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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 16 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 42, No. 42 • October 18–24, 2019
Cyclist suffers serious injuries in D’town crash
Wheel progress
MTA launches ‘holistic’ bus redesign
WBAI staffers accuse parent company of lying about debts RADIO CHATTER
Photo by Todd Maisel
The 2017 Subaru was towed to the 84th Precinct’s Gold
Street station house with heavy damage.
Judge arrested for alleged embezzlement cover-up
Photo by Elissa Esher
Gunshots at Jay St. station
By Todd Maisel
Brooklyn Paper
A motorist smashed into a cyclist
near the Manhattan Bridge
entrance ramp in Downtown
Brooklyn during the morning
rush Friday, sending him to a
Park Slope medical center with
serious injuries.
The cyclist was crossing the
Flatbush Avenue Extension along
Concord Street astride his Raleigh
10-speed at 9:15 am, when the operator
of a Manhattan Bridgebound
2017 Subaru struck him
broadside, according to officers
from the 84th Precinct.
The impact sent the bike rider
over the hood, and left a spiderweb
crack smeared across the driver’s
front windshield.
Firefighters rushed to provide
aid to the wounded cyclist, who a
witness claimed was “in and out
of consciousness,” before transporting
him to Methodist Hospital
in Park Slope.
His condition at press time was
By Rose Adams
Brooklyn Paper
The national nonprofit radio
company attempting to shutdown
Brooklyn’s beloved 99.5 FM WBAI
lied to the public about debts owed
by its listener-funded broadcast,
according to executives at the radio
station, who claim their taxexempt
overseers simply want to
strip the station for parts.
“The four-million-dollar figure
is a complete and total fiction,” said
Alex Steinberg, a member of the local
and national station boards that
oversee WBAI and Pacifica. “They
just created it to make WBAI look
like a deadbeat.”
Big shots at the Californiabased
Pacifica Foundation claimed
WBAI was drowning in $4 million
of debt after they fired most
of radio station’s Boerum Hillbased
staff and took over the station’s
programming.
But the $4 million figure
claimed by Pacifica is complete
bogus, according WBAI general
manager Berthold Reimers,
who said the station only owes
$700,000 to Pacifica and other
outside lenders.
Steinberg accused Pacifica’s
new director, John Vernile, of
making a rogue decision to close
the station — and circulating the
exaggerated debt as justification
— in an elaborate scheme to
sell the station’s 99.5 FM signal,
which is worth between $20 and
$40 million.
“Their game plan, I believe is to
sell the signal,” said Steinberg.
But higher-ups at Pacifica claim
that the WBAI’s leadership has
mismanaged the station’s finances
to the point of no return, and that
Pacifica no longer had enough
funds to pay the station’s staff.
“The other stations are not
Mimi Rosenberg (shouting), Borough President Eric Adams, and Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo
joined WBAI supporters on Oct. 15 to protest Pacifica’s sudden closure of the station.
Photo by Rose Adams
generating sufficient income to
be able to continue paying for
WBAI’s employees, and, in fact,
the Foundation as a whole has insufficient
income to continue paying
for WBAI’s payroll,” wrote
Pacifica board member Bill Crosier
on Oct. 12.
A 2017 audit of the Pacifica’s
finances posted on the nonprofit’s
website states that previous
WBAI debts forced the parent company
to take out a $3.46 million
loan — and that the station still
had a number of other outstanding
payments.
Still, WBAI broadcasters argue
that personal disagreements,
rather than debt, caused the shutdown,
citing a dispute that blew up
in September after longtime host
Mimi Rosenberg cried out “Shut
down Trump” — which executives
at the station’s parent company
feared would threaten their
Federal Communications Commission
license, according to Arthur
Schwartz, a lawyer and broadcaster
with WBAI.
“This is about content. It’s not
about finances,” said Schwartz.
After the abrupt shutdown on
Oct. 7, WBAI filed an injunction
against Pacifica, arguing that the
company violated its own bylaws
by shuttering the station without
board notice or approval.
The dispute quickly devolved
into a back-and-forth legal battle
which is slated for a court hearing
on Oct. 21, according to court
documents .
Meanwhile, Pacifica has refused
to rehire the WBAI staff
or give the station its broadcasting
powers back as the court battle
continues, according to WBAI
officials.
Police remove a bicycle from the on-ramp to the Manhattan Bridge after paramedics
rushed the rider to Methodist Hospital in Park Slope.
Photo by Todd Maisel
Rush hour smash
not immediately known.
The 27-year-old driver remained
at the scene and claimed
he was proceeding through a
“steady green light” when the
cyclist wearing headphones and
no helmet attempted to ford Concord
Street.
“We were all speeding up to
go onto the bridge, when the
biker was crossing in the mid-
See CRASH on page 4
By Aidan Graham
Brooklyn Paper
Federal authorities arrested a
Brooklyn judge at LaGuardia Airport
on Friday for allegedly obstructing
an investigation into a
multibillion-dollar financial institution
— where she once served as
chairwoman of the board.
Supreme Court Justice Sylvia
Ash allegedly destroyed evidence
and lied to investigators about millions
of dollars of embezzled funds
from Municipal Credit Union —
the largest credit union in New
York State — according to prosecutors
at the Southern District
of New York.
Ash — who was first elected
as a Civil Court judge in 2006
— had worked a side-gig on the
credit union’s board of directors
between 2008 and 2016, which paid
her “tens of thousands of dollars”
annually, prosecutors said.
Even after her resignation from
the board, Credit Union leadership
continued to provide Ash with various
benefits, “such as Apple devices,”
according to authorities.
In 2018, prosecutors approached
the judge about an investigation
into Municipal Credit Union’s
President and CEO Kam Wong
— who allegedly perpetrated an
elaborate fraud scheme to steal
millions of dollars in funds from
the financial institution, authorities
said.
But instead of cooperating, Ash
allegedly provided false testimony
to cover for Wong, and destroyed
her credit union-issued cell phone
to hide evidence from investigators,
according to prosecutors.
“As alleged, Sylvia Ash, a sitting
state court judge, took repeated
steps to obstruct a federal
investigation into significant financial
misconduct at Municipal
Credit Union during Ash’s tenure
as chair of the board of directors,”
said United States Attorney
Geoffrey Berman.
Wong ended up pleading guilty
to one count of embezzlement in
2018, according to prosecutors.
The judge was out of town when
investigators notified Ash about a
warrant for her arrest on Thursday,
and she boarded an inbound flight
to LaGuardia Airport, where she
was arrested on Friday morning,
authorities said.
She was charged along with a
former New York City police officer,
62-year-old Joseph Guagliardo,
who is separately charged
with operating a fraudulent security
company which took over
$450,000 from the credit union
— in exchange for performing no
actual work.
Ash — who was slapped
with obstruction and conspiracy
charges — faces up to 45 years
in prison if she is found guilty of
all charges.
Prior to her arrest, Brooklyn
Paper’s Standing O column saluted
the Supreme Court justice
on several occasions, including
for her work educating attorneys
regarding the state’s jury-selection
process , distinctions she received
from the Brooklyn Bar Association
in 2018, and her brief
stint as a fashion model earlier
this year.
Judge Sylvia Ash.
Photo by Stefano Giovannini
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Transit gurus kicked off a sweeping
overhaul of Brooklyn’s bus network
on Oct. 2.
The Metropolitan Transportation
Authority launched its first ever borough
wide revamp of Kings County’s
bus system by talking to straphangers
at the Williamsburg Bridge
Plaza Bus Terminal in an effort to
bring faster and more reliable service
to the borough, according to
the agency.
“We’re taking a holistic, cleanslate
look at Brooklyn bus service.
By redesigning the bus network, we
can deliver more frequent, reliable
service that satisfies the needs of the
borough,” reads a statement by the
agency’s Five Borough arm.
Transit honchos plan to re-examine
the borough’s 63 local and nine
express bus lines over the coming
year — some of which follow old
trolley or former elevated train lines
no longer in use — while looking
at ways to make them faster and
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority launched its
borough-wide overhaul of the bus network on Oct. 2.
more reliable.
The renewed push to improve the
system comes as more and more
Brooklynites are opting against taking
the bus. Express and local bus
service have seen a 10- and 14-percent
decline in ridership respectively
since 2016, as straphangers rebel
against the shuttles’ sluggish aver-
By Aidan Graham
Brooklyn Paper
Panic ensued after a gunman shot a firearm
inside the Jay Street-MetroTech subway station
in Downtown Brooklyn on Friday afternoon,
according to police.
At least one shot rang out near the station
entrance at Jay and Willoughby streets shortly
after noon, cops said.
Two blocks away, police cuffed one suspect
near the intersection of Adams and Fulton
streets at around 12:45 pm. The handcuffed
man had not been formally charged at the time
of publication.
Investigators found a bullet casing inside
the station’s upper level — between the street
and the train platform — as well as the ashes
of a smashed subway tile.
No one was reported injured in the shooting.
Photo by Aidan Graham
Police found a bullet casing inside the Jay
Street-MetroTech station.
See BUSES on page 14
PLUS: COULD BORO
GET A ‘BUSWAY’?
SEE PAGE 11
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