City accused of bias against blacks, Hispanics in ex-con jobs ban

Meet the hospital's newest employee

New York Daily News

BY THOMAS ZAMBITO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, January 27th 2009, 3:24 AM

A city ban on hiring ex-cons for hospital jobs is unfair to blacks and Hispanics, a city woman claimed in a complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Shanae Leath, who was convicted for her role in a mugging nine years ago, lost her shot at a clerical job at Bellevue Hospital when her record came to light. Leath, 28, said the city Health and Hospitals Corp. ban discriminates.

“Years ago, I made a mistake, but my life is in order now,” Leath said. “It really hurts because Bellevue seemed to recognize that I would be a good worker.”

Leath’s attorney Justin Swartz says the Health and Hospitals Corp.’s “blanket ban” on hiring applicants with criminal convictions disproportionately affects Hispanics and African-Americans.

Victims of violent crimes will most certainly be grateful that the miscreants who attacked them, will now be part of the hospital team tending to their injuries.

Smoking Ban Hits Home. Truly.

January 27, 2009
Belmont Journal
Smoking Ban Hits Home. Truly.
By JESSE McKINLEY

BELMONT, Calif. — During her 50 years of smoking, Edith Frederickson says, she has lit up in restaurants and bars, airplanes and trains, and indoors and out, all as part of a two-pack-a-day habit that she regrets not a bit. But as of two weeks ago, Ms. Frederickson can no longer smoke in the one place she loves the most: her home.

Ms. Frederickson lives in an apartment in Belmont, Calif., a quiet Silicon Valley city that is now home to perhaps the nation’s strictest antismoking law, effectively outlawing lighting up in all apartment buildings.

“I’m absolutely outraged,” said Ms. Frederickson, 72, pulling on a Winston as she sat on a concrete slab outside her single-room apartment. “They’re telling you how to live and what to do, and they’re doing it right here in America.”

And that the ban should have originated in her very building — a sleepy government-subsidized retirement complex called Bonnie Brae Terrace — is even more galling. Indeed, according to city officials, a driving force behind the passage of the law was a group of retirees from the complex who lobbied the city to stop secondhand smoke from drifting into their apartments from the neighbors’ places.

“They took it upon themselves to do something about it,” said Valerie Harnish, the city’s information services manager. “And they did.”

Public health advocates are closely watching to see what happens with Belmont, seeing it as a new front in their national battle against tobacco, one that seeks to place limits on smoking in buildings where tenants share walls, ceilings and — by their logic — air. Not surprisingly, habitually health-conscious California has been ahead of the curve on the issue, with several other cities passing bans on smoking in most units in privately owned apartment buildings, but none has gone as far as Belmont, which prohibits smoking in any apartment that shares a floor or ceiling with another, including condominiums.

“I think Belmont broke through this invisible barrier in the sense that it addressed drifting smoke in housing as a public health issue,” said Serena Chen, the regional director of policy and tobacco programs for the American Lung Association of California. “They simply said that secondhand smoke is no less dangerous when it’s in your bedroom than in your workplace.”

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Civilians, cops tag-team vs. graffiti

BTCA Graffiti Busters

Queens has made major strides in the war on vandalism.

Graffiti complaints dropped dramatically across the borough in 2008 — including a 20% decline in Queens’ northern precincts — even as citywide totals jumped more than 10%, according to preliminary NYPD stats.

The number of graffiti complaints includes calls from the public to report vandalism to the NYPD, as well as all graffiti-related criminal charges the NYPD files against suspects after they’re arrested.

In addition, cops collared 214 fewer taggers in Queens than they had in 2007 — a 23.1% drop that contrasted with a 10% leap citywide in graffiti arrests, NYPD records show.

Skeptics warn the numbers may indicate only a lack of vigilance in reporting graffiti and catching offenders — not a true dip in the colorful crimes — but others view them as a major accomplishment.

In 2008, the 109th Precinct reported 182 graffiti complaints which resulted in 55 arrests. During that same period, the 111th Precinct received 117 graffiti reports which resulted 27 arrests.

BTCA’s Graffiti Busters can often be seen removing grafitti, stickers, illegal postings and other forms of vandalism in Bay Terrace. Any one of their regularly schedluled clean-ups will often result in the removal of 30-50 tags and markings. All of these volunteer community groups should be applauded for their efforts.

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