I’m Innocent. Just Check My Status on Facebook.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, published 11 November, 2009
The message on Rodney Bradford’s Facebook page, posted at 11:49 a.m. on Oct. 17, asked where his pancakes were. The words were typed from a computer in his father’s apartment in Harlem.
At the time, the sentence, written in street slang, was just another navel-gazing, cryptic Facebook status update — meaningless to anyone besides Mr. Bradford. But when Mr. Bradford, 19, was arrested the next day as a suspect in a robbery at the Farragut Houses in Brooklyn, where he lives, the words took on greater importance. They became his alibi.
His defense lawyer, Robert Reuland, told a Brooklyn assistant district attorney, Lindsay Gerdes, about the Facebook entry, which was made at the time of the robbery. The district attorney subpoenaed Facebook to verify that the words had been typed from a computer at an apartment at 71 West 118th Street in Manhattan, the home of Mr. Bradford’s father. When that was confirmed, the charges were dropped.
“This is the first case that I’m aware of in which a Facebook update has been used as alibi evidence,” said John G. Browning, a lawyer in Dallas who studies social networking and the law. “We are going to see more of that because of how prevalent social networking has become.”
With more people revealing the details of their lives online, sites like Facebook, MySpaceand Twitter are providing evidence in legal battles.
Up to now, social networking activity has mostly been used as prosecutorial evidence, Mr. Browning said. He cited a burglary case in September in Martinsburg, Pa., in which the burglar used the victim’s computer to log on to Facebook and forgot to log off. The police followed the digital trail to Jonathan G. Parker, 19, who was arrested.
As part of his defense, a suspect in an Indiana murder case, Ian J. Clark, claimed he was not the kind of man who could kill his girlfriend’s child. But remarks he was found to have posted on MySpace left him vulnerable to character examination, Mr. Browning said, contributing to his conviction and a sentence of life in prison without parole.
In civil cases, too, online communications have helped strengthen evidence, especially indivorce cases, where they are often used as proof of cheating.
And postings by a probationary sheriff’s deputy, Brian Quinn, 26, of Marion County, Fla., on his MySpace page led to his firing in June 2006 for “conduct unbecoming an officer.”
Such cases are becoming more prevalent in part because Congress in 2006 mandated changes to the federal rules of civil procedure, expanding the acceptance of electronically stored information as evidence.
With the use of a Facebook update as an alibi, such communications may also be used to prove innocence, Mr. Browning said.
Mr. Bradford’s arrest was for the mugging at gunpoint of Jeremy Dunklebarger and Rolando Perez-Lorenzo at 11:50 a.m. on Oct. 17, according to Mr. Reuland, Mr. Bradford’s lawyer.
Mr. Bradford, who was facing charges in a previous robbery, contended he was in Harlem at the time of the Oct. 17 robbery — a claim supported by Mr. Bradford’s father, Rodney Bradford Sr., and his stepmother, Ernestine Bradford, Mr. Reuland said.
Mr. Reuland acknowledged that, in principle, anyone who knew Mr. Bradford’s user name and password could have typed the Facebook update, but he regards it as unlikely.
“This implies a level of criminal genius that you would not expect from a young boy like this; he is not Dr. Evil,” Mr. Reuland said, adding that the Facebook entry was just “icing on the cake,” since his client had other witnesses who provided an alibi.
Jonah Bruno, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said he could not discuss details of the case because it was sealed. But he acknowledged that Facebook was crucial to the charges’ being dropped.
But Joseph A. Pollini, who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said prosecutors should not have been so quick to drop the charges.
“With a user name and password, anyone can input data in a Facebook page,” Mr. Pollini said.
“Some of the brightest people on the Internet are teenagers,” he said. “They know the Internet better than a lot of people. Why? Because they use it all the time.”
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Teachers learn write from wrong at this cursive class
THE HUFFINGTON POST, published 6 November, 2009
A group of Brooklyn teachers went back to school this week for some vital retraining. Computer skills? New Math? No, good old-fashioned handwriting.
About 70 educators attended a workshop at Boerum Hill’s PS 261 on Pacific Street on Tuesday organized by Handwriting Without Tears, a national group that hopes to keep handwriting from becoming a lost art in an age of standardized testing and emphasis on keyboard skills.
“Let’s learn pencil grasp,” shouted the workshop leader, Diane Eldridge, starting off with that most-basic of skills because, she said, she recently saw a child holding a pencil as if it were a Stone Age tool.
Several teachers nodded knowingly. Others stared at the chalk with puzzled faces. A couple, looking slightly embarrassed, glanced down at their pens to see if, they too, were guilty of the offense.
Eldridge told teachers that the key is preparing to hold a pen properly.
“Writing is like scuba diving,” she said. “Before jumping into the ocean, you need to jump into a pool.”
During the workshop, teachers were asked to bang wooden sticks, clap their hands and sing — all strategies for preparing kids for the act of writing.
“Pick up a crayon, this is easy to do. I just tell my fingers what to do,” sang Eldridge. “My thumb is bent, pointer points to the tip, tall man uses his side, I tuck my last two fingers in and take them for a ride.”
All this fun, games and re-education doesn’t come cheaply — PS 261 Principal Zipporiah Mills spent $17,000 this year to get her staff up to speed on teaching cursive writing — but parents definitely approve.
“It’s a lost art,” said Klara Carames, co-president of the Parent Teacher Association at PS 261. “Nobody teaches cursive anymore, and I’m glad the school is offering this program.”
At the end of the workshop, the happiest students were indeed the teachers themselves.
Claudia Rivera, a 30-year-old special education teacher at PS 261, had entered the room typing quickly on the keyboard of her Blackberry. When she left, she was drawing a neat capital “D” on a mini-blackboard.
She looked like she had re-adjusted to the ancient tool called chalk.
A version of this story appeared in print on November 13, 2009, on page 13 of The Brooklyn Paper.
Man Is Acquitted in Fake Dynamite Case
THE NEW YORK TIMES - City Room, published 21 October, 2009
A judge on Wednesday acquitted a Brooklyn maintenance worker who was arrested in 2007 for carrying a bundle of fake dynamite he found in the trash.
Ending a bench trial, the judge, Acting Justice Vincent M. Del Giudice of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, scoffed at prosecutors’ argument that the worker, Robert Lopez, intentionally caused a scare when he sat on his stoop with the theatrical prop.
“Would you prosecute all the people who sit on their porch with a lighter that looks like a grenade?” Justice Del Giudice asked one of the prosecutors, Brandon Story.
The saga unfolded on July 22, 2007, when Mr. Lopez was taking out the garbage at Cadman Towers, an apartment complex on Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights. He said he found what was a clearly bogus bundle of dynamite.
Mr. Lopez took the prop with him, with plans to turn it into a piggy bank, figuring the hollow sticks were perfect for piling quarters. He was on his way home when two transit workers spotted the fake bomb and called the police.
As Mr. Lopez sat on the stoop of his apartment building, at 46 St. Felix Street, catching his breath on the hot summer day, the police descended on him.
Mr. Lopez, 40, was indicted on charges of violating a state law that makes “placing a false bomb or hazardous substance” a felony that carries up to four years in prison.
Mr. Story and a fellow prosecutor, Christopher Eribo, argued that Mr. Lopez caused public alarm by carrying the device from his job to his home and by “placing” it on his stoop.
Joshua Horowitz, Mr. Lopez’s lawyer, insisted his client was a victim of overzealous prosecution.
“My client was just resting on the porch of his own house where he had been living for four years, would he ever wanted to hurt his neighbors?” he said.
Shortly before the judge’s verdict, which came after months of postponed hearing, Mr. Horowitz had advised Mr. Lopez to consider taking a plea deal that would have given him three years’ probation.
“Why should I plead guilty if I haven’t done anything?” Mr. Lopez said before entering the courtroom.
Mr. Lopez, who has no job, said he was soon going to be homeless because he had no money for rent. But he said he was more worried for his mother, who he said received a diagnosis of cancer last week.
“My mom is going to be happy, my sister is going to be happy, all my family is going to be happy,” Mr. Lopez said. “And the bond guy is going to clap his hands — every time I see him he asks me why I’m still going there.”
Mr. Horowitz said coming out of the court, “I feel on top of the world. It’s like winning the World Series.”
Mr. Lopez looked at him and smiled.
“Remember my promise?” Mr. Lopez asked his attorney. “Now I have to take you to a steak restaurant.”
Mr. Horowitz did not decline the offer.
In Tough Economic Times, Psychics Console
Eileen Rivera, a 24-year-old receptionist from Long Island, is a longtime believer in fortune telling. But lately she has changed her questions.
“My focus used to be 90 per cent love and relationships and 10 per cent economical,” Rivera said. “Now it’s about 20 per cent love and relationships and 80 per cent economical.”
Rivera’s fortuneteller Karin Marcello, 29, also from Long Island, says that this switch in interest from love to money is a growing trend among her eclectic clientele, which includes top managers, cashiers and lap dancers.
“People are paranoid,” she said. “They ask: Am I going to keep my job? Will I be able to afford to live in New York? Should I still invest? Will I be able to pay my mortgage? Will I have any luck selling my house?”
Traditionally, a fortuneteller only had to divine the future, but a survey of 12 New York fortunetellers and psychics suggests that as the economic crisis has deepened, clients are treating them more like cheap psychologists and sympathetic university counselors, who have to reassure more than predict.
“Before the crisis people felt they were in control of their lives,” said psychic Stacey Worlf. “Now we feel unsafe. I find that my clients want to know whether they will be OK, and when you tell them so, they feel a lot better.”
Angela Lucy, a Manhattan fortuneteller, shares her colleague Worlf’s point of view and describes what usually happens in her office once she spreads the tarot cards out on the table.
“You get knee-jerk reactions, they are panicking,” she said. “I tell them they are going to be fine and advise them to stop listening to the news.”
According to Dr. Bonnie Maslin, a psychologist who has worked as a psychotherapist in private practice for over twenty years, when life is out of control, as in the case of the economic crisis, some people, rather than dealing with their anxiety through traditional therapy, resort to magical thinking.
But people now want more than magical thinking and whimsical advice from their psychic readings. Entrepreneurs ask whether the bailout is going to work. Small business owners ask whether investing in real estate is still worthwhile. And even artists, usually concerned with inspiration, are now more worried about making their artwork profitable. In order to respond to their clients’ more specific and personal-finance-oriented questions, fortune tellers say they can’t just rely on tarot cards and crystal balls. These days, they’re consulting economic papers and Paul Krugman’s columns.
“I’ve always picked up on the news,” said astrologer Zoltana, “but now I buy Fortune and Forbes and look at financial articles more closely.”
Psychics say they are integrating their strong astrological backgrounds with newly acquired economic savvy to help their cards provide creative, slightly more practical solutions.
“This year Aquarius is in Jupiter, which means that money can be made in the Aquarius way: thinking outside of the box and believing in your genius,” says a fortuneteller who goes by the name Joshua the Psychic. “So, for instance, I advice clients that were in finance to try to get from that arena into more creative jobs like marketing.
As Costs Soar, Shops Serving Hunts Point Close
THE HUNTS POINT EXPRESS, published 1 December, 2008
Until last year, John Hyun used to get up at the crack of dawn and rush to Hunts Point Cooperative Market. Hyun would get fruit and vegetables, load his van and drive to his grocery store just north of Hunts Point.
What came next was the hard day of an immigrant who tries to build his way up in New York: a 12-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week marathon, day after day, spent moving sacks of potatoes and fulfilling the often unpredictable requests of old ladies.
“They’re never happy with the size of their apples,” said Hyun.
Now John Hyun, who has tiny, weathered hands, salt and pepper hair and a face that looks as it had been carved out of stone, still works 12-hour days, but he is no longer so frantically busy.
“I don’t have customers,” Hyun said. “I really hoped that as the schools opened in September, some mothers would show up and buy some good fruit for their kids, but I was wrong.”
Ten years after its opening, Hyun’s Big Brother Market, a small family-run produce shop at the corner of Westchester Avenue and Stratford Avenue, is likely to close after New Year.
The economic crisis that has affected New York and the nation in recent months has hit small business like Hyun’s hard. With rising rent, electric and heating bills, owners have faced an up-hill battle. The Big Brother Market is a portrait in miniature of these large-scale troubles, one of many Bronx businesses battered by forces beyond its control.
“After 9/11 everything went downhill,” Hyun said with a shrug.
Grocery markets are among the businesses most affected by skyrocketing oil prices, which has made transportation more expensive, driving up wholesale food prices, and has boosted utility bills, as well.
“Transportation became so expensive that some transportation companies even stopped serving our wholesale market, Hunts Point Cooperative Market,” said Hyun. “It is no longer convenient for them. So, while prices are going up, you have fewer choices, and quality is dropping.”
Five years ago, Hyun could buy a box of 80 Extra Fancy Washington apples or Golden Delicious apples for $15. Now he spends twice as much. A 40-pound box of bananas cost him $10 five years ago. Now he spends $17 to $18.
While the cost of doing business has risen, stores like Hyun’s find it hard to pass the increases on to their customers. When he raises prices, shoppers stop coming.
“Take Brazilian mangos,” said Hyun. “At the market they cost $8.50 to $9 for nine pounds. We use to resell two mangos for $1 last year. Now we sell one mango for $2.”
As dusk falls and it’s time to close the shop, Hyun goes home to start the worst part of his day—going through his bills. Squinting into the darkening shadows, he rummages through his papers and tries to make ends meet. His wife wants a flat screen television, but there’s a bill for $2,000 for his workers’ comp. It comes first.
When he started his business in 1998, Hyun paid $3,000 a month in rent. Now he pays more than twice as much. But Hyun singles out dramatically rising utility prices as the main culprit forcing him out of business.
“My summer electricity bill is $1,400,” Hyun said. “I’ve no clue about how can it be so high. It was one grand 10 years ago, and then we had air conditioning. Or just take the last water bill, $300 for one month. Are they kidding me? Just five years ago it used to be $200 for three months.”
Other businesses in the same block as The Big Brother Market are no better off.
“The increase of basic goods such as bread, milk and eggs put us on our knees,” said Ilyas Memon, the owner of 99 Cents World. “We used to give away two dozens of eggs for $1. Now you get only one dozen for $1.99. The same applies to milk. One gallon was $2.99. Now it is $3.99.”
Eateries on Westchester Avenue are experiencing hard times too. The owner of Danny’s Athens restaurant, said her profits have dwindled by more than 30 percent in the last seven years.
Lately, before going to bed, Hyun stares for a few seconds the bright red Christmas lights on the railings of his neighbor’s door and hopes that with the holiday season more customers will enter his shop to do what customers usually do–buy.
“Before people came to the shop to shop,” Hyun said laughing. “Now most folks come just to ask for prices.”