Body found in Van Cortlandt Park Lake emphasizes need for more park patrol

Another story from this week's Riverdale Review and Bronx Press.

By Brendan McHugh 

A body was found Monday in the lake.

A body was found in Van Cortlandt Park Lake Monday afternoon, highlighting a lack of patrol in the city’s parks.

Anthony McGurran, 77, was missing from his Bailey Avenue home since Friday. Police say the investigating is ongoing and that the cause of death is not yet known. There were no immediate signs of foul play.

The news of the tragic death, whatever the cause may be, has underlined a problem with parks and crime.

“The Parks Department is responsible for 14 percent of the city’s land and it’s completely unacceptable that the city is not tracking and reporting crime,” said Geoffrey Croft of NYC Parks Advocates, a parks watchdog group.

Jump below for the full story.

Ydanis Rodriguez hit in the head, arrested at OWS this morning (UPDATE)

Occupy Wall Street protesters got booted from Zuccotti Park late last night/early this morning. Nearly 100 were arrested. Among those was City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, who represents Marble Hill and northern Manhattan. Go to 1:50 of the video to see him speaking to a reporter as he's handcuffed.

Also, check out the Storify below the video. It's a list of relevant tweets that came from his office, some of his fellow City Council members and one mayoral hopeful, among others. Constituents and followers of @Ydanis have been reaching out to him via Twitter to wish him well.

Rodriguez was scheduled to attend a press conference at City Hall today, calling for the Council to hold a meeting on public safety in parks that they cancelled when the NYPD told them last week they were too busy with OWS to go to the meeting. Irony at its worst.

UPDATE: From the Twitter of the group that marched from Washington Heights to Zuccotti Park in support of OWS last week (including Rodriguez): @endtoendfor99: Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus of the City Council holding a press conference in support of Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez 2pm Foley Square.

I'll try and get my hands on some video of it and post it. Stay tuned!

Jump below for statements from various organizations/elected officials.

End to end for the 99 percent

Espaillat and Rodriguez announcing the march last week.

Today, State Senator Adriano Espaillat and City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez led a march through nearly all of Manhattan in support of the 99% protests at Zuccotti Park. They created a Twitter account, endtoendfor99, and live tweeted the 11-mile march.

Jump below for the tweet-by-tweet, which also has bits and pieces of a touristy day. They saw Philip Seymour Hoffman, checked out the outside of David Letterman's Late Show studio, overtook Times Square, and (I'm assuming) blocking New Yorkers from getting to where the need to be by taking up the entire sidewalk and walking slow.

Also, make sure to check out our other coverage of OWS here, here and here.

Former Riverdale Review reporter spends night in Zuccotti Park for NY Post (UPDATE)

Candice at OWS last week.
Photo by Andrew Kelly, NY Post

Candice Giove, formerly a reporter with us here in the Bronx and now spending her time as a New York Post reporter, spent a night in Zuccotti Park for a Post article. Since then, she appeared on Good Day New York to discuss her sleepover with the protesters.

From her Post article:

Every camp tent is like its own state. There is “Camp Anonymous,” the group best known for anti-Scientology protests.

It’s neighbored by a tent full of vampires, the “Class War” tent and the “Occupy Paw Street” tent, whose residents hand out treats to occupying pets.

There’s also “Camp France” and the “Nic at Night” tent, which supplies the protest with smokes.

I settle on a sliver near Broadway by an OWS library -- which frighteningly has a children’s section. On a bulletin board, there are personal messages like, “Call your sister!”

She talked to a rape victim, spoke of drug use and highlighted the infighting between the occupiers, who have now been there for well over a month.

And here is the video of her appearance on Good Day New York:

NY Post Reporter Spends Night At Zuccotti Park: MyFoxNY.com

UPDATE: Here's another video of Candice, this time she's on Fox & Friends discussing her overnight stay at Occupy Wall Street.

Espaillat and Rodriguez to lead march from northern Manhattan to OWS Monday

They're going from the top to the bottom to support the bottom 99%.

The press conference was held outside an abandoned building
to highlight the inequality between the economic classes.

Local elected officials and leaders from various communities joined labor union representatives and grassroots activists in Washington Heights today to announce an 11-mile march to connect New York’s communities with the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

The “End to End for 99%” march – to be held on Monday, Nov. 7th starting at 10:30 am – will start at 181st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue and work south through Manhattan on its way to Zuccotti Park, where it will join Occupy Wall Street protesters in solidarity.

“Our communities have been devastated by the economic assault on middle class and poor families, even as Wall Street has enjoyed a historic financial bonanza,” said State Senator Adriano Espaillat.

Jump below for the full story.

There are only 93 millionaires in the Bronx (REPOST)

We had to delete this post because it was doing something strange to the blog. Here it is again. Jump below for the table, which may have had something to do with the problem.

There are less people from the 1% in the Bronx than there were three years ago.

Check out this spreadsheet from the Department of Taxation and Finance, which shows the amount of people in various tax brackets, county by county. The second county on the list is the Bronx, which had only 93 millionaires in 2009 (the latest year the data is available).

It's a sharp decline for the borough, which had 159 millionaires in 2007. The spreadsheet goes back to 2006, but the borough had more seven-figure income earners in 2007.

According to the Times Union blog Capitol Confidential:

The real trick will be to compare these data to the numbers for 2010. Democratic lawmakers approved a temporary income tax surcharge in the 2009 budget that raised the top tax rate to 8.97 percent for New Yorkers earning over $500,000 and to 6.85 percent for single New Yorkers making over $200,000 or joint filers making more than $300,000. Conservatives as well as Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran on the Democratic Party’s line, argue that the higher tax rate is prompting wealthy New Yorkers to move to other states. Cuomo as well as most Republicans controlling the state Senate have refused to renew it.

The tax expires at the end of the year. The fight about this, likely to culminate in next year’s budget battle, has just begun anew.

Manhattan had 14,990 millionaires in 2009, a drop of over 3,000 from 2007, when they had 19,247.

Occupy Wall Street: My Non-Thoughts

Do you really care about what I think about Occupy Wall Street?

(No)

That's what I thought. Because I don't even care about my thoughts on Occupy Wall Street. But here's a picture I took when I was there:

Note the changing station on the right, the hair cut dead center, and the sewing station on the left.

Occupy Wall Street

If you have some free time, I suggesting following along on this live blog update the Daily News has going. As of right now, the second most recent picture posted is this one:

Yeah, that's Marble Hill/Manhattan City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez on the left, locked arm and arm, with the protesters.

I'll be down there tomorrow to check it all out, assuming they're still there and the NYPD didn't decide to arrest hundreds of people. I'll write something Monday about what I experience.