MANHATTAN

FAMILY OF MAN SHOT IN SUBWAY STATION SUES MTA

The family of a man shot to death on a subway platform in February filed a $10 million negligence lawsuit against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday. The lawsuit claims that floor-to-ceiling turnstiles and cuts in staff led to the death of German Cabrera, who was shot and killed on February 19 as he stood on the subway platform at the 18th Street station of the 1 and 9 lines.

Police officers and emergency workers had trouble getting to the victim because the only entry open at the time, a floor-to-ceiling turnstile, required a Metro-Card which the police officers did not have. Officers had to eventually borrow a MetroCard from a passenger to gain entry onto the platform. The victim’s family said yesterday that had the subway station been fully staffed, emergency workers would have been able to open a shuttered entry and get to Cabrera. By the time Cabrera arrived at St. Vincent’s Hospital, he had already died.

Since the Cabrera incident, all police, firefighters, and EMS workers have been issued MetroCards, formerly given only to transit police.

– Special to the Sun

COUNCIL BLOCKS USE OF PUBLIC MONEY SOURCE ON STADIUM

The speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, pushed through legislation yesterday that will block Mayor Bloomberg from spending $300 million of public money on a stadium for the New York Jets without getting approval first. The measure, which passed in the City Council, prevents the mayor from using payments in lieu of taxes – also known as Pilot funding – without going through the standard budget process.

Mr. Miller, who is looking to unseat Mr. Bloomberg in the upcoming election, has turned his fight against the stadium into an election-year crusade. Mr. Bloomberg, who has said the project will spur the economy, is expected to veto the bill and sue to prevent the Council from implementing it.

A spokesperson for the Bloomberg administration called the Council measure unlawful, accusing the speaker of playing politics.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

DAUGHTER OF FORMER HAITIAN LEADER URGES EFFORTS TO SAVE FATHER

The daughter of the former Haitian prime minister, Yvon Neptune, urged the international community yesterday to save her father, who is on a hunger strike to protest his 10-month detention without charge.

“Without the help and pressure of the international community, my father will die,” Maryvonne Neptune told a news conference. “I’m calling for action – for people to actively and openly put pressure on the people who are detaining him.”

She said her 58-year-old father can no longer walk without help, “but he will not eat until he’s released.”

Mr. Neptune’s daughter, who just graduated from New York University and lives in Washington Heights, spoke to a news conference at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a Manhattan-based public interest group that had filed the first lawsuits on behalf of detainees America is holding as suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

A top Haiti official said recently that his government is worried about Mr. Neptune’s condition. Plans to evacuate him to a hospital in the neighboring Dominican Republic fell through when Mr. Neptune refused to leave Haiti, demanding instead that he be released unconditionally. The government has declined to drop its charges against him, and Mr. Neptune is being held in a special prison near police headquarters in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

– Associated Press

ASIAN LONGHORNED BEETLES CLAIM TWO CENTRAL PARK TREES

Polka-dotted 1.5-inch bullet-shaped beetles and parks officials are going head-to-head in a battle for the city’s trees.

Two Central Park trees found infested with the Asian longhorned beetle were chopped down yesterday and were to be burned in an effort to destroy the eggs buried in the wood, a parks department spokeswoman, Dana Rubinstein, said.

The infected American elms were found within blocks of each other along Fifth Avenue on the perimeter of Central Park. They were discovered by U.S. Department of Agriculture officials who have searched for the bugs in 1,315 park trees since mid-March, the parks department said in a statement.

“The Asian longhorned beetle poses a potentially devastating threat to our urban canopy,” the commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation, Adrian Benepe, said in the statement.

The shiny black beetle with white spots is not harmful to humans or animals but has caused thousands of New York trees to be cut down since it appeared in Brooklyn in 1996.

More than 78,000 trees in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island are being preventively treated with a pesticide that poisons adult beetles before they can lay eggs, according to the March quarterly report for the beetle eradication program. This year, the parks department statement said, officials have found 48 infested trees – two in Central Park, 11 in Brooklyn, one in Queens and 34 in Massapequa. Last year, 66 infested trees were found within the city limits.

– Associated Press

BROOKLYN

RESIDENTS WANT MAYOR TO INTERVENE ON SEX SHOP LOOPHOLE

Residents of Sunset Park in Brooklyn are petitioning Mayor Bloomberg to step up the city’s efforts to close a loophole in a law that allows a business to sell adult entertainment in less than 40% of its store. The petition comes after a lawsuit filed by the city against the businesses was struck down by a state Supreme Court ruling last month. Since a 1995 zoning law created a loophole allowing businesses not to be classified as adult entertainment if such materials were limited to 40% of a business’s floor space, the number of adult-entertainment businesses in Sunset Park – including strip clubs and adult-video stores – has grown to 23 from 4, the community board district manager, Jeremy Laufer, said.

Sunset Park residents have grown frustrated that a 2001 zoning law, meant to restrict the proliferation of businesses selling adult-entertainment materials, has yet to be implemented because of court challenges. Residents hope the petition will pressure the mayor to author a more stringent and unambiguous law curtailing the growth of adult-entertainment businesses.

– Special to the Sun

COUNCIL APPROVES MASSIVE WATERFRONT REZONING

The City Council rubberstamped a massive rezoning yesterday that is expected to develop a largely industrial 175-block area of northern Brooklyn. The agreement, which was brokered with the Bloomberg administration, aims to revitalize previously underutilized property in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, clearing the way for developers to build apartment buildings, offices, stores, and parks.

The deal includes incentives for developers to create “affordable housing,” allowing them to build 40-story towers in certain places if they volunteer to make a certain percentage of those units affordable. Luxury residential properties, without a percentage of affordable housing, would be limited to 32 floors. City officials predict that 33% of the 10,818 new apartments will be “affordable.”

Council members praised the plan and said it would go a long way to preserve the character of both neighborhoods, which have become magnets for artists in recent years. While affordable housing advocates lauded the plan last week, some Brooklyn groups have complained that the new development will price out the residents currently living there and that the tall buildings will destroy the character of their neighborhoods. In addition to the housing, the plan will also create 54 acres of parks and preserve some existing manufacturing zones. Mayor Bloomberg and the speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, who are political opponents, have both praised the deal.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

CITYWIDE

TEENAGE GIRLS RELEASED AFTER SUICIDE-BOMB-SCARE ARRESTS

Immigration authorities have released two 16-year-old girls who were detained for six weeks amid reports they were potential recruits for a suicide bomb plot that never materialized.

The girls – one from Bangladesh, one from Guinea – were taken into custody separately in New York on March 24 and put in a detention center. The Bangladeshi girl, her mother and two brothers on Tuesday left the country voluntarily, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, Manuel Van Pelt, said yesterday.

The Guinean girl was released last week and was allowed to remain in the city but still faces removal proceedings, Mr. Van Pelt said in Washington, D.C. Details about the case, first reported by the New York Times, remain sketchy.

The Times cited a government document that said the FBI believed the girls posed “an imminent threat to the security of the United States based upon evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers.” Federal officials have refused to elaborate. The girls’ supporters insisted they were innocent. At a news conference yesterday on the steps of City Hall, human rights advocates demanded an apology.

“We’re concerned about the veil of secrecy that has surrounded this case,” said Mauri Saalakhan, of the Peace and Justice Foundation. “We’re concerned about the injustice that has been done to the girls and their families.”

ICE insisted the girls were never accused of crimes, only administrative immigration violations.

– Associated Press