POLICE BLOTTER

OFFICERS SHOOT, KILL EX-CON DURING ARREST STRUGGLE

A man who was convicted of assaulting a victim with a machete in 1990 was shot and killed by NYPD detectives yesterday after a struggle ensued when they tried to arrest him for another assault, police said.

According to police, the suspect, whom police identified as Boanegef Mota, a 37-year-old, last Friday assaulted a fellow employee at the Columbus Messaging Service at 149 W. 24th St. where he works as a bicycle messenger, pistol-whipping the man and then menacing him with the gun. His office notified the police, who opened an investigation.

Yesterday afternoon, the suspect phoned his office and told them that he was going to come to work to pick up a paycheck. His coworkers notified police, who sent three plainclothes detectives to arrest him.

The detectives confronted the suspect at 1:58 p.m. yesterday and attempted to arrest him at 24th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan. A struggle began, the detectives fired three shots, and one of the bullets passed through the suspect’s right arm and struck him in the torso. He was taken to Saint Vincent’s Hospital in critical condition, and died at 3:42 p.m. yesterday, police said.

Police recovered a small derringer-style handgun from the scene and the investigation is ongoing. The incident is the second police-involved shooting in as many days.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

CITYWIDE

COUNCIL APPROVES REAL ESTATE DEAL FOR CULTURAL GROUPS

Deals don’t come much sweeter than this for most groups that dance with the city. Yesterday, a City Council committee approved an agreement to sell six buildings and two empty lots on the Lower East Side to 13 nonprofit cultural groups for $8.

The deal, which is backed by Mayor Bloomberg and is expected to win full council approval today, creates an East 4th Street Cultural District. The groups already occupy much of the space, which is between 2nd Avenue and the Bowery, but have month-to-month leases. Council Member Margarita Lopez, who pushed for the deal, praised Mr. Bloomberg for supporting the plan and said it would create a much-needed multi-cultural “mini Lincoln Center” in her community.

The artistic director of Teatro Circulo, Jose Oliveras, who during a news conference was dressed in an ogre-like custom from one of his plays, said the battle, which started during the Giuliani administration, was worth the fight. The deputy commissioner for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Luiz Aragon, said the money to renovate the buildings will come mostly from the nonprofits with “several hundred thousand” additional dollars from the city. The permanent space will help the theater, dance, film, and art groups thrive in a way they can’t now, he said.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

FERRY BOAT NAMED AFTER BOROUGH PRESIDENT

Mayor Bloomberg unveiled the newest of the Staten Island ferry fleet yesterday, the Guy V. Molinari, a boat named after the former Staten Island Borough president.

“The boat is named for a tireless public servant and Staten Island’s favorite son, and I am sure the Molinari will be just as much of a workhorse for the people of Staten Island as Guy has been,” Mr. Bloomberg told a crowd of supporters at a ceremony at the St. George Ferry Terminal yesterday. “Guy served our city, state, and country for decades and made an enormous contribution to Staten Island.”

The ferry that bears his name is the first of three new boats added to the Staten Island fleet. The $40 million vessel can carry up to 4,500 passengers and was built by the Manitowoc Marine Group in Marinette, Wis. Over the next few months, the boat will receive its final preparations for operation, the crew will be trained, and the Coast Guard will certify it for use in the New York Harbor. The two other boats are expected to arrive in New York sometime next year.

– Staff reporter of the Sun

MTA TO VOTE ON TRANSIT UPGRADES

Five separate MTA committees yesterday met yesterday to discuss the transit authority’s five-year capital plan, which is expected to cost $11 billion. The full MTA board tomorrow will vote on the final version.

The plan proposes the upgrade of many bus shelters and subway stations and several projects near and dear to the hearts of New York City residents, like a Second Avenue subway and an extension of the no. 7 train south to Penn Station.

Without help from the state or federal government, the authority will have to sell bonds to cover expenses, as it did four years ago to finance the 2000-04 capital plan. But according to the chief financial officer, Steven Kessler, such tactics would lead to unmanageable debt that could soar past the $2 billion mark by 2009, forcing severe cutbacks in service. With this projection as its weapon of persuasion, the MTA has all but come right out and ask for state funding to cover the costs. That doesn’t seem likely to happen.

“We have a lot of concerns with the plan that they have proposed: It’s kind of a Cadillac plan, it doesn’t recognize the costs proposed in this kind of plan,” said Mark Hansen, a spokesman for the state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

CHILD-WELFARE WORKER ACCUSED OF ILLEGALLY COLLECTING $21,000

A veteran child-welfare specialist with the city’s Administration for Children’s Services was arrested yesterday on suspicion of collecting more than $21,000 in daycare subsidies from the city by pretending to be a foster parent to her own 3-year-old son. The city worker, Pamela Mills, 36, surrendered to police at a precinct near her home in Queens and is charged with grand larceny in the third degree and presenting fraudulent documents to her employers. She could face seven years in prison.

“Let this case be a warning to those who would concoct similar schemes,” the commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigations, Rose Gill Hearn, said in a statement. “While we all can imagine how difficult it is for working parents to find good, affordable daycare, that does not mean one should lie or steal in order to have it.”

Calls to an attorney representing Ms. Mills, who was suspended from her $47,546-a-year post at the Queen’s Division of Foster Care Services and Family Services Unit in Jamaica, were not returned. The tip on Ms. Mills’s alleged fraud came from an anonymous complaint made to city investigators several months ago.

In order qualify for and then circumnavigate the hassle of receiving city-subsidized day care, investigators said, Ms. Mills first created a fake name for her child’s biological parent, borrowed information from a case she oversaw, and then collected subsidies from the city between May 2000 and April 2003.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

JUDGE’S RULING RELEASES SECRET IMMIGRATION DOCUMENT

Civil rights lawyers claimed a victory yesterday after a judge ordered the Department of Justice to share a secret document showing why the federal government concluded local police officers can enforce federal immigration laws.

The U.S. district judge, Lewis Kaplan, ruled Friday that the April 2002 report must be turned over to the civil rights lawyers after Attorney General Ashcroft and his representatives repeatedly cited it to justify their decision to let local police have more authority.

The judge wrote that the “department’s view that it may adopt a legal position while shielding from public view the analysis that yielded that position is offensive” to the Freedom of Information Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued the Department of Justice after it refused to turn over documents explaining the legal rationale for the change in immigration policy. The documents were prepared by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which gives legal advice to the attorney general.

– Associated Press

EDUCATION PANEL VOTES TO END SOCIAL PROMOTION FOR FIFTH-GRADERS

The mayor and the chancellor applauded themselves last night, as the Panel for Education Policy passed Mayor Bloomberg’s new plan to end the social promotion of fifth-graders.

In a statement, Mr. Bloomberg said, “We owe it to our students to provide them with the education they need to succeed.” He said the policy, which was modeled on last year’s third-grade retention policy, would help achieve that goal.

The schools chancellor, Joel Klein, said the vote of 12 in favor and one abstaining “reflects confidence in the work we’re doing.”

But members of the panel who later voted for the proposal and parent representatives of three different community education councils said the city did not make enough effort to find out what New Yorkers thought of the proposal.

“We are not prepared to comment – not that we’ve been asked,” said Michael Propper of Manhattan, during a public comment period that was much tamer than the one during the March hearing about the third-grade policy.

A council representative from Brooklyn, Carmen Colon, said that although a briefing last week on the policy was comprehensive, it didn’t allow her enough time to present it to the community and collect feedback. She asked if the members were voting in a “vacuum.”

As at the last panel meeting, the only person who didn’t vote with the majority was the Brooklyn borough president’s appointee, Martine Guerrier.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun