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Perp hid gun in a teddy bear inside a crib Prosecutors said they recovered the weapon used to shoot at an off-duty NYPD officer inside the apartment of Jamar Baker. -Photo US Attorney's Office Southern District BRONX - A suspected road rage driver is facing 20 years in a federal pen for allegedly opening fire on an off-duty officer driving to work near Yankee Stadium. Cops say they recovered the gun used in the shooting stuffed inside a child’s teddy bear.  Federal prosecutors announced the charges leveled at Jamar Baker for the March 23rd shooting on Macombs Dam Bridge. Officials were at loss to explain the motive for the shooting. Federal prosecutors said cops recovered the weapon in question stuffed inside a teddy bear inside a child's crib. -  -Photo US Attorney's Office Southern District U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “For no apparent reason, Jamar Baker allegedly decided to pick a fight with an innocent driver heading to work. Little did he know, the victi...

Salvador Garcia, FRIENDS Clinician, Visiting Nurse Service of New York By Salvador Garcia, FRIENDS Clinician, Visiting Nurse Service of New York HEALTH - Over the last two years, families have been under a tremendous amount of stress. At the FRIENDS clinic, an Article 31 clinic located in the Bronx, we continue to assist overwhelmed and exhausted clients that are having trouble managing stress after a prolonged experience with the COVID pandemic.  At the FRIENDS clinic, our licensed social workers, psychiatrists, and psychiatric nurse practitioners provide medication management and ongoing therapeutic services for children, youth, and their family. Whether it’s parents with limited resources, students struggling with heightened anxiety and/or depression, or older adults fearful of leaving their home, these concerns do not follow the stream of spikes and dips in the overall COVID cases in the Bronx. Instead, these are persistent emotions that ultimately manifest themselves in w...

NEW YORK  - Two Bronx men have been indicted for selling 33 weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices to an undercover NYPD officer, prosecutors announced.   District Attorney Darcel Clark said, “The defendants allegedly sold these deadly weapons, many of them loaded, on the streets of the Bronx in broad daylight. All but a handful of these guns have been here for some time; at least two of the guns have been connected to shootings in the Bronx and Manhattan. While we focus on the Iron Pipeline bringing new guns from out of state, this is a case of stopping criminals from recycling weapons that are destroying our communities. I thank the courageous undercover officer for helping to make the Bronx safer.” Clark said the defendants, Dereck Velasquez, 29, AKA “Chop,” and Eric Colvin, 26, both of the Bronx, were indicted on 242 counts, including Criminal Sale of a Firearm, Criminal Possession of a Weapon, Conspiracy, Criminal Possession of a Firearm, Possession of...

CAUGHT ON CAMERA - Bank Robber catching subway train The NYPD released surveillance photos of a suspect wanted in the robbery of three TD Bank locations throughout NYC. By Dan Gesslein NEW YORK - The NYPD is asking for the public’s help in trying to catch a serial bank robber who struck 3 TD Banks throughout NYC. Police released surveillance photos of a suspect wanted for questioning. Investigators are trying to catch the bank bandit who hit different TD Bank locations in the upper Bronx, Harlem and the Upper East Side this month. In each case the man handed the teller a note saying he was armed and to turn over cash.  The first case was in the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx. At around 4:50 pm on March 14, the suspect walked into the TD Bank at 3755 East Tremont and handed the teller a note. The letter stated the man had a gun and demanded money. The teller handed over $700 in cash and the thief fled.  The next robbery was at a TD Bank in Harlem. At around 10:31 ...

A row of residential buildings in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Sept. 25, 2019. | Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY This article is adapted from our Rent Update newsletter sent March 7, 2022. You can sign up here to get it or fill out the form at the bottom of this post. By Rachel Holliday Smith, THE CITY  This article was  originally published  on  Mar 7 at 8:10pm EST  by  THE CITY The backlog is thousands deep, and even those who got approved for funds have hit snags. Here’s your ERAP update from THE CITY’s Rent Updates newsletter. If you’re reading this, you might be or know one of the 315,162 people who, as of March 1, have applied to get back rent paid by the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP). And you may know that there’s not nearly enough money to go around. With current funding, there’s enough to cover just 165,000 applications to the program, according to recent analysis by the New York Housing Conference. Will the state allocate mor...

By Chandra Wilson NEW YORK - Today is Zero Discrimination Day , and this year’s theme is “Remove laws that harm, create laws that empower.” UNAIDS , the organization that launched Zero Discrimination Day in 2014, created the campaign to highlight the urgent need to take action against discriminatory laws and celebrate the right of everyone to live a full and productive life with dignity and free of discrimination. Arthur Fitting, BSN, RN, LGBTQ+ Program Manager at Visiting Nurse Service of New York , stresses the importance of Zero Discrimination Day when it comes to the LGBTQ+ population. “The LGBTQ+ community continues to experience harassment, discrimination and stigma in daily life in obvious ways like the alarming increase in physical attacks against the community, and more subtle ways like the fact that after hundreds of years the U.S. census still doesn’t have an accurate count of the LGBTQ+ population.” For the first time since the census began in 1790, the 2020 C...

‘Just being there’ can mean powerful healing VNSNY Social Worker Christine Garcia  By Chandra Wilson NEW YORK - March is national Social Work Month, a time to learn about and acknowledge the meaningful impact that social workers have on so many lives.  Whether it’s helping individuals, families or community groups cope or navigate the obstacles they encounter in life, from medical or emotional challenges to access to health education, care or government and support resources, or just being there, ready to listen, social workers—especially in the home care field—are true heroes of our healthcare professions. At the Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY), hundreds of social workers travel hundreds of miles and make hundreds of phone calls every single week as they advocate and care for patients throughout New York’s five boroughs and Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties. Rarely in the limelight, they may see their patients only a few times, but despite this short ...