Has The Mafia Gotten This Lame?

And this better not be like the drugs-support-terrorism scare tactic because David Chase isn’t buying it:

Looks like this “Beast” won’t be unleashed in Annadale this Fourth of July.

Police chasing after a man who launched fireworks off Woods of Arden Road late Saturday night say they ended up finding a pyrotechnics treasure trove inside the Lenzie Street garage of a reputed mobster.

The stash, which cops estimate at $8,000, looks like it could have come from the shelves of a toy store — dozens of brightly-colored boxes with names like “The Beast Unleashed,” “Fire King Returns,” “New Yorker,” “Midnight Monsoon,” “Screamin’ Meemie” and “Pyrotechnic Motherlode,” decorated with demented clowns, blue monsters and a robed wizard.

. . .

According to police, Frank Russo, 26, of the 100-block of Benton Avenue, was lighting “birthday cake” style fireworks at the corner of Woods of Arden Road and Lenzie Street at about 11 p.m. Saturday.

Three officers and a sergeant from the precinct’s Anti-Crime Squad — Officers Shaun Mortman, William Palmer Brian Laffey and Sgt. Andre Teterycz — saw one of the fireworks go off, and gave chase.

Russo ran down Lenzie Street, to the home of a cousin, 37-year-old Frank (Frankie Steel) Pontillo and led the cops right to the stash, according to police.

Russo and Pontillo ran into the house, through an open garage door, and when police showed up, they saw the fireworks boxes inside the garage.

Pontillo, a reputed associate of the Colombo crime family, is still on supervised release after a 1993 murder conspiracy and racketeering conviction, court records show.

Pontillo was part of a five-man hit crew led by John Pate who rented Hasidic costumes as part of an aborted plan to gun down William (Wild Bill) Cutolo as he entered a restaurant in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Police arrested both men and charged them with multiple counts of unlawful dealing with fireworks, and a felony charge of criminal possession of a weapon.

It Was Probably The Stealing From The Little League That Did It

What happens to union leaders and elected officials who run afoul of the law and lose their power? They’re forced to get a real job:

Disgraced former Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin returned to work last week. He is an electrician with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3 working at a construction site on Manhattan’s West Side.

He’s also awaiting trial on a 186-page federal indictment that charges him with 43 counts of racketeering and corruption. McLaughlin, a former Queens Assemblyman and once New York’s top labor leader, is accused of defrauding the union, receiving bribes and embezzling funds from a number of sources, including a Queens Little League. He pleaded not guilty in October and is out on $250,000 bail.

The pre-trial hearing was scheduled for June 14 in United States District Court Southern District of New York. Numerous calls to the case manager for presiding judge Kenneth Karas to retrieve results of the hearing went unreturned.

McLaughlin was president of the New York City Central Labor Council, the country’s largest municipal labor council. He has not been active in that capacity since August 2006 when he was forced to take an unpaid leave of absence and was subsequently indicted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

From Deranged Hippie Fugitive To Deranged Hippie Reject

When you’re on the lam, everything is exciting at first. Everyone thinks of you as a badass. You can taunt your victims. Then you get unceremoniously taken into custody after exiting the el train in West Philly — where’s the shootout in that!? — and all of the sudden you’re just some “deranged hippie reject”:

A deranged hippie reject, accused of gunning down a Staten Island commune leader, was nabbed yesterday at a Philadelphia train station after more than a year on the lam, officials said.

Rebekah Johnson, 44, jumped from behind a row of bushes and waylaid Ganas leader Jeff Gross outside the commune’s Staten Island compound along a sloping section of Corson Avenue, shooting him six times with a .38-caliber pistol on Memorial Day 2006, police said.

Witnesses said Johnson quickly walked away down a hill, virtually disappearing for 13 months until a fugitive task force caught up with the hateful hippie has-been in the City of Brotherly Love.

Authorities said they tracked her there after she got sloppy and bought a car in Delaware using her real name, and opened a post office box in nearby Cherry Hill, N.J.

Johnson was placed under arrest at 11 a.m. after she stepped off a train from Camden, N.J., to Philadelphia in the city’s western section, where a dozen law-enforcement officers were waiting for her.

“We had prior intelligence that she was going to be there,” said Robert Kurtz, acting supervisor of the Marshals Service’s fugitive task force. “She didn’t try to escape.”

Kurtz said the suspect was not armed when she was caught.

On The Usefulness Of Automatic Checkoffs

And you shouldn’t infer from the news that transit workers are not being forthcoming with their dues now that automatic paycheck deductions have been suspended that workers don’t highly value their union membership:

Transport Workers Union Local 100 can’t afford to represent workers at disciplinary hearings or arbitration sessions except in the most critical cases where workers have been suspended, the local’s top lawyer wrote recently to NYC Transit. The lawyer asked that such hearings be postponed and that no new ones be scheduled.

For months, union officials — and even internal political opponents of local President Roger Toussaint — have been urging the approximately 34,000 members to pay dues directly by personal check or by another method.

But too few have agreed to pony up.

Conductor Ronald Brockington said some workers are unhappy with the contract that was imposed by an arbitrator after the walkout.

Others say they don’t see union representatives enough in the field or have other gripes after a bitter internal election for officers, he said.

“I don’t like the contract,” Brockington said. “I’m undecided, but I don’t think I’m going to pay.”

Up until this month, NYC Transit automatically deducted dues from workers’ paychecks and forwarded about $1.5 million a month to the union.

A Brooklyn Supreme Court judge last year halted the deduction but delayed the move until June 1 to allow the union to first pay off a $2.5 million walkout fine.

The union can petition the court to have the checkoffs reinstated after 90 days — but must assert it doesn’t have the right to strike in the future.

Union officials declined yesterday to say how many workers have signed up for an alternate dues-payment program the union has been promoting. Workers would have to provide bank or credit card information and authorize regular payments to a union fund.

The People Have Spoken . . . And They Want You To Shut Your Pie Hole

Every once in a while it can be really satisfying to witness an idealistic one-man campaign get unceremoniously snuffed out:

Faced with an overwhelmingly negative response to the proposed ban, a committee of the [Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s] board has recommended that the cocktail hour be allowed to continue on the trains and platforms of the Long Island and Metro-North railroads, according to a member of the committee and two people briefed on its findings. The full board is expected to take up the issue next month, and appears likely to follow the recommendation.

. . .

The authority first agreed to consider a halt to alcohol sales on commuter trains and in rail stations in December, at the urging of Mitchell H. Pally, a board member from Long Island. Mr. Pally said he was concerned that passengers would drink on the train and then drive home, creating a liability for the authority if they became involved in an accident. He also said he worried that rowdy drinkers might be disturbing other passengers.

A committee of five board members was created shortly afterward to study the idea.

. . .

Gene Colonese, the rail administrator for the Connecticut Transportation Department, said that an official from the department met with the committee in April and strongly urged it not to change the policy, saying alcohol sales were “a valuable service to our customers.”

The committee also met with the presidents of the two railroads, conductors and a representative of the authority’s police force, which patrols the commuter trains and stations. “There was no overwhelming evidence of drunkenness or anything like that, or accidents,” the board member said.

He said the only person who met with the committee to speak in favor of the ban was Mr. Pally.

Earlier: The Tallboy Rebellion, Follow The Money.