Damn Those Toll Increases!

Bronx teen steals car, ends up in toll lane of Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, falls short of required $4.50 to get through, gets arrested by Bridge and Tunnel police and ends up having the Post tag him as one of the dumbest criminals of all time:

A Bronx teen nabbed yesterday for an alleged carjacking deserves an E-ZPass into the NYPD’s hit parade of dumbest bad guys.

That’s because everything that Darwin David Guity, 18, did — from the moment he set eyes on Vuong Minh’s 2003 Isuzu to when he encountered a cop named Robert Denaro — backfired, sources said yesterday.

It was 5 a.m. when Guity approached Minh walking to his car on Lexington Avenue and East 63rd Street, brandished a plastic, metallic-colored toy gun and demanded his car keys, police said.

After driving around until about 6:50 a.m., the teen found himself in the E-ZPass lane on the Brooklyn side of the Battery Tunnel, cops said.

The car had no pass. And Guity found he only had $3.70 — 80 cents short of the $4.50 toll, a law-enforcement official said.

“If he had had the $4.50, they probably would have allowed him to go through without stopping him,” the source said.

Instead, he faced Bridge and Tunnel cop Robert Denaro, pronounced like the actor. When the teen couldn’t produce a driver’s license, registration or an insurance card, cops ran the plate. And the registrant’s name came back Vuong Minh — but Guity is black and of Honduran ancestry, cops said.

“He tried to tell the cops it was his mother’s car, but the problem was this guy really had trouble passing for an Asian,” chuckled one official.

When cops got a stolen-car report on the Isuzu, they busted Guity and found the plastic gun on the back seat, sources said.

“Protect Your Device”

The latest numbers are out, subway crime is on the rise and the MTA is advising riders to protect their devices — in this case, iPods and cellphones.

But in the roughly four months of 2005 there doesn’t seem to be that many thefts — especially considering how many people actually ride the subway. The Times reports that there were 50 iPod thefts and 165 cellphone snatches. As the proud owner of an iPod Shuffle, I can live with those numbers!

Even better news is that the thefts tend to be confined to high school kids. Screw the high school kids! I don’t care about them anyway:

Just as officials in the high-crime 1980’s warned riders to beware of chain-snatchers and pickpockets, so are they now suggesting that iPod users avoid standing out. “Earphones are a giveaway,” one announcement says ominously. “Protect your device.”

It seems that the iPod has joined a list of sought-after products – Air Jordan sneakers, shearling coats, gold necklaces, boom-box radios and pricy leather jackets among them – that have been targets over the years. “We went through a period when you could track crime by the price of gold,” said Michael F. O’Connor, the chief of transit police from 1992 to 1995, recalling the chain snatchings of an earlier era.

Small digital devices now seem to be the prize catch.

Most of the cases involve young people taking iPods from other young people, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said. “A lot of it happens after school, the kind of tumult that you see when children or young people are getting on the subway station at dismissal time.”

Apple wouldn’t respond to the Times’ request for a comment but former Police Commissioner William J. Bratton did and he took the opportunity to slam the MTA for dirty subways. What a dick:

Mr. Bratton said he rode the New York subways twice during a visit last week and found them to be in shabby condition.

“When you have subway cars that are filthy – and the ones I was riding in were a mess – and it looks like there’s no one in charge, the temptation to commit crime is more significant,” he said.

OK, so maybe the subways are dirtier than they have been, but we all know the Los Angeles Police Chief is just jealous and wishes he was back home. You know L.A. sucks, dude!

Headline: Wellbutrin Has Yet To Make Inroads in Laredo

A study published in the medical journal Men’s Health Magazine says that New Yorkers are more depressed than Laredoans:

Is New York bumming you out?

Then true happiness awaits in the glittering Texas boom towns of Laredo and El Paso – and even across the Hudson in Jersey City.

A new study by Men’s Health magazine ranks New York among the most depressed cities in the country, while places like Des Moines, Fresno, Calif., and Buffalo – yes, even Buffalo – rate as hotbeds of happiness.

“No way! Are you crazy?” said An Ferree, 30, of Brooklyn. “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world.”

The study graded cities on sales of antidepressants, suicide rates and the numbers of days residents reported being depressed. So, Laredo got an A+ and New York scored a D-.

New Yorkers reacted with typical defensiveness, helping to prove the study’s findings:

New Yorkers angrily came to the Big Apple’s defense, saying the city’s cultural and culinary offerings keep them very happy.

“It’s the most vital f—— city in the world,” said Al Gordon, 78, of Manhattan. “I’ve been in Paris, I’ve been in Rome, I’ve been in England and this is it.”

Sara Lowman – a selfproclaimed “very happy person” – was miffed that New York was outranked by cities that don’t quite stack up in size, prestige or pothole width.

“I don’t have any interest in going to those places,” said Lowman, 26. “But good for those cities, since they must have so many happy people.”

Still, she said she was in no hurry to swap New York for New Jersey – no matter how happy the move might eventually make her.

“As tempting as it may sound, no,” she said, smiling. “I think I’ll stay here.”

Let’s see: misplaced rage and delusion (“It’s the most vital f—— city in the world”), self-deprecation (pothole width apologies), sarcasm (“But good for those cities, since they must have so many happy people”) and an irrational fear of what lay waiting if one is banished from the promised land (New Jersey). It all sounds like a recipe for depression to me! But all is not lost: Philadelphia and Cleveland rank worse.

Don’t Believe Their Lies!

After initial indications that they would stay, the facts on the ground are otherwise and the smokestacks on the Pennsylvania Railroad Generating Plant in Hunters Point are coming down:

The much-watched saga of the fate of four smokestacks atop a former power plant in Long Island City, Queens, has a resolution: they are coming down.

Despite a neighborhood campaign to preserve the smokestacks, they will make way for a developer’s glass and aluminum tower, which will form a residential complex when combined with the 1909 power plant, the onetime Pennsylvania Railroad Power Station.

“We had no choice but to look for a different design,” said Cheskel Schwimmer of CGS Builders, the developer. Mr. Schwimmer said he originally had hoped to incorporate the smokestacks into his design, constructing a glass cube between them. “But the city did not approve it,” he said. “We had to look at other options.”

In the neighborhood, where the smokestacks’ plight has sparked debate for months, Mr. Schwimmer’s opponents are not pleased.

“I think it’s sad,” said Paul Parkhill, co-director of the educational group Place in History, who participated in a postcard campaign seeking landmark status for the plant. “It sort of underscores the fact that the city doesn’t do a good job of protecting industrial buildings, especially in the outer boroughs.”

Nevertheless, some residents were not particularly disheartened.

“There are mixed feelings in the neighborhood between newer residents and people who are second or third generation here,” said Joseph Conley, chairman of Community Board 2. “The artists, the newer arrivals in the neighborhood, they tend to be the preservationists.”

But any dispute has been silenced by the scaffolding covering each of the stacks. At last look, one was already halfway gone.

Calling All Scriptwriters!

Too many luscious details in this Daily News article about the arraignment of the mafia-dallying cops:

The daughter of reputed Mafia cop Louis Eppolito showed her heart belongs to daddy yesterday when she came out swinging in defense of her disgraced father.

After a routine arraignment of Eppolito and his ex-detective partner Stephen Caracappa – who are charged with soiling the badge by moonlighting and murdering for the mob – Andrea Eppolito blew a kiss to her haggard-looking dad.

He blew her one back, across the Brooklyn courtroom.

“Bye, Daddy, I love you,” said Andrea Eppolito, 28, her eyes wet with tears.

Then the voluptuous, raven-haired beauty – turning heads in a tan suit with plunging neckline – strode out of the courtroom, making a beeline for a bank of microphones outside Brooklyn Federal Court.

The rest of the article just gets better and better:

She launched into an emotional defense of her father who, with Caracappa, is charged with participating in at least eight gangland murders while on the payroll of the Luchese crime family for years.

“My father loved being a cop,” she said. “He was so proud of all the things he did while working for the city. He protected women. He protected children. He worked with the elderly.

“My dad made a vow to protect and serve the people of the city and did it very well,” she added.

“And now it’s time that somebody protect and serve him,” she said, referring to defense lawyer Bruce Cutler, who is best known for representing John Gotti.

“I’m very confident that when this is over, my father is coming home,” she said.

Cutler said the devoted daughter, who lives in Las Vegas and works in restaurant promotions, had asked him if she could tell the press how much she loved her father, and he approved.

“She flew out here to be near her father and brought his heart medication,” Cutler said. “Family support means the world to Lou.”

Protected women! Protected children! Works with the elderly! Family support! The same dapper attorneys who represented John Gotti! Even a Las Vegas connection!

The defiant parting blow:

Before heading back to Vegas, Andrea Eppolito had one last thing to say.

“My father is very, very strong,” she said. “My father is not a man who is weak.”

I feel an HBO series coming on!