QUEENS

MISSING BROOKLYN BOY PRESUMED DROWNED

Police department scuba divers and emergency rescue workers hunted beneath the waves of Rockaway Beach during the day yesterday, searching for a 16-year-old boy who disappeared on Sunday after being swept underneath the water by a violent current. Last night, the search for the boy was called off, and he was presumed drowned, according to ABC news. Around 6:30 p.m. the teenager, Jermaine Cohen, of the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, was swimming in the water with two friends when a current took hold of his body and swept him below the water, police said.

Watching the boy disappear, one onlooker on the beach, a boilermaker from East New York, Wade McDonald, 40, rushed into the water to save him from drowning, but also became tangled in the current and was dragged underneath the water. Emergency workers later went into the water after McDonald, pulled him back to the beach, and tried to revive him, but all attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

STATEWIDE

TEST FINDS RACIAL BIAS IN MANY WESTCHESTER REAL ESTATE AGENCIES

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – Nearly half of the Westchester real estate agencies that were secretly tested for racial discrimination treated blacks and Hispanics unfairly, an equal-housing group alleged yesterday.

The findings at seven of the 25 agencies are being referred to the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, or to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for investigation, the executive director of Westchester Residential Opportunities, which conducted the tests, Toni Downes, said.

The owner of ERA Insite Realty Services in White Plains, one of the agencies referred to HUD, Louis Budetti, said he had not seen the complaint but added, “We don’t tolerate discrimination in any way, shape, or form in our organization.”

The fair-housing group, with funds supplied by the attorney general’s office, conducted 58 tests at the 25 agencies between July 2004 and February 2005. First it sent a white person to inquire about available rentals, then a minority assuming the same income, family, and other characteristics of the white person.

In 27 instances at 12 agencies, unequal treatment based on race or ethnicity or racial “steering” to certain neighborhoods was found, the group said.

– Associated Press

CITYWIDE

FBI: CRIMES DROP IN NEW YORK CITY

The number of reported crimes in New York plunged in the last calendar year, according to preliminary crime statistics released yesterday by the FBI.

Between 2003 and 2004, the number of overall crimes decreased about 4% while the average number of violent crimes dipped 6.3%, the statistics show.

“In 2004, the safest big city in America got even safer,” Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday, adding that New York’s declining murder rate of seven murders per 100,000 people in 2004 was virtually half that of Los Angeles and Chicago, where the murder rate was 13.5 and 15.5, respectively.

Compared to New York, the murder rate in Philadelphia in 2004 was more than three times as high, at 22.1, and almost six times higher in Detroit, which reported 41.5 murders per 100,000 people. Over the last four years, Mr. Bloomberg said, New York’s murder rate has declined 12%, a drastic reduction in reported murders, considering the national decline for the same period of time is 0.5%.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

WEINGARTEN ADVOCATES PENALIZING CITY FOR NOT SIGNING CONTRACT

United Federation of Teachers president, Randi Weingarten, lashed out at the Bloomberg administration at a 2006 budget hearing of the City Council budget committee yesterday, advocating law changes that would penalize the city for not signing contracts on time with its employees.

Public school teachers have been working without a contract for two years, while the police and fire departments have been without one for nearly three. “Late negotiations create uncertainties in budgets,” Ms. Weingarten said in an interview. “The city should be just as alarmed about not negotiating on time as I am … deadlines create real negotiations and facilitate real bargaining. For someone who is a businessman, [this] is real bad public policy.” Ms. Weingarten also criticized the administration for not coordinating its efforts with teachers to increase state funding for education. She advocated class size reductions, better security in schools, and bigger stipends for teachers, who increasingly use their own money to buy supplies.

– Special to the Sun

WEINER: FUNDING FOR POLICE SLASHED UNDER BLOOMBERG’S WATCH

Funding for a federal program that creates more police officers in the city and the nation has been reduced “to practically nothing” by the Bush administration, Rep. Anthony Weiner said yesterday. The mayoral candidate, a Democrat of Queens, said funding from the Community Oriented Policing Services or COPS program which helped put 2,580 police officers on city streets in 1998 contributed to the creation of only 50 police-officer positions in 2004, a 98% drop.

Funding for the program peaked in 1998, when the Clinton administration earmarked $1 billion to hire police officers nationally, but has been gradually phased out by President Bush.

This year the budget for hiring police officers nationally was $9.8 million, according to a program spokesman, Gilbert Moore. The New York Police Department has shrunk to 34,774 from 36,790 officers since Mayor Bloomberg was elected in 2001, Mr. Weiner said, adding that Mr. Bloomberg should have pressed Mr. Bush and his top law enforcement officials to fully fund the program. A spokesman for the mayor, Robert Lawson, said it was Mr. Weiner’s job, as a congressman, to secure funding for federal programs.

– Special to the Sun

ACTOR RUSSELL CROWE ARRESTED

Russell Crowe was arrested and charged yesterday for allegedly throwing a telephone at an employee of the Manhattan hotel where he was staying.

Mr. Crowe, 41, who plays a boxer in his latest film, “Cinderella Man,” allegedly threw the phone at the concierge at the Mercer Hotel in SoHo, “hitting him in the face and causing a laceration and substantial pain,” according to the complaint.

The movie star was arraigned on charges of second-degree assault and fourth degree criminal possession of a weapon – the telephone – before the Manhattan criminal court judge, Martin Murphy. The assault charge is punishable by up to seven years in prison.

“This arose because he was trying to get his wife on the phone in Australia,” his lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, told reporters earlier outside the police precinct where Mr. Crowe was booked. “He was in his room. He couldn’t get a line and there was a disagreement.” Police said Mr. Crowe left his room and went to the front desk, where the alleged confrontation took place.

The prosecution told the judge that Mr. Crowe admitted to a police officer that he picked up the phone and threw it because he was angry. The assistant district attorney, Chad Sjoquist, asked the judge to set $5,000 bail, but Judge Murphy released Mr. Crowe on his own recognizance and told him to return to court September 14.

– Associated Press

HOMELAND SECURITY DOLLARS LIKELY TO BE DISTRIBUTED BASED ON RISK

There’s a 99.9% chance that by the end of this year, federal homeland security dollars will be distributed based on risk instead of politics, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, Christopher Cox, said yesterday on a visit to New York.

“The likelihood that we will end up with legislation signed by President Bush this year that changes our first-responder funding formulas to one that is risk-based rather than one that is based on political formulas is 99.9%,” he said, standing with Mayor Bloomberg, the Police Department commissioner, Raymond Kelly, and the Fire Department commissioner, Nicholas Scoppetta.

Mr. Bloomberg praised Mr. Cox and the other members of his committee for understanding that New York is a prime terrorist target, but he said the city needs more money.

“We’ve used our share of federal homeland security aid to protect and to prepare New York City as never before, but there does remain a clear and urgent need for more funding because there is no doubt that New York City is still a target of choice for terrorists,” he said. “Homeland security funds must be distributed on the basis of risk alone. Homeland security funds are too important to be treated as political pork.”

– Staff Reporter of the Sun