It’s a way for a police officer to vouch for another person, that type of recommendation shouldn’t be available to the highest bidder.

-New York City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr.
From a recent story on the sale of so called “get out of jail free cards.”

I instead agree with Councilman Garodnick who said that no one should be able to use a friend of the police card to get out of trouble with the law, including other police officers. With the stories and videos of the NYPD during the occupy protests and the insanity of stop and frisk, this is just another example of the lack of concern for police corruption in NYC and countrywide.

Photo from Brechtbug on Flickr

Here’s my rant about this building that we’ve all seen and heard so much of; I find it irresponsible to put the blame on Sandy for this. It needs to go deeper than that, it seems obvious to me an incompetent, possibly corrupt, builder/contractor needs to be held accountable.

The facade of a building doesn’t just fall off. And by all means should it stand up to high wind and rain if up to legal code. Look at the buildings on either side of it, how is it the check cashing place’s awnings and vertical sign are still in tack? All the window units for air conditioning? The restaurant canopy?

It just makes me sad that this has gotten so much face time as an example of Sandy’s destruction when there is so, so, so much worse, still, and so much more directly as a result of the storm.

The city needs to investigate and prosecute the rightful party. There are more than enough slumlords in nyc and will continue to be unless they are held liable.

…

Actually reminds me of a really great novel I recently read, The Tower, that is a fictional account of the building of a skyscraper (re: the towers) in which corners are cut to save on contractor expenses and the ensuing madness as a result. As drab as that sounds its actually insanely fantastic and incredibly, eerily foretelling of events that led to the attack on the WTC (even though it was written in the ’70s). It also has some of the best, witty back-and-forth dialogue I’ve read in a really long time. I digress.

(Also, big ups to kenz and who ever did that roller piece, -ress, lots of exposure for that spot, haha.)