If You’ll Be My Bodyguard I Can Be Your Long Lost Pal

The Post story the cops want you to read this morning . . . if true, is actually really smarmy:

A key witness in the sensational police killing of Sean Bell told cops after being collared for slugging his girlfriend that he doesn’t work because he gets money from the Rev. Al Sharpton, a law-enforcement source said yesterday.

“Whatever I need they give me,” Trent Benefield, 24, told detectives Tuesday night after he was brought to the 113th Precinct station for questioning about the beating of gal pal Nyla Page Walthrus, 19, the source said.

When Benefield said he was unemployed, a detective asked him why.

“Sharpton and my lawyer don’t want me to work,” he replied, without naming the attorney, the source said.

Then how does he get by, the cop asked.

“Whatever I want they give me — whatever I need. Every month they give me whatever I need,” he boasted.

He said the amount could reach $3,000 a month.

This Makes Perfect Cents . . .

. . . to the MTA at least in a case of man versus machine:

The MTA can’t nickel-and-dime straphangers — but it has no problem taking their quarters.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority acknowledged yesterday that one BIG reason it wants a 25-cent bus and subway hike is because its vending machines can dispense only dollar coins and quarters.

MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin defended the increase as fair and said upping it by a nickel or dime wouldn’t be enough.

“The limitations of technology would make a $2.10 fare extremely costly to implement and would provide a much poorer quality of service,” Soffin said.

. . .

Riders weren’t buying it.

“It’s an outrage,” said Anthony Thompson, a Queens engineer. “Our money is being spent because of a hardware defect?”

Recruiter Jisele Lazo, 22, of Queens, said: “It stinks. Why don’t they just leave it at $2? Why are they making it easier for the machines? There are far more commuters than machines.”

. . .

Soffin said smaller change would mean longer lines and riders being saddled with pockets full of silver.

He said the size of the fare hike was not unreasonable because the $2 base fair had remained steady since 2003.

A 25-cent jump would amount to a “cost-of-living” increase for the system, Soffin said.

A rider buying a single-ride ticket priced at $2.10 with a $5 bill would be carting away 11 quarters and three nickels, or 58 nickels, he pointed out.

The machines also would likely run out of change more quickly, have to be filled more often and likely need more frequent maintenance, he said.

Out-of-service machines would result in longer lines at token booths, he said, estimating the added costs to be millions of dollars.

Shushing The Shushers

And somehow it still comes off as priggish:

In at the Brooklyn Public Library: rock concerts, children playing and singing, adults talking.

Out at the Brooklyn Public Library: getting shushed by librarians.

That’s because recently-appointed Brooklyn Public Library Executive Director Dionne Mack-Harvin views libraries as community centers — places where people are expected to talk to each other, not sit in silence.

Mack-Harvin is so determined to end the shushing that librarians from all 60 branches have been attending training sessions to get the word out about her approach.

“We’ve moved away from what some consider the ‘shushing library’ model of the past, from being a sterile, educational place that’s somewhat elitist,” she said, “to being a community space where everyone walking in the door can find a place for themselves.”

Oh, I Understand Free Speech Much Better Now . . .

This should help mitigate that bad PR:

A Columbia University dean said yesterday the Ivy League school would gladly welcome mass murderer Adolf Hitler to speak on campus.

“If he were willing to engage in a debate and a discussion, to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly invite him,” John Coatsworth, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, told Fox News yesterday.

Coatsworth spoke two days before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is slated to give a lecture on campus.

And those Minutemen wack-jobs are somehow worse than Hitler?

It’s Not The Start Of A Bad Joke . . .

The Newtown Creek Nature Walk really will open at the end of the month:

It doesn’t look like much, but come next weekend, Greenpoint residents will be able to walk past a geologic marvel, down a concrete path, through a shiny metal gate and up some steps to find themselves at the very first greenway on Newtown Creek.

Years in the making, the nature walk was one of the community benefits that the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee (NCMC), a group comprised of local residents that meets regularly with the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), was able to negotiate as part of the massive Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant expansion and upgrade.

Visitors will enter the park at the end of Paidge Avenue near the intersection of Provost Street. In addition to being an oasis on a creek that has for decades been an ecological whipping boy, the nature walk will also feature many activities for children that will teach them about the creek.