Pricey Ring Vanishes
A 39-year-old resident of West End Avenue reported the possible theft of a very expensive ring last week. The woman told police that she took the ring off and placed it in a box in her closet at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 26. When she returned to get the ring on Thursday at 7 p.m., it was missing. She said that the only person with access to it was a babysitter who was in the apartment for three hours earlier that day. The ring, which is uninsured, is a platinum diamond engagement ring with a 3.2 karat stone, worth a reported $55,000.

Motorcycle Heist
A man parked his black Suzuki motorcycle outside a West End Avenue address early Sunday morning. When he returned around 8 p.m. to retrieve it, the bike was gone. Video surveillance shows that around 4:30 a.m., a dark-colored minivan drove up to the curb and two men lifted the motorcycle into it and drove away onto West 75th Street. The 2005 model is worth $6,000.

Violent Mugging
On Tuesday, Sept. 25, at around 4:20 p.m., a 16-year-old boy was walking near Riverside Drive and West 79th Street when three unknown males approached him from behind. One kicked him the back of the knees and then the stomach, knocking him to the ground and saying, “Give me your phone and wallet, or I’ll kill you.” Another perp grabbed the boy’s belongings, including a $300 iPhone and his wallet with $32 in cash, and all three fled the scene.

Bank Robbery
A man walked into a Citibank branch on the Upper West Side at 10:25 a.m. on Sept. 25 and approached a teller. He passed a note to her demanding money and threatening to kill people in the back if she didn’t comply. The suspect, who is described as black, 5’9”, 150 pounds, with a beard and wearing a light blue shirt, jeans and white sneakers, asked for $50 and $100 bills and said, “If you don’t, I’ll shoot somebody.” The man got away with $3,725 in cash, fleeing on foot down Broadway.

Purse Thefts on the Rise
The 20th Precinct has seen a recent bump in thefts of unattended wallets and purses. Most of these crimes occur when a bag is left on the back of a chair or table unattended, and the victims don’t even realize their belongings are missing until they check for them. Police recommend that residents keep personal items close by at all times to prevent these crimes of opportunity.

Pizza Boy Turned Rapist
Just past 1 a.m. last Saturday, a 35-year-old woman awoke in her bed to an unknown man raping her. The perp was holding her down and covering her mouth with his hand, but she was able to fight him off with her hands and feet. The rapist fled the apartment, and the victim called the doorman of her West 61st Street building, who stopped and questioned the man. He turned out to be 16 years old and was in the building to deliver pizza to another apartment. After the doorman questioned him, the perp went back to his place of business, and police arrested him there shortly afterward. The New York Post and other outlets also reported that the boy had tried several apartments to find an open door and that his victim’s 7-year-old daughter was sleeping next to her during the attack.

Quick-Change Robbery
Resting on a park bench is normally a stress-free activity, but a 36-year-old Upper West Side resident felt otherwise last Monday night. She was sitting on a bench outside Central Park, near West 61st Street, when a young man grabbed her purse and fled west. A witness saw the suspect dash into a parking garage on West 65th Street, switch to a different shirt, ditch the bag and keep the contents before running out of sight. The victim cancelled her credit cards and didn’t lose anything of value.

Sticky Pretty Fingers
Last Tuesday at around 12:45 a.m., an employee at a Duane Reade on Amsterdam Avenue watched as a very specific robbery unfolded. A woman, described as black, 130 pounds, 5-foot-4 with a short ponytail, walked over to the cosmetics aisle carrying a brown purse. She then loaded her bag with 261 bottles of O.P.I. brand nail polish worth a total of $2,218. After she cleaned out the shelf, she sauntered past the cash registers and right out the door.

Picture Perfect Crime
A local man was dismayed to find that his apartment had been burglarized in the hour-and-15-minute window he was gone last Thursday. The victim left his home on West 64th Street at 10:30 a.m. and came back at 11:45 a.m. to a kicked-in window fan. The unknown burglar stole $6,150 worth of camera and computer equipment, including a $2,000 Canon camera, a $1,700 lens, a $1,250 iMac and flashes, filters and memory cards.

Gang-Up on the Train
A bumbling group of 15-year-olds were arrested for grand larceny last Thursday afternoon when they were caught stealing an iPhone from a woman on the C train. The 30-year-old victim was sitting on the uptown train at about 2 p.m. and the five kids, four boys and one girl, were standing near her. When the train pulled into the 72nd Street station, one of the boys snatched the woman’s phone and they all fled. The victim identified them all when police found them a short time later, and the phone was recovered from the girl’s purse. She said that one of the boys had grabbed it, but the whole group was arrested.

Shady Withdrawals
An employee at a Chase bank branch thwarted a fraudster from stealing from her elderly victim for a second time in one day. The swindler had possession of her 84-year-old target’s social security number and had forged an ID, entering an uptown branch of Chase and withdrawing $3,500 from the woman’s checking account. But when she went to another nearby branch to try and withdraw $4,000 from the woman’s savings account, the bank teller grew suspicious and denied the request. The bank then informed their customer that she had been robbed and closed down both accounts to prevent it from happening again. Police are still searching for the thief.

Grocery Store Grab
A local man was shopping for food at a supermarket on Broadway last Thursday at 8:15 p.m. He had his $3,000 Sony laptop and official financial documents from the Royal Bank of Canada in his bag, which he placed in his shopping cart. He told police that he stepped away for a brief moment, and when he turned back, his bag and its contents were gone. The police are reviewing security camera footage from the store.

Home Health Swindle
A man reported a theft to police after Chase Bank called to alert him of suspicious activity on his checking account. The 92-year-old Upper West Side resident discovered someone had stolen four blank checks from him and two of them had been cashed. They were both made out to the man’s home health aide, who works for a visiting nurse service and did not have permission to take or write the checks. Police are looking for the 30-year-old suspect, who has already gotten $2,000 from the forged checks.

Missing Motorcycle
A local woman parked her 2001 black Vespa scooter on the corner of Central Park West and West 83rd Street at around 11 p.m. last Sunday night. When she returned on Tuesday morning to move it for alternate side street cleaning, the $4,000 scooter had vanished. There are no witnesses or security footage of the area.

Subway Chase
Police apprehended two 36-year-old men last Friday night after an elaborate chase. The men had forcefully grabbed the pocketbook of a 26-year-old woman as she was exiting the 1 station at West 79th Street. Witnesses saw the men flee, then hide in Riverside Park. When police approached them, they fled again, leaving the purse behind—which was worth about $100—but they were both arrested shortly afterward.

Homecoming Surprise
A 24-year-old woman and her roommate were shocked to find their apartment burglarized after they had both been away for the weekend. The woman told police that she had been gone from Friday to Sunday, and when she came home to her West 81st Street second-floor apartment, she saw that someone had entered through the kitchen window, which had been closed but not locked. The perp made off with her $350 TV, a DVD player and a suitcase, as well as her roommate’s entire stash of jewelry.

One Chase Manhattan Plaza. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Following downtown residents’ and the Community Board 1 (CB1) Urban Planning Committee’s demands for an explanation, three representatives of JP Morgan Chase met with the CB1 Quality of Life Committee yesterday evening to discuss the closure of One Chase Manhattan Plaza, home of the bank’s Financial District skyscraper and a privately owned major pedestrian thruway that has been fenced off since September.

Officially, the plaza was closed for a yet-to-be-seen construction project, but its timing prompted many citizens to suspect that the fencing was erected to ward off Occupy Wall Street protestors. Suspicion increased when various community remembers reported that they were explicitly told by the bank’s floor workers and security guards that the barrier was to prevent protests.

Committee member Ro Sheffe asked the representatives if any factors at all other than construction were behind the plaza’s closure. Chase’s Community Reinvestment Manager Karen McGuinness responded, “Absolutely not.”

The representatives explained that serious leaks in the plaza were identified that compromise the building’s infrastructure and safety. They said that the bank has spent recent months surveying the lot and using vector mapping to determine weak points. Results showed that the plaza’s membrane would be good for another 8-10 years, but multiple sections need repair, along with cleaning and resetting.

Asked how long repairs would take, one representative said about six months, weather permitting. Asked when repairs would begin, he responded, “soon — as soon as tomorrow, even,” but promised no specific date or deadline.

Asked if the plaza would reopen to the public after construction, another representative assured that it would. “We intend to operate the plaza as it has been traditionally operated,” he said.

After the representatives left the meeting, the Committee agreed to suspend a resolution to pressure the bank to reopen the plaza that the Urban Planning Committee had drafted when it met on July 5. For now, they decided, they would keep an eye on the plaza and wait to see if Chase follows through.

Many committee members remained skeptical about the bank’s story — a few had been told themselves by the bank’s staff that the fencing was in place to block protestors — but most were satisfied that the bank had made its intentions clear.

Sheffe, however, said that he was still unhappy. “I don’t want to argue with Chase because it’s their property,” he told New York Press. “But there’s a social imperative. [The plaza] is a valuable community resource. I want it open as soon as possible.”

1 Chase Plaza. Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.

By Paul Bisceglio

The wire fence that blocks access to One Chase Manhattan Plaza has been a source of controversy since it was erected around the 60-floor Financial District skyscraper’s outdoor square last September for a yet-to-be-seen construction project. Now, the city’s newly formed Urban Planning Committee is adding its voice to demands that the bank reopen the plaza to the public.

The committee met for the first time last Thursday in the Community Board 1 (CB1) office on Chambers Street. Following a presentation by Michael Levine, CB1′s Director of Land Use and Planning, and his Pace University students on Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS), the committee addressed  the Chase plaza’s closure, which they considered a significant obstruction in the daily lives of the Financial Districts 28,000 residents.

“It’s a catastrophe,” said committee member Ro Sheffe, arguing that the plaza – “the major open space in the center of the financial district” – was essential for reducing pedestrian traffic in the area during what he called “the largest urban renewal project ever.”

Jeff Galloway, the committee’s chair, agreed. “It seems to be to be extraordinarily unneighborly,” he said.

The problem the committee faces is that One Chase Manhattan Plaza is not a Privately Owned Public Space – it’s just private. The building was constructed before POPS zoning laws were made in the 1970′s, so the bank has no legal obligation to keep the square open to the public.

The committee echoed general public speculation that the plaza’s alleged construction project is a guise to ward off Occupy Wall Street protestors. One man has even sued the New York Department of Buildings for refusing to disclose Chase’s construction plans, but One Chase Manhattan Plaza’s place on a Police Department list of  buildings potentially vulnerable to a terrorist attack has allowed the bank to guard the details of the project from public scrutiny for security reasons. Levine mentioned that the legality of the fencing could come into question if Chase were proven actually not to be engaging in construction.

The committee agreed that if no legal imperative exists to make Chase open the plaza, a social one still does. A preliminary vote unanimously passed a resolution to tell Chase that the plaza should be opened as quickly as possible, that security concerns should be accommodated in a way that has minimal impact on the public and that the bank should provide a timetable for the construction project’s completion.

Chase had not responded to the CB1 staff’s attempts to contact them about the fencing at the time of the meeting, but the bank has since agreed to send a a representative to the CB1 Quality of Life Committee meeting on Thursday, July 12 to discuss the issue. Chase has not responded to New York Press’s requests for details about the construction project.

Rice had an appointment at Salon at Royal Mountain, an exclusive outfit that caters by referral only to celebrities and high-end clients, according to a man who answered the phone but declined to give his name.

State Condoleezza Rice is a client of Salon at Royal Mountain, an exclusive boutique outfit on West 72nd Street.

The website Gawker noted the slew of Secret Service agents and onlookers crowding the sidewalk and street on Saturday afternoon, but mistakenly reported that Rice was getting her nails done at Tender Lovely Nail Salon. A worker there said Rice did not in fact visit, but instead went “upstairs,” which, upon further investigation, turned out to be Royal Mountain.

Asked which services Rice received at Royal Mountain, the employee responded, “We’re not at liberty to tell you that, but she did get service here.”

“It was like a madhouse,” he said.

The security detail, however, was not enough to deter a bank robber who hit the Chase branch just down the street from the salon at roughly the same time as the secretary of state’s visit.

Police said that at 2:45 p.m. that day, a man in his 40s walked into the branch, at 260 Columbus Ave. and West 72nd Street, and handed a teller a deposit slip demanding cash. The thief got away with more than $3,000, according to cops, but the money was stained by a red dye pack that deployed soon after he left the bank. Witnesses reported seeing red bills strewn across the street as the thief fled north to 73rd Street, shedding his jacket in the process.

Rice has apparently worked with Royal Mountain’s stylists before, but this was her first visit to the salon’s West Side location.

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With additional reporting by Dan Rivoli