Times Were Bad, So Bad, That We Took To Stealing Garbage Cans

You can almost understand stealing a bronze statue or even, you know, like a police car, but a trash can? That’s just desperate:

Members of Garage 6, located at 127 2nd Avenue, were telling police about a recent break-in at their garage when they, as an aside, told them that over the last month and a half, 45 waste bins have been removed from area shopping strips.

Waste bins have disappeared off of 4th Avenue, 5th Avenue and 7th Avenue, they told cops.

With the bins costing $120 apiece, the city has shelled out over $5,000 in the last month just to have the bins replaced.

The “Whoever Smelt It, Dealt It” Rule Of Gentrification

Young urban professionals moving back to Manhattan from Brooklyn can rest assured that the Brooklyn Papers will make them look real stupid in the process:

As Melanie Greenberg unpacked boxes in her new 500-square-foot Lower East Side apartment, her next-door neighbor was, for no apparent reason, on the fire escape singing mournful ballads.

And that was the good news.

Greenberg, a 27-year-old freelance writer, was back in the city where she felt home — just two years after she had moved to Williamsburg to save money.

But within months of that move, the traditionally Italian neighborhood she loved started changing. And Greenberg didn’t like the changes.

“Big high-rise buildings started going up and slowly but surely the hipsters started spilling into my part of the neighborhood,” said Greenberg, who is now single.

“I decided I wanted to go back to Manhattan — specifically to Alphabet City — where there is a real feeling of community and more diversity than probably just about any other neighborhood of the city.”

Greenberg is not alone. The type of hipsters who once moshed from Manhattan into Williamsburg, Cobble Hill and Park Slope like crowds at a Beck concert are now singing a different tune: “We’ll re-take Manhattan.”

If Michael Bloomberg Is The Ross Perot Of 2008 Then Kevin Sheekey Is The Ralph Reed Of The Post-Bush Era

So far, all this Bloomberg ’08 talk is doing is positioning Kevin Sheekey as the Ralph Reed* of the independents:

The day after Bloomberg’s reelection, Kevin Sheekey, his campaign manager, gave a TV interview. At 40, Sheekey is a character straight from central casting: If Karl Rove is (or was) the Architect, Sheekey is the Operator. Puckish, preppy, tousled, and inordinately caffeinated, he was born and bred in Washington and worked for years on Capitol Hill, establishing a rakish reputation. After rising to become Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s chief of staff, he was hired away by Bloomberg in 1997 to be Bloomberg LP’s chief lobbyist and has been with the mayor ever since. Now, appearing on NY1 News, he averred that a Bloomberg presidential bid was “not likely” — though no one had asked if it was.

With that mischievous spark, Sheekey ignited speculation that would soon be blazing like a Bronx tenement circa 1977. By the summer, rarely a week would go by without another story about Bloomberg 2008 — most of them the handiwork of Sheekey, whose desire to see his boss run was (and is) frank and unconcealed. “My view is, the country needs to start over; it needs independent leadership,” Sheekey told me last week. “And in 2008, Mike Bloomberg is the guy who could give the country that chance.”

Bloomberg’s refusal to muzzle Sheekey is seen in political circles as a sign that he wants to stoke the fire. (To put it mildly, there isn’t much freelancing among the mayor’s people.) Bloomberg does nothing to dispel this impression when I ask about his adviser’s sotto voce presidential ruminations. “I’m shocked if Kevin is doing this,” he says, in his best Captain Renault tone. “Shocked!”

*Not to suggest that Ralph Reed didn’t have a good run there, but in the end all that hubbub never really amounted to much, did it?

Two-Drink Limit?

Undercover police officers working in nightclubs are under strict orders to adhere to a two-drink limit:

It is an upside-down kind of police work, the opposite of the men and women in blue on sunny streets. There is no uniform, and often no gun, no badge, no bulletproof vest, no radio car with lights and sirens. Instead, officers drive rental cars and are armed with city-issued money and a two-drink limit.

Undercover police work in the city’s nightclubs is a dangerous and vulnerable assignment, the sort of work assigned to the new citywide Club Enforcement Initiative. That unit is under new scrutiny after a police shooting outside a Queens strip club shortly after 4 a.m. on Saturday.

According to the police, five officers on the club detail shot into the men’s Nissan Altima, killing a bridegroom and wounding two of his friends. The officers fired 50 rounds, the police said, after the men struck an officer with the car and twice slammed it into an unmarked police van. Officials have said the officers believed there was a gun in the car, but none was found.

Wait, wait — what’s that about a “two-drink limit”?

The officers are allowed two drinks. “We authorize them to have two drinks, and no more,” Mr. Kelly said at a news conference. “This initiative started at one in the morning, so they were there for three hours.”

To abstain from or refuse alcohol, said those familiar with the unit’s tactics, could conceivably tip off other patrons that an undercover operation is taking place.

. . .

At least one of the two undercover officers inside the bar had had two beers between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m., Commissioner Kelly said. That officer was one of the two who did not fire in the shooting. Five officers from the team of seven fired at the Altima. One officer with 12 years of experience fired 31 rounds.

The other undercover officer fired the first shots. Those familiar with that officer’s account have said he believed the men were armed. It is unclear if that officer drank in the club. The police have not yet been able to question him while the Queens district attorney conducts an investigation, Mr. Kelly said.

A commanding officer found all the officers fit for duty — meaning they showed no signs of being impaired by alcohol — during the operation outside Club Kalua in Jamaica, the police said.

Even If You Can Go Home Again, You Won’t Want To See What Your Crazy-Ass Mother Did

I have to say, this would make for a totally outrageous third act:

Estranged from his father, a gay Brooklyn man came home yesterday to make peace, only to make a horrifying discovery: His mother had been hiding his dad’s corpse in the family’s apartment for three years, police sources said.

. . .

Her horrific secret was exposed when her 38-year-old son, Paul Iversen, knocked on the apartment door early yesterday. He had not been home since he came out of the closet well before his dad’s death, the sources said.

“I want to see Dad,” Paul Iversen told his mom, the sources said. “I want to make everything right.”

The elderly woman — who almost never allowed anyone into her Bay Ridge apartment — opened the door, sources said. “He’s in the bedroom,” she told her son.

Paul Iversen walked through the filthy apartment and to his horror found the skeletal remains of his dad, Frank Iversen, 75, in a fetal position under a pile of bed covers and clothes, the sources said.

And here’s the kicker:

At the 68th Precinct stationhouse, Joanne Iversen told cops that she and her husband had made a pact to hide the death of whoever passed away first so the surviving spouse could continue collecting Social Security benefits.

“He died of natural causes,” she told cops, the sources said. “It was three years ago.”

Detectives questioned the woman for several hours, but released her last night without filing charges. Cops were investigating whether she illegally obtained Social Security checks since her husband’s death.

A police source said Joanne Iversen had told another estranged son she had buried her husband years ago.

Tenants in the Bay Ridge Parkway apartment building between Ridge Blvd. and Third Ave. said they noticed Frank Iversen, a quiet man who had worked as a painter, hadn’t been around in years. But his wife always told them he had moved upstate.

“I always wondered if he was dead in there,” said neighbor Bonnie King. “Frank just disappeared. There was no explanation.” Other residents said there were clues, but no one put it all together.

“There were odor issues in that apartment,” said Carole Clements, 64. “We complained a lot, but I would have never guessed there was a body inside.”