Fake-gun fine unreal
30G penalty forcing B’klyn store to close
Now this is a real stickup!
The owner of a discount store in Brooklyn says the city is holding him up for $30,000 in fines he can’t afford — all because he stocked six toy sheriff sets that included plastic guns.
And now the .44-caliber fines for the orange-tipped, obvious fakes are forcing him to close for good.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Khaled Mohamed, 23, manager of 99¢ Target in Flatlands, which has been ordered to pay a staggering $5,000 fine for each gun offered for sale — the maximum under the law.
The store “cannot pay that fine at all,” said Mohamed, arguing that the punishment imposed on the Utica Avenue odds-and-ends shop is way out of proportion to the violation.
Dana Sauchelli
UNLAWFUL: The city says this obviously fake toy gun is too real.
MOHAMED
“They’re stopping us from doing any business,” he said.
The store’s lawyer, Andrew Tilem, doesn’t dispute that 99¢ Target was in violation of a city regulation that makes it illegal to sell toy weapons that look too real.
The rule is designed to prevent cops from mistaking the toys for the real thing — and shooting an innocent kid — and to thwart criminals from using them to commit crimes.
Retailers can get around the law by making sure the toy guns are brightly colored.
Tilem and Mohamed said the store initially relied on the word of the gun’s vendor, JMD All Star of New Jersey, that the toys were legal for sale. Then, they said, the prior manager failed to inform store owner Jamal Ahmed that a city inspector had written up the shop.
Because of that failure, Ahmed missed a hearing, which led to the $30,000 fine, Tilem said. The lawyer got Consumer Affairs to reopen the case and negotiate a tentative settlement for about $5,400.
But Ahmed couldn’t afford that either, so he tried his luck at another hearing.
After the store argued that no reasonable person would believe the guns were real, the hearing officer upheld the original fine, as did an appeals judge last week.
Tilem decried the $5,000-per-toy fine, calling it “a really, really abusive penalty.”
But a Consumer Affairs spokeswoman countered, “Realistic-looking imitation guns are illegal and dangerous, and just last week, a 15-year-old in Texas was killed while holding one of these guns.”
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/fake_gun_fine_unreal_fdcYUeshHyvth4maEHXrpM#ixzz1jqtR9Ovq
NYPD looks to scan people on the street for guns, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says
New technology being tested
The NYPD is developing a new way to seek people toting guns on the street by using radiation scanners that can detect those packing heat, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced Tuesday.
The technology — which works similar to infrared imaging — includes a mechanism that can detect a natural energy, known as terahertz radiation, that emits from a person’s body, Kelly said during his State of the NYPD address.
Because the radiation waves cannot travel through metal, a concealed gun can be detected from the image captured by the lense of the detector, Kelly said.
“This technology has shown a great deal of promise as a way of detecting weapons without a physical search,” Kelly said.
However, the technology — which has been undergoing testing by the NYPD and the U.S. Department of Defense for the past three years — can only be used at a distance of 3 to 4 feet, cops said.
“This can be done from a short range,” Kelly said. “We want a distance of at least 25 meters.”
Kelly mentioned the technology as part of the department’s continuing efforts to curb illegal guns off the street as he addressed the Police Foundation at the Regency Hotel on Park Ave.
He said cops hope to install the heat-seeking devices on police vehicles in the near future.
“We want to use new technology to protect the public and police officers from illegal guns,” he said.
But civil liberties lawyer Norman Siegel said he hopes the scanning devices will be able to distinguish between a gun and other harmless metal objects, such as an iPod.
Siegel said if the technology only picks up only fuzzy images of possible guns, it could lead cops to make unwarranted stops.
“It will make an already agressive policy of stop, question and frisk seem tame,” he said.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/nypd-scan-people-street-guns-police-commissioner-raymond-kelly-article-1.1007456#ixzz1jquSLjC2
Well first they said it did ot happen now they say they are sorry and wrong. The first thing you have to do is make them admit they are wrong or they will not change.
TSA admits wrongdoing in cases of two elderly woman who claim they were strip-searched
Exclusive: Lenore Zimmerman and Ruth Sherman still fuming after humiliating December incident
In an about-face, the feds have admitted wrongdoing in the cases of two elderly women who say they were strip-searched at Kennedy Airport by overzealous screeners.
Federal officials had initially insisted that all “screening procedures were followed” after Ruth Sherman, 89, and Lenore Zimmerman, 85, went public with separate accounts of humiliating strip searches.
But in a letter obtained by the Daily News, the Homeland Security Department acknowledges that screeners violated standard practice in their treatment of the ailing octogenarians last November.
Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Betsy Markey concedes to state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) that Sherman was forced to show security agents her colostomy bag — a violation of policy.
“It is not standard operating procedure for colostomy devices to be visually inspected, and [the Transportation Security Administration\] apologizes for this employee’s action,” Markey wrote.
The letter says that Sherman, who uses a wheelchair, was escorted into a private area after she voluntarily lowered her pants to show screeners the device.
In the private room, she was patted down and told to show agents the colostomy bag, the letter says.
Markey still maintained that the Florida-based Sherman was never asked to remove her clothing.
“They asked me to pull my sweatpants down, and now they’re not telling you the truth,” Sherman fumed Monday.
Markey also denied that Zimmerman had been strip-searched, but did apologize for the conduct of a TSA agent who violated policy by scanning the Long Island granny’s back brace.
Zimmerman had told The News two female agents removed her clothes — instead of just patting her down — after she revealed that she was wearing a defibrillator.
“They’re lying,” said Zimmerman. “I don’t have a problem with [screeners checking\] the back brace. I have a problem with being strip-searched.”
Gianaris, who wrote to the TSA requesting a full investigation, said the feds’ account is still full of holes.
“It’s obvious that something went wrong, so its nice to see the TSA admit that their procedures were violated,” Gianaris said, “but they’re still falling short of admitting that these women’s dignity was violated by asking them to remove their clothes.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/tsa-apologizes-elderly-women-strip-search-kennedy-airport-article-1.1007725#ixzz1jsYc7n6d
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