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Is Licking Your Employee’s Hand Sexual Harassment?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:35:00 +0000

A fashion designer who worked for high-end coat company S. Rothschild & Co ., which supplies DKNY and Tommy Hilfiger, has filed a federal sexual harassment lawsuit against her former boss, claiming that she had to leave the company in 2008 because of his “egregious sexual harassment.” The Daily News obtained the court papers , which paint a pervy portrait of Michael Kaufman, the boss of plaintiff Maria Adamkiewicz. According to the lawsuit, Kaufman’s quite the character, and loves spicing up boring meetings with antics like licking Adamkiewicz’s hand. Which he then followed up with the age-old question, “Is that sexual harassment?” That’s now for a Manhattan court to decide. But Kaufman’s bizarrely ribald shenanigans didn’t stop there—the lawsuit claims he “once took off his belt in front of another employee, snapped it and said he was going to whip her with it—and dropped his pants on another occasion.” Oh, and on a business trip to LA, “Kaufman pulled up next to a Hustler lingerie shop and told Adamkiewicz and a colleague they buy sex toys to use with their boyfriends.” At least, that’s what she said (in the lawsuit).

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Is Licking Your Employee’s Hand Sexual Harassment?

State Police Chief Insists Resignation Not Admission of Guilt

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:25:00 +0000

Pedro Perez Pedro Perez, the acting superintendent of the NY State Police, resigned yesterday amid an investigation into his intervening role in the domestic violence case of former Paterson aide David Johnson. He took over as chief just a week ago after Police Superintendent Harry Corbitt , also implicated in the scandal , stepped down. Perez claims he’s leaving not because he acted wrongly, but because he lacks support from the administration and his fellow officers. But Joseph Barrett, the president of the New York State Police Investigators Association, which represents detectives, says, “The position that the State Police find themselves in now is the result of the actions of a few high-ranking officers in management positions, and Acting Superintendent Perez was one of them.” In a letter to the governor, Perez called his actions concerning phone calls made to Sherr-una Booker—the woman who was in the process of filing an order of restraint against Paterson’s former aide —“honest and rightly motivated.” The Times now reports that State Troopers contacted Booker three times and were also in touch with the NYPD , trying to obtain records and information about Johnson’s case. Major Day, the state trooper who spoke with Booker, told Attorney General Cuomo that Perez authorized the intervention , but it’s unclear to what extent the higher up was aware of contact made after the initial phone call . Even before Perez stepped down, two trooper unions had approved no-confidence votes and were preparing to make them public. “[Perez] was given the call,” one source told the News .

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State Police Chief Insists Resignation Not Admission of Guilt

Brooklyn Library Staff Happy Head is Gone

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:15:00 +0000

Flickr user xbettyx After being publicly embarrassed when a Washington Post reporter was allowed to watch their firings, the Daily News reports that former BPL staff members feel “vindicated” that chief Dionne Mack-Harvin has resigned in the wake of the scandal . On top of having their reactions publicly aired, laid-off workers were asked to sign an agreement not to discuss the firings. One former worker said “We felt disgusted. We felt we weren’t valued at all.” Though Mack-Harvin insists she was “misled” by the reporter, Library staff says the Post had approved access. “They thought it was a great media opportunity… After the story came out, they realized it was public relations mistake.”

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Brooklyn Library Staff Happy Head is Gone

Snowball Gets 4 Teens Arrested

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:03:00 +0000

Four Bronx teens are facing a year behind bars after nailing a cop in the leg with a snowball. Their crime? Weapons possession, attempted assault, menacing and harassment. Late last month the friends were out in a snowstorm and hit officer Adonis Ramirez, who was not in uniform at the time. According to the teens, Ramirez then pulled a gun, and 19-year-old Christian Perez tells the Daily News , “I thought he was some drug dealer who was going to shoot me in the head and walk away. We only hit him once, and it was by mistake.” They nearly got laughed out of Central Booking when they said they were in there for a snowball. Meanwhile, Ramirez claims he was struck with several snowballs as he was walking to his car; he also says the group was taunting him. They allegedly called him a “bitch” and said “Let’s jump him.” Somewhere between pulling his gun out and having them arrested, he called 911 for backup. While the Bronx district attorney doesn’t plan to drop charges, the friends are preparing to slap the city with a $10 million suit. Their lawyer says, “You would think that the NYPD would focus on real crimes and not on young men playing in the snow during a nor’easter.”

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Snowball Gets 4 Teens Arrested

"Vigilante Posse" Lands FDNY Firefighter, LI Chief in Hot Water

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:49:00 +0000

Fire chief Mike Charles (left), FDNY firefighter Brian Schuck When shots rang out near his firehouse in Hempstead, Long Island, Michael Charles did what any red-blooded fire chief would have done: grab a gun, form a posse, and saddle up (in an SUV). But for his efforts, Charles and FDNY firefighter Brian Schuck, who joined in the armed manhunt, have been charged with second-degree menacing and fourth-degree possession of a dangerous weapon charges. (A third member of the posse is expected to be arrested soon, Newsday reports .) In their search for the gunman, the three men allegedly stopped and frisked an innocent man, 29-year-old Kenneth Powell, who happens to be the son of Hempstead Village Trustee Perry Pettus. Powell told investigators he was walking along Tompkins Place Sunday when the three men pulled up in an SUV with the fire department seal on it. He says one man pointed a gun at him as he was questioned and patted down; Schuck allegedly stayed inside the SUV with a shotgun protruding from the window. “I was petrified,” Powell tells Newsday . According to police, he was not involved with the shooting incident, in which two men exchanged gunfire, injuring another man and a woman in the crossfire. When Powell told Chief Charles he was the son of a local official, he was released. “[Charles] formed his own posse, went out looking for a suspect and acted in a vigilante manner,” a Nassau police spokesman says. “We simply can’t condone people taking the law into their own hands.” But Chief Charles has helped local police in the past; he once detained a drunk driver until he could be arrested. And his attorney wants everyone to know that Powell did two years in prison after pleading guilty to criminal possession of a weapon. The Daily News reports that it “was not clear why they targeted” Powell, but here’s a photo of his father , so you do the math. Charles tells the Post, “My instincts kicked in. I guess it doesn’t pay to get involved anymore.”

Halderman Admits "Thinly Veiled Threat To Ruin" Letterman

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:34:00 +0000

Robert Halderman last November (AP) Robert “Joe” Halderman pleaded guilty yesterday for his attempt to extort $2 million from David Letterman by way of revealing Letterman’s many affairs. The former CBS News producer admitted his scheme to sell a movie treatment to the talk show host “was just a thinly-veiled threat to ruin Mr. Letterman if he did not pay me a lot of money.” Halderman also confirmed that he deposited a fake $2 million check from Letterman’s lawyers. With his guilty plea for second-degree grand larceny, he faces six months at Rikers (though he’ll probably just serve four), four and a half years of probation, and 1,000 hours of community service. The Post calls it a “sweetheart deal,” noting that Halderman promised to keep quiet about Letterman’s affairs, including one with Halderman’s former girlfriend Stephanie Birkitt. Halderman also apologized to “Mr. Letterman and his family; to Stephanie Birkitt and her family and everyone else that I have hurt or disappointed.” Halderman’s lawyer Gerald Shargel told the NY Times , “We raised some novel legal issues, novel defenses”—like the Tiger Woods defense —”I couldn’t be at all certain that they would prevail. Weighing the risks against the rewards, I thought this was an opportunity to make the best of a bad mess.” Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. credited Letterman with coming to the authorities after the threat, “Mr. Letterman risked the disclosure of certain aspects of his private life. Like all New Yorkers, he has a right to a certain degree of privacy in his personal life.” Letterman said on his show last night that the matter was “was handled professionally, skillfully and appropriately,” and thanked Vance as well as former DA Robert Morgenthau.

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Halderman Admits "Thinly Veiled Threat To Ruin" Letterman

Airport Shoe Removal to Continue

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:10:00 +0000

Despite invasive full body scanners popping up at our nation’s airports, Janet Napolitano says you’ll still have to take your shoes off to get through security. According to the Homeland Security Secretary, shoes are so impenetrable that they can’t be fully screened while they’re on your feet, reports the AP . Too bad these never caught on. During a live video chat session, she also spoke to the shortage of air marshals on domestic and international flights, and about incidents, like the Newark airport kisser , where non-passengers cause security meltdowns by entering unauthorized areas. She said that for now only ticketed travelers would be allowed in secure areas but that “It may be possible to change that as we move forward.”

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Airport Shoe Removal to Continue