You Can’t Pick Your Family But You Can Pick Over Their Belongings Right From Their Dead Bodies

Nice:

Moments after his 18-year-old nephew took two bullets meant for him, Earl Samuels did something despicable, cops say.

He flipped the young man’s lifeless body face-up, then started rifling through his pockets and underwear, looking for something to take.

“If you can believe it, he was robbing his own dead nephew,” a police source said.

Police arrested Samuels on Monday, a day after the teen, Wayne Kennedy of Brooklyn, was shot and killed in the Park Hill Apartments in Clifton. Authorities charged Samuels with felony tampering with evidence and misdemeanor obstructing governmental administration.

Mychal Judge Was A Hero To Most But He Never Meant Shit To Pete

Apparently Retep Nietsnuarb is still upset about Black to the Future:

When [publicity-mitigating name redaction in effect] dressed up as a firefighter for his Halloween 2005 attack on a Fairchild Publications co-worker, he had a reason other than kidnapping and sex assault — he wanted to “stick it” to the FDNY.

[Name redacted] believed city firefighters were wrongly portrayed as heroes during 9/11, his defense shrink testified yesterday.

He told forensic psychologist Barbara Kirwin that “so many of them had betrayed that trust and were hypocrites,” she testified.

“He said some of them had acted in a way that was a crime against the city of New York, telling me about the hypocrisy of the Fire Department people who have not acted with dignity,” Kirwin said.

[Name redacted] told her, “I wanted to commit this crime . . . to stick it to the New York City firefighters.” Just how dressing like one would accomplish that goal, and what he meant by “hypocrisy,” were unspecified.

For Just A Little More Than 55 Cents A Day, You Too Could Make Thousands Of Commuters Late For Work

That billion-dollar development that has been cutting off lanes of traffic for months and months doesn’t really pay all that much for the luxury of doing so:

Even as Mayor Bloomberg seeks to reduce traffic in the city by charging drivers to use the most crowded thoroughfares, the city is issuing more than 200,000 permits a year to close traffic lanes and is charging developers as little as $50 for three months of road use, according to data provided by the Department of Transportation.

A citywide construction boom in the last few years has required many lanes to be closed for months and even years at a time. Closed streets are a nuisance to both drivers, who must endure increased traffic, and to local residents, who are often forced to navigate makeshift sidewalks.

In parts of Midtown Manhattan with the worst congestion, such as the area around Times Square, developers are charged no more to take over lanes than for construction sites in the outer reaches of Queens. The Durst Organization, which is erecting a $1 billion office tower for the Bank of America near Bryant Park, has for three years closed the south side of 43rd Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, the curb lane on Sixth Avenue near the park, and segments of three sidewalks. During off-peak hours, it has also taken over some traffic lanes on 42nd Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway. These traffic lanes and sidewalks are likely to be closed through 2008, when the project is scheduled for completion.

The fees have not changed for decades, according to a spokesman for the transportation department. For the use of its roads, the city charges construction managers a $50 fee for new permits every three months to cover the expense of processing the applications, a transportation department spokesman said. For developers slicing open roadbeds to work beneath the street, the city charges $135 for a three-month permit. If the road has recently been resurfaced, the fee can climb to $380.

These lane-closure permits must be renewed after 90 days but can be renewed indefinitely. The city does not factor into these fees the higher cost of congestion when a bottleneck created by a lane closure on one block can slow traffic for miles.

Brother, Can You Spare The Time To Count Hundreds Of Pennies For This Groundbreaking Investigative Report?

Come on — they obviously knew something was up when a geeky reporter in his undershirt tried to pay for fast food with several pounds of pennies:

The Daily News sent me out to five quick-serve restaurants to see if they would accept pennies as payment.

Four of the establishments — including a Bronx takeout joint that made headlines for refusing pennies last week — eventually took the legal currency.

But a Bronx McDonald’s would give me no break the day I approached with pockets sagging.

I ordered a Happy Meal, the one that came with four Chicken McNuggets. And a toy (it wasn’t for me). Side of large fries. The total came to $6.36, or roughly 3-1/2 pounds of pennies.

It took me more than five minutes to count them, prompting the cashier to frantically pace between her register and the manager.

The official tipping point came when I reached 612.

The cashier planted her feet under a sign that read, “We are no longer accepting bills larger than $20. Sorry for the inconvenience,” and added another apology.

“We can’t accept that, sir,” she said, looking at the ocean of change on the counter. “We don’t have the time to count it.”

But what makes this story isn’t so much the first-person account of the “dirty metallic reek” emanating from the reporter’s hands as it is . . . wait for it . . . a John Liu sighting! He’s everywhere!

The value of a penny became a national controversy last week following allegations that the Great Wall restaurant in Soundview refused to accept 10 Lincolns from one of its regular customers, resulting in some lawmakers urging fines for restaurants that refuse to accept change.

I went back to the Great Wall, where co-owner Juan Lin happily counted my 400 pennies for pork dumplings with the efficiency of a bank teller.

As she took the change, City Councilman John Liu (D-Queens) happened to show up, saying that I wasn’t the first wiseguy to dump his change on Lin after the story broke.

“This is harassment,” he said.

I nodded sympathetically, then moved on.

Chow-Man Mao?

Free association — “Manhattan restauranteur” = “total dick”:

Renowned Manhattan restaurateur Michael Chow skims from waiters’ tips to pay managers at his Chinese eateries, demands “cult-like attention” from employees, and once forced a server to lie on the floor for a half-hour for arriving late to a staff meeting, a $5 million lawsuit charges.

“Michael Chow utilized degradation as a management technique,” says the suit filed in Manhattan federal court yesterday by three former Mr. Chow staffers against Chow and his business entities.

Chow, 67, operates Mr. Chow on the Upper East Side and Mr. Chow Tribeca, as well as other eponymous and pricey restaurants in Beverly Hills and Miami that are popular with the jet set.

. . .

At the center of the suit are claims that Chow’s Manhattan restaurants for years have broken the law by dipping into waiters’ tips to pay other staff not legally entitled to that money, such as managers and hostesses.

Managers also allegedly dock staffers’ tips for infractions that include “not listening attentively to Michael Chow’s instruction” and “speaking out of turn.”

Such practices are “symptomatic of a bigger picture” at upscale Manhattan eateries, said the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Louis Pechman, who has similar suits pending against Sparks and Old Homestead steak houses.

The suit claims that Chow would “tap or lightly slap” waiters’ heads if he wanted their attention, and “demanded cult-like attention when he spoke.”

The suit says Chow made a “whipping boy” out of veteran waiter Costin Dumitrescu.

On May 18, 2006, the suit claims, as Dumitrescu was running late to a staff meeting, Chow allegedly told 30 or so staffers “he was going to make an example out of Dumitrescu.”

When Dumitrescu showed up and apologized for being late, Chow “ordered Dumitrescu to lie on the wooden floor in the middle of the staff meeting.”

For the next half-hour, “Michael Chow paced around” near Dumitrescu and periodically “walked up to Dumitrescu as he lay on the floor and pretended to kick Dumitrescu,” the suit claims.