Streetsblog New York City

The driver who allegedly struck and killed 4-year-old Ariel Russo and injured her grandmother during a police chase on the Upper West Side Tuesday morning has been charged with manslaughter. But if authorities and the media place 100 percent of the blame on a kid who tried taking the family car to school, a conviction won’t make the public any safer.

Ariel Russo

NYPD says Franklin Reyes, 17, was stopped on 89th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues for driving across several lanes to make a turn, according to the Times and the Post. As officers approached the Nissan SUV, Reyes “sped off” north on Amsterdam Avenue, and the officers “jumped back in their car and gave chase,” the Times said.

Reyes, who has a learner’s permit and had taken his family’s vehicle without permission, drove for eight blocks at unknown speeds before he attempted a left turn onto 97th Street at an estimated speed of 34 mph, officials said. At some point, according to reports, Reyes jumped the curb. From the Times:

The S.U.V. pinned the victims against the security gate of a corner restaurant, the police said. As the driver reversed in an attempt to get away, he may have struck one or both of the victims again, the police said. He crashed into a parked car on the other side of the street, they said.

FDNY said responders arrived eight minutes after the crash. “It took way too long to get an ambulance here,” said Steven Davis, a witness and volunteer EMT who lives on the corner of 97th and Amsterdam, to the Times. Ariel was pronounced dead at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt. Her grandmother, 58-year-old Katia Gutierrez, was in stable condition, the Post said.

The crash occurred at approximately 8:15 a.m., when neighborhood sidewalks are packed with kids. Ariel and Gutierrez were struck outside Holy Name School, where Ariel attended pre-K. She had a younger brother.

Reports say Reyes was charged with manslaughter and vehicular manslaughter. Since he had not yet been arraigned, as of this morning Cy Vance’s office could not confirm the charges.

The Post says Reyes told police he took the car to drive to school, and fled because he didn’t want to be caught without a licensed driver. A strong argument could be made that teenagers have no place behind the wheel in New York City — and, for that matter, that carmakers should be required to equip vehicles with technology that makes them accessible only to licensed drivers — but we’ll save those issues for later.

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State Senator Marty Golden and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association are working to keep life-saving speed enforcement cameras out of NYC.

State Senator Marty Golden has a history of advocating for street safety, but opposes speed enforcement cameras, which are known to reduce crashes.

A demonstration program with a handful of cameras was included in the State Assembly budget, and has the support of Mayor Bloomberg, the City Council and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. City leaders and street safety advocates have worked years to get the program this far, but Golden — a former cop — and the police union are lobbying Albany lawmakers to kill it.

“Speed cameras are no substitute for live policing,” said PBA President Patrick Lynch, to the Daily News.

He said the cameras would allow drivers who are drunk, carrying weapons and fleeing crimes to “slip by.”

Said Golden: “What we need are the actual police officers on the street. Cops on the street are what slows people down.”

But according to Kelly, streets will be safer with speed cameras. “Motorists know that there will never be a sufficient number of police officers to catch everyone who violates the traffic laws,” said Kelly, in a recent letter to Governor Cuomo, “but the presence of speed cameras can create a strong deterrent effect, serving to reduce speeding and the collision and physical injury that it causes.”

NYPD traffic enforcement is on the decline. Officers issued as few as 19,119 summonses for speeding on neighborhood streets in 2012, and the overall number of traffic citations was down 20 percent from 2008.

In four precincts encompassed by Golden’s south Brooklyn district — the 61st, 62nd, 63rd, and 68th — officers wrote a total of 507 speeding tickets last year, according to NYPD. That’s less than two motorists caught speeding per day in Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, and parts of Sheepshead Bay, Gravesend, and Marine Park combined. With 39 percent of motorists speeding on city streets, that equates to practically zero enforcement.

Speeding was cited as a factor in 55 of 250 fatal NYC crashes last year, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. Crash data compiled by Streetsblog show that since January 2012 at least five pedestrians have been killed by motorists in the precincts in Golden’s district. One of the victims was a child, and two were seniors. Another victim, Chenugor Dao, died when two drivers collided in Gravesend, sending one vehicle onto the sidewalk, where Dao was standing with family members.

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Ray Kelly says NYPD’s revamped crash investigation team will be increased by half.

At a City Council budget hearing this morning, Kelly told council members that the Accident Investigation Squad, soon to be known as the Collision Investigation Squad, will add 10 officers. The unit currently has a staff of 19 investigators.

According to the guidelines announced by Kelly last week, crash investigators will in the future be “notified to respond” to crashes involving critical injury. While it seems more crashes will be investigated once the department abandons the “dead or likely to die” rule, the new protocol will apparently continue to exclude many collisions, despite state law that requires a full-scale inquiry into all crashes that result in serious injury. Serious injuries are defined by the state Department of Motor Vehicles as a broken bone or worse.

As we reported yesterday, there were 2,942 serious injury crashes involving pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists in 2011. There were 250 fatal crashes. Not that crashes occur at regular intervals, but that’s an average of just under nine per day.

In the days since Kelly’s March 4 letter to the City Council outlining the new policies, at least four pedestrians and cyclists have been killed by motorists who remained at the scene. Among the victims are a senior killed last night in the Bronx, and 16-year-old Drudak Tenzin, struck Monday morning by a driver who police say was speeding and distracted. No charges have been announced in that case, or any of the other three.

NYPD will increase the number of officers assigned to investigate serious traffic crashes, and will revise protocols that denied the possibility of justice to thousands of victims of vehicular violence, according to a letter from Commissioner Ray Kelly to the City Council. In another major shift, the department will stop using the word “accident” to describe traffic crashes, and the Accident Investigation Squad will soon be known as the Collision Investigation Squad.

Under long-standing NYPD procedures, drivers who injured pedestrians and cyclists, and who were sober and remained at the scene, were not investigated unless the victim died or was believed likely to die. This policy undermined or destroyed investigations into an untold number of crashes, including those that took the lives of Stefanos Tsigrimanis and Clara Heyworth. The new standards described by Kelly represent a significant step forward for the department’s crash response protocol, and should result in more investigations. However, they will apparently fall short of what is required by state law.

The number of crash investigators — currently 19 — will be increased, according to Kelly. The size of the increase is not known, but the Times reported Sunday that NYPD has for months assigned investigators to “dozens” of crashes that would not have warranted investigation under the “dead or likely to die” rule. The Times says “many” of those crashes have resulted in criminal charges.

Those charges could include reckless endangerment or third degree assault, says attorney Steve Vaccaro. Reckless endangerment requires proof that a driver was aware of a risk of seriously injuring someone else, Vaccaro says. “Third degree assault requires a lower level of culpable mental state. It requires that the driver not be aware of the risk, and the failure to perceive the risk was a gross deviation of what a reasonable person would have perceived.”

“I would think that third degree assault would be a major source of these criminal prosecutions, to the extent it’s true that NYPD is investigating cases outside of the dead or likely to die rule subset,” says Vaccaro.

According to Kelly’s letter, dated March 4, crash investigators will be “notified to respond when there has been a critical injury or when a Police Department duty captain believes the extent of injuries and/or unique circumstances of a collision warrant such action.” Critical injury status will be determined by utilizing existing FDNY EMS guidelines, defined “as a patient either receiving CPR, in respiratory arrest, or requiring and receiving life sustaining ventilator/circulatory support.” Changes in the NYPD Patrol Guide will provide officers with “additional guidance” when determining whether crash investigators should be notified, and will require patrol personnel to confer with EMS at the scene.

In cases that do not result in criminal prosecution, a summons for failure to exercise due care, or merely the gathering of evidence — functions limited to AIS — will be of great help to victims. But many crashes may still fall through the cracks.

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It’s not for nothing that Michael Bloomberg is known as a champion of traffic safety. He has given millions to reduce global road deaths, and the life-saving innovations that have become the hallmark of his DOT are setting the pace for cities across the U.S.

Making streets safe from reckless drivers is not a priority for Ray Kelly's NYPD, and Mayor Bloomberg is just fine with that. Photo: Brad Aaron

This makes the mayor’s refusal to acknowledge NYPD’s traffic enforcement shortcomings especially perplexing. More than that, Bloomberg has on multiple occasions downplayed the role NYPD must play to keep city streets safe from reckless drivers, most recently in the Daily News.

Here’s the quote from a Monday story about the death of 6-year-old Amar Diarrossouba:

“We deploy our police officers when they’re not doing other things,” he said. “We have signs. We try to educate our kids.”

“Parents also have a responsibility to talk to their kids and explain to them that they have to look before they cross and not go out without supervision,” the mayor added.

The mayor was not speaking off the cuff. On his radio show in January, Bloomberg said: ”[W]e don’t enforce the automobile traffic laws or the pedestrian laws as well as we should. The police have a lot of things to do. They focus on the most serious things and when have time, do these others.”

At a street safety event two years ago, attended by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Bloomberg told Streetsblog that NYPD lacks the resources to enforce city speed limits. He has also chastised a reporter for questioning NYPD’s commitment to investigating traffic crashes.

Bloomberg knows that speeding kills, of course. International efforts to increase speed enforcement, funded in part by Bloomberg Philanthropies, are touted on his web site. At the 2010 event, the mayor called speeding “the biggest killer on our roads.”

A 2009 Transportation Alternatives study found that 39 percent of city motorists clocked with radar guns and speed cameras were speeding, heedless of school zones and other areas with heavy pedestrian traffic. TA also found that a motorist could speed every day in NYC and get ticketed only once every 35 years, and that police and enforcement cameras combined catch only one out of every 438 red light runners.

Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly draw a lot of attention to gun violence. But while traffic crashes now rival guns as a mortal threat in NYC, dangerous drivers are clearly not an NYPD priority. Rather than bring the department in line with his street safety agenda, for whatever reason, Mayor Bloomberg is its chief apologist.

You don't normally hear from NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly or Manhattan DA Cy Vance when a child is killed by a motorist.

In case you missed it, after years of bashing the city’s efforts to make walking and cycling less dangerous, the editors of the New York Post have decided they care about children’s safety. But in its Saturday editorial persecuting the crossing guard who was not present when 6-year-old Amar Diarrassouba was fatally struck by a truck driver, the Post chose not to acknowledge that if police and prosecutors were doing their jobs, the NYPD crossing guard program would not be necessary in the first place.

Look at today’s headline stack: a young couple and their baby killed by a hit-and-run driver in Brooklyn; a 61-year-old pedestrian in critical condition in the Bronx; another pedestrian seriously hurt by a curb-jumping motorist in Midtown. All this death and suffering, and more, since Amar Diarrassouba was killed last Thursday. The fact is reckless driving is rampant in NYC, it happens at all hours of the day and night, and the law enforcers charged with bringing it under control — NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, and, in little Amar’s case, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance — have failed to do so.

From the Post editorial:

New York’s criminal-justice system has a duty to hold this guard liable for her words and her actions. The authorities need to probe this case thoroughly — and pursue the full measure of punishment allowed by the law.

New York City employs more than 2,000 crossing guards to keep its schoolchildren safe as they navigate Gotham’s busy streets and cross dangerous intersections. Those who take these jobs take on an important public trust. Amar Diarrassouba’s death is a reminder of the terrible price that the innocent pay when someone in a position of public trust blows off that responsibility.

It’s much easier for the Post to scapegoat Flavia Roman than to take on the players responsible for the city’s deficient traffic justice system, and though editorials trashing street safety measures are common, we can’t recall the last time the paper called for the prosecution of a killer motorist. But forget the cowardice and rank hypocrisy on display here. Let’s talk about public trust.

Whose job is it to protect children when crossing guards are not on duty? Ebrahim Kebe, Timothy Keith, Kevin Rodriguez, Dashane Santana, Moses Englender, Andrew Ramirez, Aniya Williams, Joshua Ganzfried, Max Mendez, Axel Pablo, Diego Martinez, Hayley Ng — all children killed by city motorists. In none of these cases was the driver known to have been charged for taking a child’s life.

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NYPD is being characteristically closed-mouthed concerning the crash that killed Upper East Side pedestrian Rubin Baum, as Commissioner Ray Kelly has ignored a request from a City Council member to be apprised of the department’s investigation.

Rubin and Denise Baum. Photo via Daily News

Baum and his wife Denise were struck at Park Avenue and E. 59th Street on Saturday, September 22, as the couple attempted to hail a cab. According to reports, the driver of a Mazda sedan ran a red light and struck a minivan. The Mazda spun into the Baums, killing Mr. Baum and injuring Mrs. Baum.

Baum, a decorated Korean War medic, was 80 years old.

A few hours after Baum was killed, NYPD announced to the media that “no criminality was suspected.” On September 28, City Council Member Dan Garodnick, who represents the district where the crash occurred, sent Kelly a letter requesting that NYPD “conduct a full investigation” into the crash.

“I ask for you to share the results of your investigation,” Garodnick wrote. “Further, please advise if NYPD has referred this case to the Accident Investigation Squad for additional investigation and/or to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office regarding possible criminal charges.”

Kelly has yet to respond to Garodnick. ”We look forward to hearing back from the NYPD on the results of their investigation,” Garodnick told Streetsblog in an emailed statement.

At a public event on October 5, long-time street safety advocate Charles Komanoff asked Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance if his office has issued subpoenas for “black box” data from the vehicles involved in the crash. Vance said he didn’t know, and said that obtaining such evidence is “complicated.”

As a candidate in 2009, Vance said that as district attorney he would consider vehicle black box data “critical” to crash investigations, and that he would issue subpoenas to acquire it.

Vance’s office does not comment on vehicular crimes. An email from Streetsblog to NYPD regarding the crash, the investigation and Garodnick’s letter has not been returned.

Earlier this month, the City Council passed a package of bills to regulate delivery cyclists. Legislation intended to compel NYPD to comply with state law in its handling of traffic crashes, which kill hundreds of New Yorkers a year, remains in limbo.

There are almost as many people in this photo as there are trained crash investigators in all of NYC. Photo: Daily News

Last week, Mayor Bloomberg, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance announced the indictments of 16 defendants allegedly involved in illegal gun trafficking.

Said Vance, in a written statement:

There have been 127 shooting incidents this year in Manhattan, with 152 victims. Nineteen of those victims were shot to death.

Fortunately, shootings are down in the city and murder is down 18 percent. We are on track to establish a new record low this year. We’ve accomplished this through proactive policing strategies like Operation Impact. Through Operation Crew Cut — aimed at loosely affiliated groups like those selling guns in this case — we hope to make the city even safer.

“One of the reasons New York is the safest big city in the nation is because we employ every tool available to us — including legislation, litigation and enforcement — to take illegal guns off our streets,” said Bloomberg.

The same can not be said of illegal and careless driving. While gun violence is down in the city, traffic fatalities spiked in the last fiscal year. In Manhattan, 26 pedestrians and cyclists were killed in collisions with motor vehicles from January through August, according to NYPD data compiled by Streetsblog, and 2,664 were injured.

Through August of this year, someone died in New York City traffic about every 30 hours, on average, and an injury occurred every 14 seconds. There is no concerted effort between city prosecutors and NYPD to get those numbers down, or to ensure that victims get justice. To the contrary, few crashes are even investigated.

Imagine a photo op to tout 2,664 gun-related injuries, or a citywide gun crimes investigation unit comprised of just 19 officers, like the NYPD Accident Investigation Squad.

Until police and electeds treat vehicular violence as seriously as other public health threats, traffic casualties will be the asterisk at the bottom of every self-congratulatory law enforcement press release.

The Riverdale Press revealed last week what should have been a bombshell allegation of the sort that is splashed on front pages across the city. But it wasn’t picked up by other media outlets, nor was it the focus of the Riverdale Press story.

Prosecutors say former NYPD detective Kevin Spellman caused a crash in Yonkers and was disciplined for driving a police car under the influence before he killed pedestrian Drane Nikac. Image: WABC

Former NYPD detective Kevin Spellman is on trial for vehicular homicide for allegedly mowing down 70-year-old Bronx pedestrian Drane Nikac while driving drunk in a government vehicle three years ago this month. According to the Riverdale Press, prosecutors from the office of Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson have sought to introduce evidence that the crash that killed Nikac wasn’t the first incident in which Spellman was caught drinking and driving.

The first incident the District Attorney’s Office would want to introduce, according to the transcript, took place on Oct. 14, 2004. Mr. Spellman, who was off duty at the time, was allegedly driving the wrong direction on a one-way street in a police vehicle.

Civilians reported him to police after they said they noticed him staggering into a bodega to buy beer, smelling of alcohol and with bloodshot eyes. Two other police officers had been in the car with Mr. Spellman.

He wasn’t arrested but he pleaded guilty to internal charges, forfeiting 26 vacation days and accepting an eight-day unpaid suspension and 10 months of modified duty.

According to the transcript, the second incident took place on Aug. 2, 1997. It was a sunny, clear summer day and Mr. Spellman allegedly ran a stop sign in Yonkers, striking a family of three. The father asked the police officer at the scene to perform a Breathalyzer test on Mr. Spellman but the cop refused, according to the transcript. The matter was eventually settled in a civil suit, she said.

Mr. Spellman allegedly made a similar admittance on the day of this accident as the one he made in 2009. He said he didn’t see the 1989 Plymouth Sundance he hit.

These allegations, if true, are nothing short of scandalous: An NYPD detective evades arrest after causing a crash, receives a slap on the wrist years later for driving a police vehicle under the influence, and finally kills a bystander, again while driving drunk in a government-issued car. (Prosecutors from Johnson’s office, understandably, could not comment on the ongoing Spellman trial.)

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Cassandra Faustini took a job as a bike messenger to help make ends meet. After getting rear-ended by a hit-and-run driver last year, she tried to report the crash to a police officer, who refused to take her statement. One year later, she’s joining other New Yorkers to demand reforms to the way NYPD and its Accident Investigation Squad handle crashes – and she’s asking for people to take part in a day of online action on September 17.

Cassandra Faustini and her coworkers are launching a day of action to change the way NYPD investigates crashes. Photo: Bicycle Roots

In September 2011, Faustini was making a delivery, riding north on Church Street. The light ahead at Worth Street had just turned yellow, so Faustini braked to slow down. In a post last week on the website for the Bicycle Roots bike shop, where she now works, Faustini recounted the crash:

All of a sudden, I heard the engine of a car behind me, deafeningly loud like someone forgetting to whisper and instead shouting right into your ear. The next thing I knew, I was airborne […] Although I did not realize this until later, I hit my head upon impact. Thankfully, I was wearing my helmet. It did not crack, but there were clear impact marks on the right side. I blacked out, probably for only a second or two, but it was only later when I began to piece events together that I realized I’d hit the ground hard enough to go under.

The driver didn’t stop. Faustini, injured and shaken, walked the remaining few blocks to complete the delivery and then approached an officer to report the crash. She did not have witnesses or a license plate for the driver who fled the scene. The officer told Faustini that there was no way for him to know that she wasn’t the one behaving irresponsibly. He refused to take a report.

I couldn’t even get mad; I was in shock. Here I was, obviously injured — bleeding and concussed, although I wouldn’t realize that until later — and the cop had the audacity to blame me without even taking a statement? He would brush me off without even attempting to investigate what had happened?

In the year since, Faustini has undergone a slow recovery from her injuries and discovered that she is not alone. “In a lot of cases, individuals don’t realize how severely they may have been affected until after the accident,” she said. “It may be difficult to realize what happened to you.”

This is why, Faustini explained, filing a police report to provide documentation is critical. But as she experienced, the NYPD often makes this process difficult.

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