On The One Hand There Are Battle Axes, On The Other There Are Gun Runners

Some landlords may be hard-assed old battle axes but at least they’re not gun runners:

A Brooklyn landlord who once smuggled high-powered sniper rifles to Kosovo guerrillas is now at the center of a more domestic dispute.

Tenants in a Carroll Gardens building are taking their landlord, Florin Krasniqi, to court, claiming he is using a ploy to kick them out of their rent-regulated homes.

The six low-income families live in a four-story walk-up at 137 Nelson St., where all the apartments are either rent-stabilized or rent-controlled. The tenants, some of whom have lived in the building for more than 40 years, pay between $350 and $550 a month.

. . .

The tenants’ attorney, Michael Weisberg, said he wasn’t aware of Krasniqi’s intrigue-filled past, which was detailed in a 2005 PBS documentary, “The Brooklyn Connection.”

“No way. Wow. That doesn’t bother me,” Weisberg said of Krasniqi’s history as a gun-runner. “I’ve met him. He didn’t seem particularly dangerous. He seemed like a jackass landlord.”

Not Really Biting The Hand That Feeds You So Much As Jumping Over The Counter And Shooting It Off

Despite how they make it sound, Bedford-Stuyvesant really is a tight-knit neighborhood:

There are video cameras watching the counter all the time. The monitors are wrapped in clear plastic to keep them clean. Most of the other Chinese restaurants nearby also have thick plexiglass shields between the cashier and the customer, like a gas station or a liquor store, but not Happy House. Longtime customers, presumably the very people who would be the most offended by beefed-up security, tell [Gigi] Wong they need more.

“They need, like, a partition here with a window,” said a matronly woman who gave only her first name, Lorna. “People are stupid. They always kill the ones that help them.”

To Ms. Wong, she said, “If that was you they shot, I would have cried.”

So new was the cashier that, after the shooting, no one in the Wong family seemed to know her full name, only her last name, Lin. Before the shooting, when Gigi Wong had tried to speak to her at work, they would be constantly interrupted by customers.

And the kicker:

The man, Raymond Wiliams, 21, was identified on the security video tape as the gunman leaping over the counter, according to a criminal complaint filed in court. The police are looking for another man who may have been involved, the complaint says.

Mr. Williams has been charged with attempted murder, assault, menacing and harassment, and remained in jail as of yesterday. He admitted he leaped over the counter and fired two shots, according to the complaint.

Ms. Wong did not recognize his name.

But she was stunned to learn of his address, 210 Stuyvesant Avenue, right around the corner from the restaurant.

“We deliver to that address,” she said. “Every single day.”

Robbing a Chinese takeout is not particularly smart. Robbing your neighborhood Chinese takeout . . . nice.

And If The Lawsuit Is Successful And The Damage Award Holds They’ll Obviously Be Garnishing Their Wages . . .

What dumb luck that the news about their $1 million lawsuit against homeless people loitering in front of their business comes out on the coldest day of the winter:

A high-end antique dealer on the Upper East Side is suing four unnamed homeless people for $1 million on the grounds that they’ve driven away customers by loitering on the sidewalk in “old, warn, and unsanitary clothing and cardboard boxes and old blankets which they convert into sleeping accommodations.”

In addition to money, Karl Kemp & Associates Antiques, located near 69th Street at 833 Madison Ave. near Gucci, Chanel, and Prada, is asking a Manhattan Supreme Court judge to force the homeless defendants to stay at least 100 feet away from the store, according to legal papers filed yesterday.

For more than two years, the papers allege, the homeless have spent “significant amounts of time” obstructing Karl Kemp’s storefront window display, “consuming alcoholic beverages from open bottles, performing various bodily functions such as urinating or spitting on the sidewalk, and . . . verbally harassing or intimidating . . . prospective customers.”

No NASCAR But Deer Hunting Takes Hold On Staten Island

The borough of parks becomes the borough of wild game:

Wanna-be hunters have been spotted bringing rifles, guns and bows into Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve to hunt — illegally — for the deer that have in recent years established themselves in the Charleston park and elsewhere on the South and West shores.

“It’s chaotic,” said Cherryl Mitchell, who owns the Richer Farms horse stable on Sharrotts Road. Mrs. Mitchell said she has witnessed several people “trotting through the woods” with hunting equipment and lights and fears that one of her horses, or neighbors, will be shot by accident.

“They all think they’re great white hunters. You’re going to have one of these [expletive] put a bullet through one of our houses.”

Hunting is illegal within the five boroughs. Anyone caught by state Department of Environmental Conservation police faces a $2,000 fine and/or up to one year in jail, said DEC spokeswoman Lori O’Connell.

. . .

The recent surge in Staten Island’s deer population has some Staten Islanders, fascinated with the sport, opting to stay local.

Mrs. Mitchell is not amused.

Besides the danger to neighbors, she said, the borough should not be considered a hunting attraction.

“The point is, if you’re a hunter, what’s your great accomplishment hunting on Staten Island?” she said.

What’s This Generation Coming To?

Heartless scam artists responsible for bilking Staten Islanders out of hundreds of dollars turn out to be 12 and 14:

The search for two scam artists who traded on tall tales about dead relatives and needy families came to an end in West Brighton last night.

Not with a whimper, or a high-speed police chase.
But with the young suspects knocking on a door.

A cop’s door.

A brother-and-sister team from the neighborhood — the boy just 12 and the girl 14 — were arrested on charges they have been duping Staten Islanders for months, police said.

The middle-school miscreants were roving Davis Avenue in West Brighton at about 5:40 p.m. when they unwittingly arrived at the cop’s home, according to a police source familiar with the case.

Sensing something was amiss, the cop’s wife called her husband, and officers from the North Shore’s 120th Precinct were immediately dispatched, the source added.

The kiddie culprits were caught a few houses away, with a professional-looking ledger stuffed of falsified donation receipts from two funeral homes for about $150, the source continued.

The duo reportedly confessed to concocting various tall tales, saying that money was tight at home and they were trying to help out their mom.

However, when their mother was notified of her children’s capers, she was shocked, the source said.

. . .

Apparently, the small scam artists coaxed their victims out of cash with the promise that the funeral homes — and even the Advance — would match any donation made toward a burial.

The suspects told cops their inspiration for the sick swindle was the Advance’s coverage of the decomposed body of an infant found Sept. 24 inside a plastic shopping bag in the grass of Luis R. Lopez Playground in Clifton, according to the source.