CITYWIDE

REGENTS APPROVES OPENING OF FOUR CHARTER SCHOOLS

The state Board of Regents yesterday officially approved four more charter schools to open in the city. The new schools, Achievement First, Hyde Leadership, International Leadership, and Ross Global Academy will fill the last available charters to open the independently run public schools. Two schools recommended by the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, were rejected because only four slots remained. The state law that allowed for the creation of charter schools included a provision that capped the number of charters to be granted across the state at 100. Mr. Klein again called on Albany yesterday to lift the cap and allowed for unlimited charters.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

35-YEAR-OLD OFFICER DIES AFTER HEART ATTACK

A 35-year-old Brooklyn police officer died yesterday after suffering a heart attack the night before as he was responding to a police call, police said. Officer Francis Hennessy was on duty and assigned to a scooter Monday night, but joined two other officers in a patrol car to investigate a man with a gun at Farragut Road and Flatbush Avenue around 9:30 p.m., said police. Police said Hennessy told the other policemen he felt ill during the ride, then collapsed on the street upon arriving at their destination. The officers performed CPR and took him to Kings County Hospital. He was subsequently moved to SUNY Downstate Medical Center, where he died around noon yesterday. Police said the call about a gun was unfounded. Yesterday, police did not know if Hennessy had a prior medical condition. Since becoming an officer in 1997, he had earned three police medals and worked at the 70th Precinct in Brooklyn, the same precinct where a slain officer, Dillon Stewart, was assigned.

– Special to the Sun

NYCLU SUES CITY OVER RIGHT TO SHOOT VIDEO, PICTURES IN PUBLIC

The New York Civil Liberties Union sued the city yesterday, challenging restrictions to people’s right to photograph public places after an award-winning filmmaker from India was blocked from filming near the MetLife Building. In its lawsuit, the civil rights group highlighted the plight of Rakesh Sharma, who said he felt ashamed and humiliated after he was detained in May 2005 after police saw him use a hand-held video camera on a public street in Midtown Manhattan. Mr. Sharma was taping background footage for a documentary examining changes in the lives of ordinary people such as taxi drivers after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He was told he needed a permit to film on city streets and then was denied one without explanation when he applied to the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting, the lawsuit said. It alleged his constitutional rights were violated.

– Associated Press

POLICE BLOTTER

TWO SETS OF RACIST GRAFFITI FOUND IN QUEENS

Police are investigating bias incidents at a playground and at a public school, after racist graffiti was found in two locations in Queens. Police said someone used a magic marker to disparage whites, blacks, and Latinos on a Parks Department sign inside a playground at 155th Avenue and 83rd Street in Ozone Park. In a separate incident yesterday, police said anti-Semitic slurs reportedly were painted with red spray paint on the wall and steps of P.S. 207, a Rockwood Park School.The graffiti reportedly was directed at a teacher who works at the school, police said. Police did not know if the two incidents were connected.

– Special to the Sun

W HOTEL ATTACK CALLED FIRST VIOLENT RAPE IN AREA SINCE 2004

Monday’s rape of an on-duty housekeeper at the W Hotel on Lexington Avenue at 49th Street was the first violent rape reported in that area since at least 2004, police officials said. At around 4:30 a.m. Sunday, the woman, 25, was pushed from behind and knocked unconscious in the sixth-floor hallway, police officials said. Her uniform blouse was allegedly ripped and she suffered a bruise on her head. She called another hotel employee who came to her aid when she became conscious again. He called police, officials said. Police plan to view footage from a first-floor video camera to look for clues; there was no camera on the floor of the attack, sources said. While the number of rapes was up last year to 13 from nine in 2004 in the 17th Precinct, which covers the East Side between 30th and 59th streets from the East River to Lexington Avenue, the crimes were between acquaintances and were not violent, law enforcement officials said. Other than a hotel maintenance worker who was arrested in December inside the W for groping a hotel guest, there was only one other major crime reported in the hotel last year: a grand larceny, police said.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

STATEWIDE

LAWYERS ARGUE FOR POST-PRISON DETENTION OF SEX OFFENDERS

A lawyer for 32 sex offenders who are being held in mental hospitals on Governor Pataki’s orders after their release from prison asked an appeals court yesterday to declare their detention illegal. But a lawyer for the state argued to the five-judge panel that the post-prison detention of the sex offenders in psychiatric facilities is legal because after release they were subject to the same civil commitment rules as anyone else. An assistant attorney general, Julie Loughran, said two psychiatrists examine the prisoners to determine whether they should be sent to mental facilities after release from prison.A third psychiatrist examines them at the institutions.This is the same level of mental health evaluation any person must undergo before being civilly committed to a psychiatric facility, and therefore the former prison inmates enjoy the same rights as anyone else, Ms. Loughran maintained.

– Associated Press