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Gunshots pepper vehicle parked in Falls alley

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NIAGARA FALLS – Shots were fired at the car of a 22nd Street man about 7 p.m. Sunday, Niagara Falls police said.

The owner said that just before 7 p.m. he heard shots fired in the alley behind his apartment in the 2700 block, Police found bullet holes in the trunk area and and door of the man’s 2011 Hyundai Sonata.

About an hour later the an said he heard four more shots fired and noticed more bullet holes in the vehicle, including a blown-out tire. Damage was estimated at $800.

Witnesses described an older,charcoal-colored BMW, which sped off after the shots were fired. Police recovered a bullet from the scene.

Two men sought in theft of laptop computers from Walmart

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LOCKPORT – Niagara County sheriff’s deputies are investigating the March 14 theft of two laptop compurters Sunday from Walmart.

According to store surveillance video, one man took two laptops and slipped them into the other man’s in the electronics department of the store, at 5785 South Transit Road. The men rode off on bicycles.

Fire leaves $17,000 damage to Riverside house

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Buffalo firefighters confined an fire that broke out early Monday to the first floor of a vacant house in the city’s Riverside section.

Firefighters responded to a 4:09 a.m. alarm at 89 Grace St., one block north of Hertel Avenue, a couple blocks east of Niagara Street. The fire left an estimated $17,000 damage. The cause remains under investigation.

Cheektowaga town justice issues maximum sentence following car chase

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A Cheektowaga town justice has imposed the maximum 30-day jail sentence following a guilty plea by a Buffalo man involved in a high-speed chase with Cheektowaga police in early March.

Town Justice Paul S. Piotrowski sentenced Sergio Jacobs, 26, of Sterling Avenue, Buffalo, in connection with the chase that started at about 3:55 a.m. March 6.

Jacobs was driving on Genesee Street, near the airport, when Officer Daniel Clifford attempted to stop his vehicle for insufficient tail lights. Police say Jacobs, who was driving a stolen car, refused to stop and ran several red lights on Genesee Street at excessive speeds.

He later was arrested on a warrant and charged with criminal possession of stolen property, unauthorized use of a vehicle, unlawfully fleeing a police officer, reckless driving, speeding and other violations, police said.

Elma crash into telephone pole leads to DWI arrest

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An East Aurora man whose car smashed into a telephone pole late Monday night in Elma has been charged with driving while intoxicated, Erie County sheriff’s officials reported.

While on patrol at about 10:15 p.m., Deputy Eric Szkatulski responded to the Seneca Street crash site and arrested Jie Jiang, 39, accusing him of DWI and several traffic infractions, according to police reports. Jiang, who was not injured, refused to submit to a chemical test to determine his blood-alcohol content, sheriff’s officials said.

The arrest marked the 85th DWI arrest by sheriff’s road patrols this year.

Court issues mixed verdict in malpractice suit over stroke

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The state’s highest court Tuesday reversed a medical malpractice award of $9.6 million for pain and suffering that a jury awarded an Olean excavation contractor left paralyzed by an undiagnosed brain aneurysm that led to a massive stroke in 1998.

The Court of Appeals, however, left intact the jury’s award of $7.12 million for other damages, including custodial care and supportive services for Daniel C. Oakes.

The appeals judges ordered a new trial for the pain and suffering damages.

“We feel that we’re vindicated,” said Francis M. Letro, Oakes’ chief attorney. “You can see where the state’s highest court said the proof of malpractice was compelling. That’s what we’ve been saying for 15 years.”

Oakes died last year while the appeal was pending.

Oakes was driving with his wife on July 18, 1998, when he suffered a severe headache and vomiting. The headache persisted for the next three weeks, during which Oakes consulted several doctors, including his primary care physician and a neurologist. He had a scan at Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital, Amherst. The hospital had an arrangement with Dent Neurologic Group for the reading of scans.

The aneurysm in a blood vessel in his brain went undetected until it ruptured Aug. 7, 1998, causing a stroke that left Oakes a quadriplegic.

The Court of Appeals noted the evidence at trial supporting a finding that the brain scan was either misread or not read at all, and that if it had been read properly, the aneurysm could have been detected and the stroke prevented.

Letro and co-counsel Ronald J. Wright said the failure to read the scan or do so accurately had devastating consequences for Oakes.

A Kaleida Health spokesman could not be reached to comment. The 261-bed hospital in Amherst is one of Kaleida’s four hospitals.

Oakes and his wife, Lisa, filed their lawsuit in 2000. In 2008, after a trial on liability and damages, a jury awarded the Oakeses damages totaling approximately $5.1 million.

The jury ordered Kaleida to pay 94 percent of the award, with Oakes’ Olean doctor, Rajnikant Pastel, ordered to pay 5 percent, and Jamestown neurologist Satish K. Mongia ordered to pay 1 percent through their insurance carriers.

State Supreme Court Justice Timothy J. Drury, however, ordered a new trial on financial damages in the malpractice case because he found the award too low.

In 2009, a second jury awarded Oakes and his wife $16.7 million, on top of $1.1 million that was allowed to remain from the first jury’s verdict. The first jury’s apportionment of responsibility was allowed to stand.

Kaleida and the co-defendants challenged the second jury’s large malpractice award. “We reject most of their arguments,” the State Court of Appeals judges said in their decision.

The appeals judges, however, ordered a new trial on damages for pain and suffering because they found the lower courts erred in holding that causation issues could not be litigated at the second trial, which was for damages only.

“Mr. Oakes had a pre-existing condition, an aneurysm in a blood vessel near his brain,” the court ruled. “Defendants’ malpractice did not cause the aneurysm. Defendants should have been allowed to show that, even with appropriate medical care, some of the injuries that Mr. Oakes suffered were inevitable.”

The appeals court added, “The trial court was mistaken in thinking that the first jury’s verdict resolved this question. The first jury did decide that the malpractice was a substantial factor in causing Mr. Oakes’ stroke, but defendants were entitled to show that some of the pain and suffering that Mr. Oakes endured was not preventable.”

By ruling the causation testimony inadmissible during the second trial, Drury in essence told the jury that “it could not consider the extent to which plaintiff’s injuries resulted from the malpractice,” the court said.

“We conclude that this error requires reversal of the second jury’s awards [totaling $9.6 million] for pain and suffering,” the court ruled.

Oakes died last year in his home. His wife had cared for him since his stroke, with help from health aides, Letro said.

Oakes started his business, R&D Oakes Construction, after high school in 1974 and remained owner and president until 2002, according to his obituary in the Olean Times Herald. He was the Town of Olean highway superintendent from 1994 to 1998 and was also the Pleasant Valley Cemetery superintendent for 12 years, according to his obituary.

“Our claim was he never should have had a stroke,” Letro said. “While we feel vindicated, there’s still no closure.”



email: plakamp@buffnews.com

Falls teen jailed on home invasion indictment

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LOCKPORT – Niagara County Judge Sara Sheldon Farkas jailed a 17-year-old from Niagara Falls in lieu of $100,000 bail Tuesday after he pleaded not guilty to an eight-count indictment accusing him of taking part in a failed Jan. 12 home invasion in that city.

“I didn’t do anything,” K’Shawn L. Sistrunk of McKoon Avenue protested as he was handcuffed. “What’s going on?” Sistrunk, who had been free on a $5,000 bail bond, was living a few doors from the targeted home on Linwood Avenue at the time of the crime. He is charged with first- and second-degree burglary, attempted first- and attempted second-degree robbery, second-degree menacing and three counts of criminal use of a firearm.

Assistant District Attorney Joseph A. Scalzo said three masked intruders entered the home, two of them armed with long guns. However, a person in the home disarmed one of the attackers, and they all fled without stealing anything.

Scalzo told Farkas that two of Sistrunk’s relatives testified to the grand jury that Sistrunk had told them he had taken part in a robbery that night. The other two participants have not been identified, Scalzo said.

Two locked out end up locked up on felony drug charges

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LOCKPORT – City police responded to a 911 hang up call early this morning and found a man and woman couldn’t get into their hotel room at the Comfort Inn on South Transit Road. Poice were asked to check the room and they found no intruders, but instead found bags of crack cocaine, pills, a large amount of marijuana and drug paraphernalia and both room residents were charged with felony sales and possession of a controlled substances.

Charles E. Griffith, 30, of Linwood Avenue, Niagara Falls and Brianna J. Brown, 25, of Millicent Avenue, Buffalo, were arraigned in City Court Tuesday on three felony counts of third and fifth-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and third-degree possession of marijuana; as well as misdemeanor counts of unlawful possession of marijuana and two counts of seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance. Brown was remanded to Niagara County jail on $10,000 bail and Griffith was remanded without bail. Return court dates for both were set for Wednesday.

The officer at the scene said the Comfort Inn general manager asked him to open the door to ensure the safety of Griffith and Brown, just before 4 a.m. Tuesday at the South Transit Road hotel and the officer said Griffith and Brown consented.

Once inside, the patrol noticed a strong odor of marijuana. A check of the room found marijuana in a plastic baggie on a bedside table and several more baggies in an open drawer, along crack cocaine, suspected narcotic prescription pills, rubber gloves, more plastic bags and a large amount of cash.

Pearl street man tries to flee accident

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A 38-year-old Pearl Street man was charged with driving while intoxicated and other counts after allegedly trying to drive off after running into a parked car on Woodside Avenue, only to be pursued by another motorist who stopped him a block away until police arrived about 11:40 p.m. Monday.

Andrew Siwy refused to submit to either field sobriety or blood tests but officers charged him with driving while intoxicated because of the “odor of an alcoholic beverage” and because of his slurred speech and bloodshot and glassy eyes. He was also charged with aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle and leaving the scene of an accident. The name of the motorist who stopped Siwy was not released.

Over $1,000 worth of electronics stolen from Falls vehicle

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NIAGARA FALLS – A 38th Street man told police Sunday that his car radio, GPS and radar detector were stolen from his vehicle overnight.

The victim said his 2001 Hyundai Accent was parked in rear of 3800 Krull Parkway at 6 p.m. Saturday and when he returned to the car at 4 p.m. Sunday the vehicle’s radio system was gone, as well as other electronics.

The man told police he had locked the car, but police found no signs of forced entry. Total loss and damage, $1,100.

Shoplifting with six-month old child

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A 23-year-old Kensington Avenue woman was charged with walking out of a Delaware Avenue store Monday afternoon while trying to hide two purses a store security guard allegedly saw her take as she pushed her six-month-old daughter out of the store in a shopping cart. Brittany B. Hall was arrested on charges of petit larceny and endangering the welfare of a child after walking out of the Marshall’s Store at 2152 Delaware Avenue about 4:40 p.m.

A vacant building in the Falls is damaged by gunfire

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NIAGARA FALLS – Windows were damaged by gunfire at a vacant building owned by the Knights of Columbus at 755 West Market St. This is the second time the building windows have had to replaced because of gunfire, according to police.

The chairman for the Knights of Columbus said sometime between Thursday and Monday someone fired shots at the vacant building, shooting out two windows and causing $900 worth of damage. Two bullet holes were found in a smaller window and one bullet was found in a larger paned window, police reported.

The chairman said the building is currently for sale and had been previously occupied by a restaurant . He told police that windows recently had been replaced because of similar damage.

A discarded cigarette leads to fire

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LOCKPORT – A fire on the back deck at an apartment building on Oxford Lane caused about $2,000 damage to the building’s exterior Tuesday afternoon. A gasoline can on the deck reportedly was ignited by a resident’s discarded cigarette.

South Lockport Volunteer Fire Department and Niagara County sheriff’s deputies were called to the apartment building at 5720 Oxford Lane just before 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Deputy Eric S. Gieseler used a fire extinguisher to help knock down the fire on the deck and evacuated two residents, Jaime Harbridge and Nicole Stratiff. No injuries were reported.

Stratiff told deputies she threw her cigarette out the window in an attempt to throw it into an ashtray. She then called 911 when she noticed the fire.

Fire investigator Joseph Fries said the fire damaged only the exterior of the building.

Medina man charged with stealing fish from a Lockport pet store

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LOCKPORT – A Medina man allegedly walked into a West Avenue pet store Monday afternoon and asked for a clerk to remove four bags of fish from the store’s tank, then left with two of these bags, valued at $140, under his coat.

However he was not arrested until he returned 40 minutes later to buy the two bags he left behind, according to Lockport police

Wilbert Honors, 52, of South Main Street, was charged with petit larceny just before 2 p.m.

Honors came into Pet’s Plus on West Avenue at 12:15 p.m. and was observed leaving with two bags of fish under his jacket, according to police. He then returned and was charged

Canadian arrested for marijuana at Peace Bridge

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A 33-year-old Canadian man was arrested by Buffalo police at the Peace Bridge about 9 p.m. Monday after a Homeland Security agent said he found a ziplock bag containing 33 grams of marijuana that the man allegedly was hiding in a leg of his trousers. Chad Styres of Oshweken, Ontario, was charged with criminal possession of marijuana.

Two men struck, seriously hurt outside their disabled vehicle in Hamburg

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Two men standing in front of their disabled vehicle were critically injured in Hamburg late Monday night, when their SUV was struck by a pickup truck, whose driver later was charged with driving while intoxicated, town police reported.

The two people injured, a 61-year-old Hamburg man and a 32-year-old man from Hopewell Junction, in the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh area, were taken to Erie County Medical Center, where police said they were listed in critical condition. Their names have not been released.

Slick weather conditions led to the first accident, which left the SUV disabled in the left lane of Lake Shore Road at about 11 p.m.

As the two men were standing in front of the SUV, police said, it was rear-ended by the pickup driven by Thomas A. Gilray Jr., 28, of Hamburg. The SUV then lurched forward and struck the two men, Capt. Kevin A. Trask said.

According to investigators, Gilray had been headed outbound on Lake Shore at Mile Strip Road when he disregarded a police officer who was outside his marked vehicle, attempting to secure the first accident scene.

Officials said Gilray narrowly missed hitting the police officer before his vehicle struck the SUV.

Police charged Gilray with DWI, vehicular assault, reckless endangerment and failure to yield to an emergency vehicle, according to police reports. They also accused him of refusing to take a chemical test.

Gilray was treated in ECMC and released.

Sheriff’s dispatcher in custody on vehicular assault charge

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A 28-year-old dispatcher for the Erie County Sheriff’s Officer was in custody Tuesday night to await court action on a charge of vehicular assault and other counts arising from a traffic accident late Monday on Route 5 in Hamburg that has left two other men critically injured.

Thomas Gilray Jr., was being held in lieu of $5,000 bail and has been suspended from his job in the sheriff’s department without pay.

In addition to the vehicular assault charfge, he faces charges of driving while intoxicated, reckless endangerment, and failing to stop for an emergency vehicle.

Gilray is accused of driving his pickup truck through a police accident site about 11 p.m. Monday on Route 5 near Milestrip Road and striking a 61-year-old Hamburg man and a 32-year-old Duchess County man who were out of their cars after an earlier accident that was caused by icy road conditions, investigators said.

Both victims were listed in critical condition Tuesday evening in Erie County Medical Center but their names have not been released.

Police were clearing the roadway from the earlier accident when Gilray allegedly drove through warning barriers, according to police reports. He was taken into custody after refusing to submit to sobriety tests or to take an alcohol tes

Driver shot by Buffalo police had high blood-alcohol level

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The driver Buffalo police fatally shot in December before his out-of-control vehicle crashed into three light poles, killing a female pedestrian, had a blood-alcohol level four times the legal limit, authorities revealed Tuesday.

Isaac C. Parker, 48, had a blood-alcohol content of 0.32 percent, several law enforcement sources confirmed.

Thomas H. Burton, an attorney who represents Buffalo police officers in such incidents, claimed that Parker’s “whopping” blood-alcohol level remains a relevant fact for the grand jury to consider in weighing the actions of the police officer who fatally shot Parker.

“That blood-alcohol content, which is in the stratosphere by any estimation, goes a long way to explain the driver’s conduct,” Burton said. “With a 0.32, he was nothing less than an unguided missile on four wheels.”

On the evening of Dec. 6, two Buffalo officers assigned to the Housing Unit stopped Parker’s vehicle at Fillmore Avenue and Best Street.

After the officers approached him, Parker attempted to restart the vehicle, police have said. Officers later told police officials that they detected a strong smell of alcohol.

With both officers partially inside the vehicle and sensing that Parker was fleeing, one of the officers fired once from his service weapon at close range, mortally wounding the driver.

The two officers managed to get out of the sport utility vehicle, which traveled north, out of control, about four-tenths of a mile, before crashing into three light poles at Fillmore and Riley Street. One of those poles fell on top of Ida Murphy, 54, killing her.

While the justification for the officers using deadly force in that incident hasn’t changed, Burton explained why he thinks the alcohol level is relevant.

“In 99 out of 100 DWI stops, the motorist is compliant,” he said. “Being that drunk may explain why he gunned the engine and tried to take off, with two uniformed officers hanging on to him in the front seat.”

The Dec. 6 shooting has been investigated by both the Buffalo Police Internal Affairs Division and the Erie County District Attorney’s Ooffice.

District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said his office recently received a copy of the medical examiner’s report, along with the accident report from the Buffalo Police Accident Investigation Unit.

“It is likely that we’ll present this matter to an Erie County grand jury,” Sedita added.

The grand jury presumably will have to determine whether the conduct of the police officers – including the shooting and their earlier decision to jump into the vehicle – rises to the level of criminal behavior.

But once they were inside, Burton cited the risks they faced, especially the taller officer, who dove into the car with his legs sticking out the passenger side.

“All it would have taken was a brush against a parked car or hitting a pole or a fire hydrant, and this officer may have lost his lower legs,” Burton said.

The incident also sparked a debate about whether police used excessive force in shooting Parker.

The fatal shooting was the sixth time last year that a Buffalo police officer fired a service weapon at a suspect; three of those shootings proved fatal.

A few days after the shooting, Fernando Parker objected to his brother Isaac’s getting the major share of the blame for the twin incidents that claimed two lives.

“Actually, the police killed the lady,” Fernando Parker said. “If they hadn’t shot him, he wouldn’t have hit the pole and killed her. My heart goes out to the other family.”

Fernando Parker acknowledged at the time that his brother, a former Marine, had three previous DWI convictions and that he shouldn’t have been drinking and driving. But he still questioned why his brother was shot.

“He wasn’t armed,” Parker added. “Why couldn’t they shoot the tires?”



email: gwarner@buffnews.com

Condition of 4-year-old, attacked for crying, improves

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The 4-year-old Buffalo girl cried too much and, because of that, was repeatedly attacked and bitten by her mother’s boyfriend, authorities said Tuesday.

And it was only by chance, police say, that the girl survived.

After receiving a complaint that children were residing in a West Side home where alleged drug dealing was occurring, Erie County Child Protective Services workers found the girl nearly unconscious from internal bleeding a week ago, according to Buffalo Sex Offense Squad detectives.

“The child was in a lethargic state. If the CPS workers hadn’t shown up, she probably would have died from internal bleeding. That’s what the doctor told us,” said Detective Jacqueline Sullivan, a member of the Sex Offense Squad.

The girl has begun to recover and she is in stable condition.

Ediberto Rodriguez, 25, is accused of biting the girl some 20 times all over her body, slamming her into a wall and throwing her down a flight of stairs.

The attacks, which began March 22 and continued through March 25, were so fierce, according to Sullivan and Detective Karyn DiPaolo, that the child’s spleen was crushed, her pancreas damaged and the right side of her pelvis cracked. In addition, hemorrhaging occurred in her mouth, ears and neck.

The girl’s mother told The Buffalo News late Tuesday she had no idea Rodriguez was harming her daughter.

“I didn’t know this was going on. I trusted him with my daughter. I didn’t think he would do something like this to her. I never saw it happen. If I did, I would have stopped it,” the mother said, adding that the attacks must have occurred while she was out running errands. “I’m hoping my daughter will be able to come home next week.”

Rodriguez is no stranger to the detectives who, in addition to sexual assaults, investigate attacks on children. Last summer, he struck his 10-month-old son so hard in the head that Detective Natalie Perez placed a child endangerment charge against him.

Rodriguez appeared in Buffalo City Court on March 15, pleaded guilty to harassment and was conditionally discharged. A week later, he allegedly began the series of attacks on the girl because she would cry, Sullivan and DiPaolo said. The girl’s twin sister was not harmed. The mother, twins and boyfriend resided in a home on the 1200 block of West Avenue.

CPS workers, responding to a tip about drug dealing at the home March 26, summoned an ambulance to rush the critically injured child to the pediatric intensive care unit at Women & Children’s Hospital.

Sullivan and DiPaolo charged Rodriguez on Friday with second-degree assault.

“We believe there were multiple attacks between March 22 and March 25, and there are indications that she was injured by him a month ago from the bruises on her body,” Sullivan said.

Perez had been searching for Rodriguez since early July, when she had investigated a complaint that he had assaulted his infant son. She caught up with him last November in Erie County Family Court after he had been summoned there by CPS workers, also investigating the July incident.

Rodriguez is now being held in the Erie County Holding Center in lieu of $400,000 bail and is scheduled to return to Buffalo City Court on Thursday.

This latest case comes only weeks after two high-profile child abuse fatalities in March. In those cases, two toddler boys – one in Brant, the other in Springville – were beaten to death, and their mothers’ boyfriends were charged. One of the boyfriends told authorities that he struck the 1-year-old boy because he was crying.



email: lmichel@buffnews.com and mgryta@buffnews.com

High rank in State Senate brings power that is often corrupting

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ALBANY – The title of State Senate majority leader exudes Albany power.

But with the arrest Tuesday of Democratic Sen. Malcolm Smith of Queens, three of the four most recent majority leaders have later faced serious federal corruption charges.

Smith, who lost the title following a 2009 Senate coup, was arrested at dawn at his home and accused of a bribery scheme to get political support for him to run as a Republican for New York City mayor this year.

Five others were arrested in connection with the affair or spinoff allegations of corruption.

For prosecutors, it was just the latest in an extraordinarily long line of cases brought against state officials, from former Comptroller Alan Hevesi to former State Senate leaders Joseph Bruno and Pedro Espada.

The newest Albany scandal “demonstrates, once again, that a show-me-the-money culture seems to pervade every level of New York State government,” said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Preet Bharara.

The New York Public Interest Research Group pointed out that 29 top state officials, most of them lawmakers, have been arrested, convicted, censured or brought down by scandal involving everything from stealing money to sexual indiscretions.

One of those arrested on corruption charges for his role in the Smith scandal, New York City Councilman Dan Halloran, offered a simple explanation about politics and money in an FBI tape recording.

“That’s politics,” the Republican was quoted as saying on the undercover tape. “It’s all about how much … That’s our politicians in New York. They’re all like that, all like that. And they get like that because of the drive that the money does for everything else.”

FBI agents said they caught Smith, 56, on tape as recently as two weeks ago in his Albany Senate office. Agents made five other arrests, including GOP leaders in the Bronx and Queens, a New York City Republican councilman and the Democratic mayor and deputy mayor in the Rockland County community of Spring Valley.

In all the episodes involving a strange set of connections, prosecutors allege more than $100,000 was spread around in bribes arranged by an unnamed cooperating witness and an FBI undercover agent posing as a real estate mogul.

Smith, who ran the Senate during a turbulent period before a 2009 coup, denied the allegations through his lawyer. A maximum sentence on the charges, if convicted, could land Smith in prison for 45 years.

He was the first and only African-American member of the Independent Democratic Conference, the breakaway group of five Democrats who formed a coalition to keep Republicans in partial control of the Senate. He was stripped of his leadership and committee posts seven hours after his arrest.

Sen. Jeff Klein, a Bronx Democrat and leader of the IDC, said that Smith’s actions “breached the trust” of the group and that Smith should consider stepping down from office.

Klein stripped Smith of his $12,500 stipend as Social Services Committee chairman.

In a Buffalo News editorial board meeting Tuesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo called the corruption charges “horrific and very troubling if true.”

Not unlike past prosecutors who have dealt with Albany corruption, Bharara noted the level of criminal behavior at the Capitol in the past decade or so and said prosecutors alone can’t clean up Albany.

“The dream of honest government cannot come to pass unless there is a real honest change in the culture … New Yorkers should demand more,’’ he said in a Manhattan news conference.

In the first scheme outlined by prosecutors in a written complaint, Smith approved payments to Joseph Savino, the Bronx GOP chairman, and Vincent Tabone, the Queens vice chairman, to secure their backing to let him run on the Republican mayoral line. As a Democrat seeking a wild long shot to run as the GOP candidate for mayor, Smith needed the backing of three of five Republican chairmen from the city’s five boroughs.

Smith was “bent on becoming mayor,” Bharara said.

Halloran, the city councilman and former New York police officer, was described as the quarterback who arranged the payments to the borough leaders. This was all with Smith’s blessing, who talked of giving only half the money until they delivered the signatures needed to get him on the ballot.

In all, $80,000 was paid or promised to the two GOP county bosses, who also were arrested Tuesday morning.

“He decided to bribe his way onto the ballot,” the prosecutor said of Smith.

Prosecutors said Smith also sought to steer $500,000 in state transportation funding to the cooperating witness and undercover agent for a Rockland County real estate deal.

The second case involves allegations Halloran directed $80,000 in city funds to a company he believed was controlled by the cooperating witness and undercover agent.

A third case was brought against the mayor and deputy mayor of Spring Valley in Rockland County – Noramie Jasmin and Joseph Desmaret, respectively. They were part of a scheme involving Smith and road and redevelopment projects in the village.

Smith joined the Senate in 2000 and became majority leader for a brief time before the 2009 coup. He later emerged with the title of temporary president of the Senate but little real power until the Republicans took back control of the Senate in 2011.



email: tprecious@buffnews.com
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