As proven at trial, in the early morning of May 28, 2008, Suarez followed a 19-year-old woman from the 14th Street subway station to the Spring Street station. Upon exiting the train, Suarez followed the victim, and as she entered her building, he rushed in and followed her to her apartment. Suarez forced her into the courtyard and raped her at knifepoint.

DNA evidence was collected at the scene and was entered into the New York State DNA Database. There were no matches at the time, and the crime went unsolved until Suarez’s information was entered into the system in 2011 after he was convicted for an unrelated crime.

“Using DNA evidence, the skilled prosecutors in our office’s Sex Crimes Unit were able to ensure that this defendant was held responsible for this terrible crime,” District Attorney Vance said.
Suarez is expected to be sentenced Dec. 12.

Former East Village Officer Sentenced to Over 15 Years
Earlier this year, former New York City Police Officer Nicholas Mina, who served in the East Village’s 9th Precinct, pleaded guilty to numerous charges of stealing police-issued firearms and selling them on the underground market. Last week, the Queens resident, 32, was sentenced to 15 and a half years in prison for his crimes.

He was convicted of charges including the criminal sale of firearms, sale of a controlled substance, conspiracy and grand larceny.

After serving on the police force for more than three years, Mina confessed to stealing and selling police-issued guns on the black market for over six months to fund his addiction to prescription drugs.

“The defendant took an oath to protect New Yorkers from criminals. Instead, he worked alongside a gun trafficker in order to feed his drug addiction,” District Attorney Vance said in a statement.
Vance applauded the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau and the Firearms Investigation Unit for its work with the case investigating missing firearms from the 9th Precinct station house and monitoring Mina’s illegal sales of the stolen guns.

AIDS Activists Climb Flagpoles At City Hall Park

Two members of Housing Works, a New York-based advocacy group that supports health-care issues and HIV/AIDS patients, climbed two 40-foot flagpoles at the southern end of City Hall Park in lower Manhattan on Wednesday, Nov. 28, around 10:45 a.m. The activists, wearing helmets and climbing gear, unfurled a 30-foot banner that read “Housing Is Healthcare: House People Living With HIV/AIDS” after quickly climbing to the top of the flagpoles without being noticed by several police officers in the vicinity.

Police arrived soon after, blocking the sidewalk and the area immediately under the flagpoles and calling in a cherry picker to bring down the activists. Other Housing Works activists held signs and cheered on Tony Ray and the other unidentified flagpole climber from the ground.

“I am up here today because of the lack of attention to housing for people with AIDS,” Ray said through a megaphone high above the crowd. “If people with AIDS have a safe place to live and a place for them to refrigerate their meds, they are going to stay healthy.”

The two activists stayed on the flagpoles for around 25 minutes before they were removed peaceably by the NYPD and arrested without incident.

The civil disobedience came shortly before World AIDS Day, a global day to raise awareness of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which is observed each year on Dec. 1.

Compiled by Aaron Adler and John Friia

Photo Courtesy of Alissa Fleck

By Alissa Fleck

When the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) first discovered that developer Stephan Boivin intended to raze the 1824 federal style house formerly belonging to Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, the group focused primarily on the house’s architectural merit. Boivin’s development group, Nordica, hoped to transform the house into apartments and retail space.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) responded to community advocates in favor of the building’s preservation by saying the house does not qualify as a landmark because it does not retain enough of its original material, though its general area in the neighborhood is still under consideration.

After this obstacle and further research, the GVSHP began to focus instead on the house’s rich history and ties to the LGBTQ community. As the group explained, the City has never before declared something a landmark based on the history of the gay and lesbian movement.

At a press conference outside the Spring Street house today, elected officials and community advocates came together to speak to this colorful history. Senator Tom Duane, the second openly gay member of the New York State legislature, appeared at the conference to make a statement, and Council Speaker Christine Quinn sent a letter in support.

Steve Ashkinazy, Stonewall Democratic Club executive committee member, said early leaders of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) formerly resided in the South Village home. The GAA group was the blueprint for the LGBT movement, he explained.

“Now they want to turn it into a mall,” said Ashkinazy. “The City says it does not retain enough of its original character…it’s clearly older than its surroundings. It’s visually and architecturally a standout with a story to tell.”

“The world has changed here and New York needs this landmark,” he added.

GVSHP Executive Director Andrew Berman said, of former residents with ties to the gay rights movement: “People who lived here touched others’ lives.”

He added, as an openly gay man who has worked under Senator Duane and is well-versed in the region and the struggles of civil rights groups, even “for [him], this house was a lesson.”

Laurence Frommer, a licensed NYC tour guide, said he, and others, have been reaching out to queer historians, hoping to bring the matter to national attention. While the midday turnout was a relatively small spattering, Frommer said he had been hoping for “a cast of thousands.”

“As somebody interested in chronicling and presenting LGBT history, this is important,” said Frommer. “It should be landmarked. There should be a plaque.”

“There’s so much in the City we don’t know about,” said Frommer. “How did it get lost?”

As for the civil rights angle, Frommer said he believes the City is trying presently to make up for a lack of African American historical representation, but they should be focusing on LGBTQ history also, and every other group as well. He said the City usually preserves landmarks based on architectural merit and less so cultural matters or history, but culture should be “considered a lot more.”

Beastie Boys Courtesy of Wiki Commons

Fight for your right…to get historic sites landmarked? Developer Stephan Boivin has filed for demolition permits for an “1824 federal style house” recently purchased from Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, according to a statement from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. The Beastie Boy’s former residence is at 186 Spring Street in the proposed South Village Historic District. GVSHP reports the developer previously made a public statement “promising to preserve the structure,” saying it would be kept for his personal use. The permit now requests full demolition.

According to GVSHP’s Executive Director Andrew Berman, his group has brought this to the attention of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Berman says the LPC agreed to consider this part of the district years ago, and his group urges them to do so now to save the “historic site.” The LPC has thus far refused to consider the remainder of the district a landmark site.

The house GVSHP hopes to preserve is part of a group of surviving federal style houses all built in the same year. According to the organization’s research, “though altered, the house still has the Flemish-bond brick and  two or three stories plus dormer form characteristic of federal-style (1790-1835) houses.” Horovitz sold the house in April of this year.

Not only does Boivin want the property demolished, he aims to combine it with another development site at 182 Spring Street. The GVSHP provides the facts about the South Village. In March it was designated one of the seven most important and threatened historic sites in NY State. In 2006 the GVSHP submitted a proposal for historic district designation of the South Village. Four years later a third of the proposed district was landmarked, but since the LPC has taken no action on the issue.

Since then several sites in the district have been demolished. Berman released a statement on the prospective demolition of this site: “This can either be yet another case of the city sitting on its hands while the character of one of New York’s great historic neighborhoods is destroyed, or the Landmarks Preservation Commission can finally keep its promise and fulfill its duty by protecting the remainder of the proposed South Village Historic District.”

—Alissa Fleck

Photo by James Kelleher

With another summer season on the horizon, Animus Art Collective’s neon plastic-tie art piece “Flaming Cactus,” was installed in Astor Place as part of the Department of Transportation’s Summer Streets program, was taken down Tuesday, June 19. The collective will reportedly bring the piece to 23 poles along Spring Street soon.

Photo by James Kelleher

Bless This Theft
A 64-year old woman who only spoke Chinese was approached by three young women on Canal Street who told the victim that she needed to have her money and jewelry blessed to ward off evil spirits. The victim, amazingly, brought all her cash and 23 pieces of gold jewelry, worth a whopping $60,000 in all, to a location they specified on White Street. While there, the thieves supposedly blessed her valuables, but really swiped them out of her bag and replaced them with newspapers and a bottle of water. The perpetrators then had the audacity to tell the unsuspecting woman to wait a week before opening the bag, at which point she reported the crime to police.

Designer Handbag Theft
Some crimes take a lot of effort and teamwork. Three people recently stole a $1,295 handbag from a designer store on Spring Street. In the heist, a female team member first went into the store and, while perusing the wares, casually moved the bag to one side of a display table and promptly left the store. After the woman left, a fellow thief—this time a man—came in and picked up the purse. Police are also looking for a third male suspect in the crime, but it is unclear what role he played in this group theft.

Be Cautious When You Eat Lunch
We’ve heard of dine and dash, but not this way. A 25-year-old woman eating lunch in a restaurant on Fifth Avenue had her wallet stolen right behind her back, as her purse was slung over her chair. The thief stole a number of cards and items from her purse, worth a total of $1,515, and charged $1,300 on her credit cards.

A similar incident occurred a day before, when a 49-year-old woman was having lunch in a downtown café and her wallet was stolen from her purse, which was on the back of her chair. When she called her credit card company to report it, they informed the woman that the thief had already spent $2,450 at a retail store.

Yet Another iTheft
Earlier this month, a 31-year-old woman was standing in front of a coffee shop on West Houston Street with a friend when two women attacked her, stealing the victim’s iPhone, worth around $500, then fleeing in a car. Police say the victim’s shoulder was bruised in the attack and she had a few scratches on her body.

Two-Wheeled iTheft
Even keeping your bag on you can’t guarantee it won’t be stolen. As a 33-year-old woman was walking up West Broadway, a thief riding by on his bike managed to reach out and grab her bag. The sack contained a $1,200 Macbook Air laptop, an iPad 2 worth $499 and prescription medication, totaling $1,849 in stolen goods

A Shopper’s Wallet Goes Missing
When we go shopping, we expect to spend most of our money ourselves, but this wasn’t the case for a 39-year-old woman who was recently shopping downtown. The woman told police that while looking at clothes at a store, she absentmindedly left her wallet in her shopping cart. She noticed her wallet was missing when she went to check out. Thankfully, no charges were made on her cards before she cancelled them.

Costumed Capers
When the regular old black ski mask doesn’t do the trick, some criminals turn to costumes for their illegal antics. Two men in their forties, who were posing as police officers, pushed a 24-year-old man against a wall. As one removed his wallet, the other acted as a lookout at the Canal Street subway station in Soho. While one fled the scene on foot, the other was successfully arrested by police and the $40 that had been stolen out of the young man’s wallet was returned.

Cell Phone Theft
As a 17-year-old man was standing on the corner of South and Whitehall streets, when two 18-year-old men jumped him. One of them kicked the man to the ground, while the other took his $500 Blackberry. The pair walked away, leaving the victim with injuries to one eye and scrapes on the back of his neck and elbows.

The New York Post reported that Hernandez told police he “lured the boy with candy, stabbed him, cut up his remains and put them in plastic bags.” Hernandez is said to have worked in the area at the time of Patz’s disappearance, and the Post writes he had admitted to killing a child to several family members and others. While police were looking for new leads in the basement of the Prince Street building, at the intersection of Spring Street, a relative of Hernandez reportedly called police.

This timing of this news is particularly interesting as Patz went missing on May 25, 1979, almost 33 years to the day of Hernandez’s arrest. Patz, who lived with his parents and two siblings on Prince Street had begged his parents to walk along to catch the school bus on nearby West Broadway. He was last seen walking to the stop that morning.

Patz soon became the poster child of missing children across the country, and thanks to the tenacity of his parents, he became the first child to have their face on a milk carton.

Sean Sweeney, Director of the SoHo Alliance and a longtime neighborhood resident, recalls when SoHo was filled with artist lofts and industrial retail stores at the time of Etan’s disappearance. The residents were a very close knit community, he said.

“When Etan Patz disappeared, his mother contacted all the other mothers. There wasn’t a lamp post south of 8th St. that didn’t have his missing child poster on it,” said Sweeney. “I think part of Etan being so well known was that his parents were tenacious. His father was a photographer and they had a good picture of him. At the time, missing children were barely reported in the news or not at all.”

Update:

During a public statement to the press yesterday evening, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirmed the arrest of arrest of Pedro Hernandez, 51, of Maple Shade, N.J., for murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz.

Hernandez who worked as a stock boy at a bodega and lived in an apartment on W. Broadway. According to his 3 hour confession to police, Hernandez lured Etan into the bodega, located on 488 W. Broadway,  with the promise of a soda before choking him to death. He then placed the body in a plastic bag and tossed it in with the garbage.

“Earlier this month the NYPD missing person’s squad received information from an individual which led them to identify Hernandez as a person of interest in Etan’s disappearance on May 25, 1979,” said Kelly. “In the years following Etan’s disappearance, Hernandez had told a family member and others that he had, quote, done a bad thing and killed a child in New York.”

TRY THIS ON FOR SIZE

Police say a Florida woman left her purse unattended as she tried on shoes at the Crocs Store on Spring Street. An opportunistic thief reached in and stole her wallet, which contained not only credit cards but her Social Security card.

BIKE CRAZE

A man’s Yamaha recently went missing in Soho, and this past week it looks like cycling thefts are continuing. A red 2008 Honda CBE was stolen outside of Charlton Street. When the owner returned to where he parked, the bike had vanished. The $6,500 two-wheeler was not chained up or locked when it was taken. Police on the scene searched the neighborhood for the motorcycle, but it was nowhere to be found.

DIRTY DANCING

While dancing at a downtown nightclub with her friends, a 21-year-old woman had a thief reach into the purse slung over her shoulder to steal her Samsung Galaxy III phone. The pickpocket also stole her credit and debit cards. While no charges were made on the credit cards, the crook withdrew $2,100 from her bank account.

A Queens woman also thought her wallet was safe in a friend’s purse as she partied in a nearby nightclub. When the party ended in the wee hours of the morning, she discovered someone had managed to slip her wallet out of her friend’s bag. The thief made several charges on her Bank of America card which were quickly canceled.

BROKEN WINDOW

A Pennsylvania man in New York visiting friends had his 2008 Range Rover broken into while it was parked on Mercer Street. The early-morning burglars smashed his rear window and stole a Dell XPS laptop valued at $3,000. A $1,200 Nikon camera and a $1,000 Louis Vuitton bag were also taken out of the back seat.

TRUE THEFT

On a recent night, six thieves wearing baseball caps went into a Soho clothing store while another two served as lookouts. The men stuffed thousands of dollars of denim into shopping bags before they quickly fled. Among the items stolen were 32 pairs of jeans, four jean jackets and nine pairs of shorts for a thread count of $10,851.

JEWELRY STORE SACKED

A display window at a Soho jewelry store was robbed during business hours. The clerk went to remove the items at the end of the day when she discovered that someone had stolen a collection of four rings and a bracelet. The high-priced adornments, made from a variety of exotic stones such as Peruvian calcite and labradorite, were valued at $4,995 in total. While the store has security cameras, the display window was located in a blind spot, allowing to crook to make off without a trace.

AN EVENING STROLL

As she took a nighttime stroll down Broadway, a Singapore woman felt something in her purse move. When she looked down, her purse had been opened and her yellow Kate Spade wallet was missing. The wallet contained credit and debit cards, $400 in assorted currency, and her Singapore ID.

Handing It Over

Apparently, in an urban metropolis, even the public bathroom isn’t safe from enterprising robbers, or so a recent incident reported by the NYPD would indicate. A 57-year-old woman was at the Whitehall Ferry Terminal in the early afternoon when she made her way to the restrooms. After selecting a stall, she placed her bag on a hook on the stall door, but no sooner had she closed that door than a man ran up, swooped his arm over the door and snatched her purse. Fortunately, the woman had only about $100 in cash and a few credit cards in her bag.

The Jewels on the Desk

According to police, a thief recently nabbed $4,200 in jewelry from a specialty store on Spring Street in Soho. Police say that while the owner’s attention was elsewhere, an unidentified thief lifted a $3,000 platinum and diamond ring and a $1,200 14-karat white gold mounting from the owner’s desk.

Don’t Trust a Friend With Your Wallet

A 23-year-old woman was whiling away the hours dancing at a bar on South Street recently when her wallet was stolen out of her friend’s purse. The friend told police she had left her bag on a chair while the pair jived and grooved. The woman canceled her cards after noticing a suspicious purchase at an MTA ticket machine.

Never Leave Your Bags Unattended

In a surprising move, a 69-year-old man told police that while at a beauty store in Soho one recent evening, he left his briefcase at the front of the shop and went on a 10-minute tour of the premises. When he returned, his bag was nowhere to be seen, and whoever might have taken it made off with a lot of loot. The briefcase reportedly contained a $2,000 Lenovo laptop, a $200 camera, $100 worth of drafting pens and pencils and a $150 tape measure.

Citizens’ Arrest

Police were called to the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets recently at almost 10 p.m. after receiving complaints from local residents that a man was excessively shouting. Police say that after the 21-year-old man refused to quiet down, they attempted to arrest him but he flailed his arms and legs. An officer was reportedly injured in the process.

Hold On to That iPhone

iPhone thefts—at least according to the complaints we look at—seem to mainly occur in the subway systems, where thieves not only have close access to the devices but usually a means of a quick getaway by stepping off the train at a stop. But in a recent NYPD case, a 24-year-old woman’s phone was taken from her while she was on the street. She told police that she was at the intersection of Spring and Wooster streets and had been intercepted a few times by a 25-year-old guy. When she attempted to cross the street, he ran by, snatched her iPhone and ran away. The woman told police that she attempted to use the Find My iPhone application but to no avail, as the phone was turned off.

Stolen Bike

A 40-year-old man was given a rude awakening recently when he wrapped up his workday. According to police, the man pulled up to the corner of Greenwich and Spring streets at 9:30 a.m. and parked his Yamaha R6 motorcycle. When he returned to the spot after work, he discovered that his bike, worth roughly $7,000, was stolen.