesses in the city be gathering steam. Two city councilmembers, Robert Margaret Chin and Cornegy, have introduced create legislation that wouldSmall a new “Office of the within Business Advocate” of Small the city’s Department Business Services. Chin The new post, which have up told us she’d like to would and running this year, for serve as an ombudsman city small businesses within them clear government, helping to get through the bureaucracy things done. Perhaps even more also importantly, the ombudsman and number will tally the type small business of complaints by taken in owners, the actions policy response, and somefor ways to recommendations If done well, begin to fix things. report would the ombudsman’s give us the first quantitative with taste of what’s wrong the city, an small businesses in towards important first step fixing the problem. of for deTo really make a difference, is a mere formality will have to the work process looking to complete their advocate are the chances course, velopers precinct, but rising rents, -- thanks to a find a way to tackle business’ is being done legally of after-hours projects quickly. their own hours,” which remain many While Chin “They pick out boom in the number throughout who lives on most vexing problem. said Mildred Angelo,of the Ruppert construction permits gauge what Buildings one said it’s too early tocould have the 19th floor in The Department of the city. number three years, the Houses on 92nd Street between role the advocate She Over the past on the is handing out a record work perThird avenues. permits, there, more information of Second and an ongoing all-hours number of after-hours bad thing. of after-hours work the city’s Dept. problem can’t be a said there’s with the mits granted by nearby where according to new data jumped 30 percent, This step, combinedBorough construction project noise Buildings has data provided in workers constantly make efforts by Manhattan to mediate BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS according to DOB of Informacement from trucks. President Gale Brewer offer response to a Freedom classifies transferring they want. They knows the the rent renewal process, request. The city They 6 “They do whatever signs Every New Yorker clang, tion Act go as they please. work between some early, tangible small any construction on the weekend, can come and sound: the metal-on-metal or the piercing of progress. For many have no respect.” p.m. and 7 a.m., can’t come of these that the hollow boom, issuance reverse. owners, in business moving The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you as after-hours. soon enough. variances has led at the alarm clock The surge in permits
SLEEPS, THANKS TO THE CITY THAT NEVER UCTION A BOOM IN LATE-NIGHT CONSTR NEWS
A glance it: it’s the middle can hardly believe yet construction of the night, and carries on full-tilt. your local police or You can call 311
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