Round up the Usual Suspects
Awhile back I wrote a rather controversial diary discussing the possibility of a resurfacing of an age-old tradition of developers burning neighborhoods to clear away "undesirable" communities. I wrote this partly about the Greenpoint fire, one that hit warehouses owned by a developer who has been "unlucky" in the number of suspicious fires that have hit run down properties he owed and wanted to get rid of. The Greenpoint fire occurred mere days before a hearing that was scheduled to debate whether these warehouses should be declared historical landmarks. I also wrote about the unusual and alarming spike of suspicious fires in the Prospect Heights area, around the Atlantic Yards project.
My goal was to raise concerns. I do not KNOW that anything underhanded is happening. But there is a large spike of suspicious fires, some people have died, and these fires have been quite convenient to developers who want to completely uproot entire neighborhoods and have been opposed by those neighborhoods.
Retired NYPD captain Eric Adams, candidate for State Senate, has unequivocally called the Prospect Heights fires arson. Wellington Sharpe and Bill Batson, both candidates for Assembly, also called them arson and referred to these fires and the Greenpoint fire as the destruction of NYC's heritage and identity by developers who are out only for their own interests. These are strong words and I only wrote my article after hearing three different politicians independently make the same kinds of arguements about the Brooklyn fires.
Bill Batson's opinion of how the Greenpoint fire would be dealt with was to shrug and say that they will round up the "usual suspects" and pin it on a homeless guy.
Well, the NYPD have rounded up the usual suspects and have gotten a confession from two homeless guys. From the NY Times:
2 Homeless Men Started Warehouse Fire, Authorities Say
By KAREEM FAHIM and MARIA NEWMAN
Published: June 7, 2006Two homeless men who were burning the insulation off some copper wiring so they could sell it sparked a massive fire that destroyed a historic Brooklyn warehouse complex last month, the authorities said.
One of the men, Leszek Kuczera, 59, was arrested earlier today and charged with arson, burglary, reckless endangerment and petit larceny, the police said. The second man, whose identity was withheld, was still being sought.
The police said that Mr. Kuczera confessed last night to starting the fire, and was scheduled to be arraigned later today in Brooklyn Criminal Court.
The developers, the Guttmans, et. al., are getting off with a slaps on their wrists:
A statement from Mr. Hynes's office listed the owners of the property as Joshua Guttman; his son, Jack Guttman; and four of the real estate corporations run by the father and son.
They are charged with 434 counts of "failure to maintain privately owned waterfront property," one count for each day the owners failed to repair dilapidated piers and crumbling concrete bulkheads after being ordered to by the city Department of Small Business Services Dockmasters, the statement said. The owners were first cited for the damaged and unsafe piers and bulkheads on Jan. 21, 2005, Mr. Hynes's office said.
The charges, considered misdemeanors, are each punishable by a fine of up to $5,000, the district attorney's office said.
Well...I feel unsatisfied. It may be true that two homeless guys burned down the warehouses and the Guttmans are merely unwitting beneficiaries of this, no longer having to worry about pesky community activists trying to declare the now ashes as historical sites. But somehow it doesn't sound right. What happened to the accelerant that the police were so certain was used when they first investigated? Homeless people don't spread accelerant through a wide area of abandoned properties, yet this was originally thought to be what happened because of the speed of the fire. If all of these fires throughout Brooklyn are unrelated and have nothing to do with the development projects, why the sudden spike and why are so many of them near places where developers are battling the community?
We may never know. I would feel greatly relieved if I were convinced that the fires are not sinister. I do not want to believe that people would be willing to so callously destroy and kill just for profit. But for now I am not so convinced despite the confession. And I know that people can be like that and that such practices were once common. I want to hear the opinions of Eric Adams, Wellington Sharpe and Bill Batson regarding this because I found their initial suspicions well expressed and thought out.
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Community | Crime | Law Enforcement | Politics | New York City | Brooklyn
More of a response
Submitted by mole333 on 8 June 2006 - 7:01am.
My first response to you was rushed. And I think your comment deserves more of a response.
I thought about to what degree I should state my suspicions since I do not wish to accuse innocent people of arson and, in essence, murder. In fact I didn't state my suspicions until I started hearing others independently expressing such concerns. I do consider that Eric Adams, at the time an active cop, and Bill Batson, whose primary interest is fire safety and related issues, are speaking with some authority. Certainly they speak with far more authority than I do. To hear them, along with Wellington Sharpe, expressing my exact concerns in even stronger words than I have used, raised my concerns. Had I never heard these gentlemen make such statements, I never would have written my original piece and hence never written this followup. To me something stinks about these fires. That means nothing. Many people I know also think something stinks. That means scarcely more. But when people with stronger involvement in the community, who are tied to law enforcement or fire safety, ALSO think something stinks, that means something.
Is this different than your actions that I was so critical of? I think so. I am drawing from public statements made by people who would be approaching this issue with some authority. And I am stating my suspicions AS suspicions, not as certainty or fact. I think this differs from your statements made with some certainty based on a hunch. I do see why you draw the comparison and I take that comparison seriously. But I see a difference. If you do not, I want to hear your reasons.
Finally, I also, mainly in the previous article, discuss the alternative theory which is equally worrisome: that Bloomberg's closing of firehouses is providing inadequate coverage of some communities. Of course that doesn't explain the start of a fire, but the destructiveness of the fires and, possibly, the deaths might have been avoidable. Neglect of our neighborhoods would be a problem that needs to be addressed and these fires indicate that we do have a problem.
One difference
Submitted by mole333 on 7 June 2006 - 6:46pm.
I never stated it with any certainty. In fact I stated, and honestly feel, uncertainty. You were pretty certain in your statement. I am not advocating a witch hunt. I am advocating a thorough investigation and not just rounding up the usual suspects.
I've always had a suspsicion
Submitted by Gatemouth (not verified) on 8 June 2006 - 7:53am.
I've always had a suspsicion about things off duty cops say off the cuff and out their ass, based upon supposition, rather than personal knowledge. When those cops are running for office, my concern is doubly so. In a barroom, this may pass for informed opinion, but you would probably not such "information" in an column about a garden variety criminal investigation which did not have political implications.
Batson, given his real work in this area, probably deserves to be taken more seriously; especially when talking about the general phenomena. However, I still think ones needs to be extremely careful when discussing specific incidents until one has evidentiary proof. On the other hand, Wellington Sharpe (who I would probably support for Assembly just on the basis of the homophobic poll conducted by Nick Perry) probably has not earned the defference one would give to a cop shooting off his mouth in a barroom. People running for office have an occaisional tendency to say things which are not necessarily resposible; go figure.
This issue does deserve discussion, as does the closing of the firehouses. However, I think care must be taken when discussing specific cases which have not been closed.
And, sad to say, but, like cliches, "usual suspects" usually have earned their subroquet for a reason. Usually.
Fair enough
Submitted by mole333 on 8 June 2006 - 9:27am.
I think we both agree that these fires need to be given more attention because, whatever the cause, they represent a problem. And I certainly agree with you regarding caution in accusations. Yet I think we both do indeed accuse people of things. In this case what I intend to do is to riase to the surface the suspicions many have. Again, suspicions. It is easy to blame someone for a crime because we know they are criminals or otherwise "undesirable" to society as a whole. That is what is done when the police focus on "usual suspects." In the case of the Brooklyn fires there seems to be a pattern that to me does not fit the "usual suspects." Doesn't mean I'm right and it doesn't mean that every suspicious case will be due to the same cause. But the pattern of fires--where they occur, how they occur--do not seem random. And that nonrandom pattern points in a particular direction. I am voicing that direction.
Again, I did not voice it when it was only my own reasoning and my wife's reasoning that saw that pattern. My estimation of these politicians is higher than yours. In the case of Eric Adams, this isn't the first time he has voiced a controverial view that goes against an "official story." I have to say that even before I paid attention to who he was his reasoning on various "official stories" matched my own reasoning. The subway warning (fnord) that Bloomberg issued that homeland security seemed to find unworthy of mention, for example. Not that I trust Homeland Security! Nor would I want Bloomberg to make a mistake that opened NYC up to threat. But the timing was suspicious and, according to Adams, the warning itself was inadequately passed on to police, making it seem like Bloomberg was more interested in getting the timing right politically rather than in getting the police complete information. My wife and I listen to Adams and find that, although we first saw him as a grandstander, he makes a lot of sense.
Bill Batson I think is running because he really has a sense that something is deeply wrong in New York right now and he feels like he wants to be part of the solution. And he does come with some knowlege of this issue.
Sharpe is harder for me to read. He is quiet and I THINK that his quitude is thoughtful. He genuinely seems to listen to everyone around him first, thinks about what they say, and then adds his opinion. My first thought was that he was trying to measure the wind so he could say what people wanted to hear. But I am not so sure of that now. I know others, people you don't generally agree with, who aren't so sure about Wellington except to know that he is better than Perry. I am leaning towards seeing Sharpe as a careful, thoughtful guy. That is the impression I have gotten from meeting him a few times. I support him over Perry regardless. But I think I support him for who he is.
Didn't Yassky do it?
Of course, the homeless people were hired by Yassky! As always, his hands are all over it. LOL!!!
I'm not willing to write off foul play just yet; but the manner in which people were so quick to accuse, based upon educated suppositions, reminds me of my own mistake in too quickly attributing the Yassky/arson "blood libel" emails to the wrong source. Of course, even when explained, my actions were unforgiveable, because the person I'd accused of unseemingly campaign tactics was a purehearted progressive, and accusing a purehearted progressive of being unseemly is reprehensible, while accusing a greedy, grubby, scumbag(in the case of Guttman, a description, rather than a value judgment)landlord from Borough Park of being a murderer is merely understandable under the circumstances, and therefore, permissable, even if ultimately proven untrue. After all, something said by both Eric Adams and Wellington Sharpe can't possibly be any different in character than the "Sermon on the Mount" itself.
OK Mole, you're basically a good guy, so I really don't mean to be that harsh, but the schedefreude here is as good as it gets; or would be, if some innocent people hadn't died (how inconsiderate of them to spoil my gloat). I suppose Guttman doesn't qualify as an innocent here; he was, at the very least, negligent, and he's certainly an ugly character. He can't really cry about having no place to go to get his reputation back, since his reputation sucks, and not without reason. But shouldn't we at least temporarily grant him a presumption of innocence to the crimes of arson and depraved indiferrence homicide? A presumption can always be rebutted; rebutted with facts; why not try when you have them?
Can it be that controversial to state, on a left-progressive site, that the "Bill of Rights" applies to landlords as well as to accused child molesters? We shallsee.