McDonald’s decides
The owner of the McDonald’s franchise on W. Third St. near Sixth Ave., where a brawl broke out last month, has agreed to engage Paid Detail — off-duty New York Police Department officers in uniform working as private security — at night. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn had said that Paid Detail security at the spot was the first step in improving public safety and order.
Deputy Inspector Brandon del Pozo, Sixth Precinct commanding officer, told the Sixth Precinct Community Council meeting last week that police would be able to access the restaurant’s surveillance cameras by Internet and that the franchise would consider limiting late-night seating.
Bribery doesn’t pay
Police arrested James Alexis, 27, at Beth Israel Hospital’s emergency entrance on E. 16th St. on Mon., March 26, and charged him with trying to bribe an assault victim not to testify at a grand jury hearing against the man accused of hitting her with a bottle at Hype Lounge, 243 E. 14th St., on Jan. 7. Alexis, a friend of the accused, Darryl Campbell, offered the victim $5,000 not to appear at the grand jury hearing, but she notified police, who turned up at the prearranged E. 16th St. site and arrested Alexis.
A man arrested for urinating on a Greenwich Village sidewalk around 2:30 a.m. Sat., March 31, was being taken to the Sixth Precinct for booking when he offered $50 to the two officers if they would let him go. At the W. 10th St. stationhouse, the suspect tried again with a $100 offer, which the desk sergeant recorded on tape, before charging a man, 28, with attempted bribery.
Hater/burglar sentenced
Kenneth Harden-Smith, 24, who pleaded guilty to 12 counts of burglary in Chinatown as a hate crime on Feb. 1, was sentenced on Wed., March 28, to eight years in prison, plus five years of supervision after release.
Harden-Smith admitted that he targeted Chinatown apartments on Madison, Catherine, Eldridge, Forsyth, Monroe and Henry Sts. and East Broadway because of his strong dislike of Chinese people.
He broke into the 12 apartments in October and November 2010. Many of the victims were asleep at the time and a few of them woke up during the break-ins. Targeting buildings with open front doors, Harden-Smith entered apartments with unlocked doors and opened locked doors by using plastic credit or A.T.M. cards. He stole electronic equipment as well as credit cards and cash.
Leather lifters
Police arrested a man on Mon., March 26, who was wanted in connection with the Oct. 21 theft of a leather jacket from the John Varvatos store at 315 Bowery near E. Second St. The suspect, Troy Cooper, 32, had walked into the shop with a leather jacket over his arm, replaced it with one he took from a rack and walked out with it. Police tracked him from the DNA on a wad of chewing gun found in the jacket he left behind, according to a New York Post item.
A man who walked into the Agnes B boutique, at 50 Howard St. near Mercer St., around 6:30 p.m. Wed., March 28, took two leather jackets with a total value of $3,500, rolled them up and walked out with them under his coat, police said. A surveillance tape recorded the theft.
E. Sixth St. scaffold
The construction scaffold around the house that the actor David Schwimmer is building at 331 E. Sixth St. between First and Second Aves. partially collapsed around 2 p.m. Tues., April 2, injuring one person. An Emergency Medical Service team took the victim, believed to be a passerby, to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. A load fell from a crane, causing part of the scaffold to collapse, a Fire Department spokesperson said. Schwimmer, who appeared in the TV sitcom “Friends,” bought a four-story 1852 building on the site for $4.1 million in 2010 and demolished it in fall 2011 after the Landmarks Preservation Commission informed him that it was being considered for landmark designation. A new six-story, elevator, residential building is under construction on the site, which is near the Community Synagogue, the former 19th-century St. Mark’s Lutheran Evangelical Church when the East Village was known as “Little Germany.”
Moto theft
A man parked his 2009 Honda motorcycle valued at $14,000 in front of 108 Charlton St. near Greenwich St. at 2:30 p.m. Thurs., March 29, went to a business meeting and returned at 5:45 p.m. to find the motorbike stolen.
Lost it while shopping
A woman visiting from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, went shopping in a few Soho boutiques on Saturday morning March 31 and stopped for lunch around noon at a restaurant on Broadway at Spring St. when she discovered that her credit cards were gone. She learned later that two unauthorized charges of $350 and $373 had been made at two nearby stores, Guess and Armani Exchange.
A California visitor, 18, shopping at Aldo Shoes, 579 Broadway, on Friday afternoon March 30 put her bag down for a moment. When she looked again, it was gone, along with her wallet, $50 in cash, her driver’s license and her University of California Santa Barbara ID. She learned later that an unauthorized charge of $11 had been made at Staples nearby.
Took off with tables
When the staff of King Diner, 5 King St. near Sixth Ave., opened for business on Sunday morning April 1 they discovered that eight cafe tables, with a total value of $1,600, were gone from the front of the place.
Watch out
An employee of the Jack Spade store, at 56 Greene St., told police that a $2,595 Rolex watch that she knew was in its display case at 11 a.m. Sun., April 1, was gone when she looked again at 2 p.m. Police said there were no working surveillance cameras in the place.
On the wrong path
Police arrested Ira Wallace, 36, around 6:40 a.m. Mon., April 2, and charged him with arson for setting fire to cardboard boxes at the PATH station on Sixth Ave. at Ninth St.
On Fri., March 30, an officer who stopped a man who stepped over the turnstile at the same PATH station around 4:25 a.m. felt something hard in the fare beater’s waistband. The suspect bolted and tossed a handgun onto the platform but police caught him and recovered the gun with a clip of .40-caliber bullets. Ruben Samaria was charged with weapons possession.
Front door smashed
Police arrested Ernesto Bailey, 28, at 1:50 a.m. Sat., March 31, for smashing the glass front door of 320 W. 11th St.
Welfare scam
A clerk at the Human Resources Administration center at 14 W. 14th St. discovered that a man applying for public assistance around 5 p.m. Tues., March 27, was using fake ID. The suspect, Maurice Spady, 58, was charged with using a forged document.
— Albert Amateau
