Schumer to restaurateurs:
Get in line early for fed aid
BY MARK HALLUM
Senate Majority Leader Charles
Schumer is telling New York City
restaurants to get it while it’s hot!
It, being $28 billion in COVID-19 relief
through the American Rescue Act.
It could not be more timely, according to
Andrew Rigie, the executive director of the
NYC Hospitality Alliance, who has been
asking for just such support from all levels
of government as the pandemic decimated
the fi nances of the service industry across
the board.
At Crave Fishbar in Midtown, Schumer
said it would be fi rst-come fi rst-served in
terms of getting the grant money through
a portal on the Small Business Association
website.
“Within about two weeks you’ll be
able to apply in a few weeks after that you
should get some funds,” Schumer said. “So
go on the website, start collecting the data
you need to get ready to apply. Restaurant
help is on the way to one of the most important
parts of New York.”
According to Schumer, the $28 billion
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (left), Crave Fishbar
owner Brian Owens and NYC Hospitality Alliance Executive Director
Andrew Rigie on April 25.
may be fi nite, but he is confi dent that
with bipartisan support for the inclusion
of the Restaurant Revitalization Fund
in the stimulus that the money could be
replenished if the COVID-19 pandemic
PHOTO BY MARK HALLUM
continues on.
“We need to start getting rid of some
of these restrictions that don’t make sense
like prohibiting a customer from having
a meal while sitting at a bar, or requiring
someone to order food with a glass of wine.
So there’s still a long road to recovery, but
there’s reasons to be cautiously optimistic,
but we need to get this Restaurant Revitalization
Fund grants to the businesses right
away,” rigie said.
Rigie believes indoor dining restrictions
should be lifted even more as up to 44.1%
of New Yorkers having now received at
least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine,
according to the state.
“If you’re in midtown Manhattan, and
offi ce buildings have less than 15% occupancy,
it’s extraordinarily diffi cult to
keep your doors open,” Rigie added. “Your
customers are gone, if you rely heavily on
tourists, when are the nearly 70 million annual
tourists going to come back to New
York City restaurants?”
Each restaurant could receive up to
$5 million to pay for employee overhead,
mortgage, rent, utilities, maintenance
and supplies including cleaning equipment
and personal protective equipment
for staff serving patrons in the ongoing
pandemic.
So far, indoor dining is only allowed
within city limits at 50% capacity, something
that has been in place since early
March with the only easing of restrictions
coming in the form of an expanded curfew
on indoor and outdoor service from 11 p.m.
to midnight.
NYPD settles suit with Chelsea woman
who was shackled as she gave birth
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
The NYPD and the Legal Aid Society
agreed to settle a federal lawsuit
fi led on behalf of a 22-year-old
woman whom police offi cers kept shackled
in December 2018 as she gave birth to her
son.
The woman, identifi ed only as “Jane
Doe,” was more than 40 weeks pregnant
when offi cers from the 9th Precinct arrested
her in Chelsea on the morning
of Dec. 17, 2018 in connection with a
recent altercation between her mother’s
then-boyfriend.
That began a 24-hour legal odyssey in
which Jane Doe was shuttled back and
forth between court, the 9th Precinct and
Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct — where she fi -
nally went into labor while in a holding cell
as offi cers there enjoyed a holiday party,
according to the lawsuit.
Paramedics brought her to Kings County
Hospital, but offi cers kept her shackled as
she delivered her son.
According to the lawsuit, the new mother
was kept restrained even after giving birth,
complicating her efforts to feed her child.
When her child wound up in the hospitals
Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), the
suit noted, police required Jane Doe to
be shackled while she visited the ward to
check on her baby.
Adding insult to injury, the charges for
which she was restrained were ultimately
dismissed, the Legal Aid Society noted.
“Shackling pregnant people is a
PHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
dehumanizing and pointless practice that
has no place in New York City,” said Anne
Oredeko, supervising attorney of the Legal
Aid Society’s Racial Justice Unit. “All New
Yorkers should be appalled that the NYPD
continues to fail people giving birth at one
of the most important and vulnerable moments
in their lives, and I am outraged at
how this practice consistently targets Black
and Latinx women and people who give
birth for treatment no one deserves.”
The settlement awards Jane Doe
$750,000 for her ordeal. Under the terms
of the agreement, the NYPD pledged to
conduct roll call training of all offi cers on
its policies regarding restraining pregnant
women.
“At the state level, New York Correction
Law Section 611 outlaws the use of
restraints ‘of any kind’ on women admitted
to the hospital for delivery or recovering
after giving birth — but the NYPD still
refuses to ban these practices,” said Katherine
Rosenfeld, partner at Emery Celli LLP,
which assisted in the case. “Jane Doe is a
fi erce champion for justice, and we urge the
City Council to take up her efforts, change
the local laws on shackling pregnant
people, and force the NYPD to fi nally ban
handcuffi ng women who are about to give
birth, or who have just brought a child into
the world.”
The lawsuit, initially fi led at the U.S.
District Court in Brooklyn, cited four
similar lawsuits fi led against the NYPD
between 2015 and 2018 regarding the
restraint of pregnant New Yorkers.
Asked at his April 22 briefi ng about the
settlement, Mayor Bill de Blasio thought
the woman was treated inhumanely, and
that he doesn’t believe “that should ever
happen again.”
Schneps Media April 29, 2021 3