Either Small Planes Are Too Dangerous Or Our Parks Are Too Underutilized

Fortunately, no one actually uses Brooklyn’s Dreier-Offerman Park:

His small plane sputtering in the skies above Brooklyn, a New Jersey pilot played Capt. Cool yesterday and landed the Cessna right smack in the middle of a city park.

“It was a walk in the park,” Paul Dudley said after calmly guiding the faltering single-engine plane onto a field at Drier Offerman Park in Gravesend.

“This was tailor-made,” the 51-year-old pilot said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better place to land — except an airport.”

. . .

Police said no one was hurt in what Dudley, the director of the Linden Municipal Airport in New Jersey, shrugged off as a “big nothing.”

Frightened local residents said they saw the plane putt-putting low over the tops of buildings just across a creek from Coney Island.

“It sounded like he was in trouble — I thought it would crash,” said Ida DeGorter, who works at a local bus depot. “It came right over the garage. It came so low, we could see the pilot.”

Federal Aviation Administration officials will investigate the cause of the emergency landing.

Dudley, who has houses in the Hamptons and Staten Island, was flying the 28-year-old Cessna alone from Westhampton, L.I., to Linden when the engine started giving out as he neared Coney Island.

Instead of continuing across New York Harbor, he searched for a safe place to land.

“I didn’t want to risk taking it across the water,” he said. “I saw this open field of grass and decided to land it.”

Dudley touched down near several soccer fields and skidded to a halt after rolling about 150 feet.

This Just In: Still No Love Lost Between Giuliani And CUNY Professors

Obviously it’s going to be difficult for Rudy to break through to CUNY professors, but that wasn’t exactly his bread and butter to begin with:

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani appears to be gunning for a 2008 GOP presidential bid.

He filed papers to create the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Exploratory Committee, Inc., establishing a panel that would allow him to raise money for a White House run and travel the country, according to the Associated Press, which obtained the four-page filing yesterday.

. . .

Though Giuliani has been popular in Iowa and New Hampshire polls before the campaigning has begun, [Hunter College political science professor Ken] Sherrill said, “I’m told he’s capable of being an extremely charming person. Then we’ll need to think about what if he had access to nuclear weapons.”

But Excuse Me Officer, Don’t You Know Who My Second Cousin’s Ex-Brother-In-Law Is? He’s On The Force, Of Course!

Is the Civilian Complaint Review Board actually defending people who abuse PBA cards? It sounds that way:

Eleven officers have improperly confiscated police union “courtesy” cards shown to them by relatives and friends of other officers throughout the last 18 months, the Civilian Complaint Review Board announced yesterday.

In a letter to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, CCRB chair Franklin Stone recommended that the NYPD better inform officers about the cards, which are often shown by civilians to get special treatment or immunity from tickets and/or arrest.

“Most, if not all, of these cases involved the improper seizure of union cards by police officers who misunderstood the law relating to these cards,” the Nov. 9 letter read. “Simply put, officers often do not have legal justification to seize police union cards — private property — from individuals who lawfully possess them.”

And apparently people complaining about a lack of special treatment is endemic:

In a separate letter to Kelly — dated yesterday — [New York Civil Liberties Union associate legal director Christopher] Dunn and NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman echoed the CCRB’s concerns and called for an investigation into conduct by NYPD Officer John McNeeley, who was pulled over for speeding in Kansas last month and showed the officer his driver’s license and NYPD ID.

“About 5 minutes later, he brought back a summons to me and thanked me for my cooperation,” McNeeley wrote in a letter to the court obtained by the NYCLU. “I then tried to ask him why a cop would write another cop a ticket? He would not answer. I have stopped many people and the minute they pull out their Law Enforcement ID card I say ‘Sir or Mam [sic] have a nice day’ No questions asked. . . . You see it’s called professional courtesy.”

Nice to know that both the CCRB and the Civil Liberties Union (while ostentatiously “sounding an alarm”) are standing up for your right to get out of paying tickets. Very heartening!

This Still Doesn’t Answer The Question Of Why Someone Would Stop In Scranton

Scranton, PA just sounds like the kind of place a major art heist would take place:

A painting by Goya was stolen on its way from the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio to a major exhibition that opens on Friday at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the two institutions announced yesterday.

The museums said in a statement that the 1778 painting, “Children With a Cart,” was stolen in the vicinity of Scranton, Pa., while in the care of a professional art transporter. They said the theft was discovered last week but refused to provide additional details on the crime. Officials at both museums said the F.B.I. was investigating the case and had warned them that releasing additional information might jeopardize the inquiry.

The painting was to be included in “Spanish Painting From El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth and History,” a sprawling exhibition of some 135 paintings by Spanish masters.

How About The “William A. Shea ATM” — Sorry — The “William A. Shea Citibank ATM”?

Even if Bill Shea loses out entirely, at least Jackie Robinson will get a rotunda:

A rotunda honoring the life of Jackie Robinson, Citibank A.T.M.’s, a 41 percent increase in concessions and enough restaurant capacity to feed 3,134 people are among the features planned for the Mets’ new ballpark, Citi Field, which is scheduled to replace Shea Stadium in 2009, the team announced yesterday.

Gov. George E. Pataki, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other politicians joined the Mets’ principal owner, Fred Wilpon, and several team officials and players yesterday for a ceremonial groundbreaking on a new 42,500-seat stadium. The design for the stadium is inspired by Ebbets Field, the former home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and is expected to cost nearly $800 million.

Under a 20-year sponsorship deal with Citigroup, the stadium will be named Citi Field, displacing the name of William A. Shea. Shea, a lawyer, helped bring National League baseball back to New York in 1962, five years after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants left. Shea Stadium opened in 1964.

The Mets have encountered some criticism for not naming the new stadium for Robinson, the Dodgers legend who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, but Wilpon said fans would be welcomed into the soaring Jackie Robinson Rotunda, inscribed with this quotation from Robinson: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” The rotunda will include a statue, still to be designed, and an exhibition on Robinson’s life.

A rotunda is a very thoughtful way to remember the man who broke the color barrier in baseball. Almost as thoughtful as a plaza.