Uptown Radio

In the 1960s and 1970s, New York passed a series of laws that stiffened penalties for teenage offenders. Today, New York is one of only two states that treat 16 year olds as adults in criminal cases. Now the pendulum may be swinging the other way. Celia Llopis-Jepsen reports.

LLOPIS-JEPSEN: Let’s say a 15-year-old steals an iPhone. If the police apprehend him, the first thing they have to do is call his parents. But if he’s 16, he alone at the precinct house. Then he goes to central booking, and if he doesn’t make bail, he goes to Riker’s Island.

All that exposure to the criminal justice system may be making things worse.

Jeffrey Fagan is director of research at the Center on Crime, Community and Law at Columbia University.

FAGAN: The research evidence is very strong and very conclusive … that when you … prosecute teenagers as adults … they are far more likely, maybe one and a half to two times more likely to be rearrested than the same kid, pound for pound, who’s treated in the juvenile court. (00:10)

LLOPIS-JEPSEN: In other words, treating 16 year olds as adults is having the opposite effect of what legislators intended.

FAGAN: I’m hard pressed to find a reason why we want to maintain even fragments of the current system by retaining original jurisdiction in the adult court for juveniles. (00:08)

LLOPIS-JEPSEN: New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman agrees. Next week, he will send a proposal to legislators to set the age of criminal responsibility at 18.

New York arrests more than 40,000 16 and 17-year-olds every year. The vast majority are arrested for nonviolent crimes. Under Lippman’s proposal, those teens would be treated as juveniles.

Retired judge Michael Corriero advised Lippman on the proposal. Corriero served on the bench for 28 years and specialized in cases with minors. He says 16 year olds are too young to understand the consequences of their actions.

CORRIERO: Have you ever been 16? Have you ever done anything that … you didn’t want to do because you … were concerned about your image? (00:09)

LLOPIS-JEPSEN: Under Lippman’s proposal, nonviolent juvenile cases would go to newly created youth courts, where judges would have a wider range of sentencing options. They could order mental health care, for example. Or counseling, tutoring, or community service.

Teens brought before these courts would not end up with criminal records that would follow them for life. That means they wouldn’t be disqualified for student loans or certain jobs, and that their families couldn’t be expelled from public housing.

Lippman is already testing the waters. Early this year, he launched preliminary versions of the youth courts in a few counties. One of those pilots is in the Bronx.

Teens who participate can end up doing community service or attending classes at Bronx Community Solutions, an alternative sentencing project.

In the Mt Eden neighborhood yesterday, three boys and two girls were sweeping the streets around the West Bronx Recreation Center under the watchful eye of a supervisor.

AMBI: “Just walk around and pick up what you see. Try to make the neighborhood look nice and decent.” (00:15 of talking, ambi)

LLOPIS-JEPSEN: At the edge of the action, community service coordinator Moises Reyes looked on. He says he sees a difference even with teens who participate only for a few days.

REYES: They believe they’re doing something positive.
When they come in the morning you know they come very serious, but at the end of the day you know when you reach somebody because they give you a handshake and they say thank you. (00:20)

LLOPIS-JEPSEN: Lippman’s proposal is likely to face some opposition in Albany. Some county officials worry that the law will shift significant costs to county governments, in particular to their probation departments. They also say a lot of counties don’t have the community and social services infrastructure they need to make the proposal work. Without that, they say, New York State would still be failing kids.

Lippman is looking for a sponsor in Albany for his proposal.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen, Columbia Radio News.

Now we turn to another issue before the Supreme Court, rent regulation. The justices are considering whether to hear a case on New York City rent laws that could upend the laws currently in place. The plaintiffs own a brownstone on the upper west side, and say their three rent stabilized units only earn them a third of market value. They say this violates their fifth amendments rights — claiming the government has unlawfully seized their property. The city says rent stabilization ensures affordable rental housing, and violates no one’s rights. Acacia Squires reports.***

The Lower East Side is one of Manhattan’s more desirable neighborhoods now, but when JoAnn Wypijewski moved to her rent stabilized one bedroom here in 1979, it wasn’t.

Ambi: Lower east side street, door buzzer, then muffled though intercom “Hello?”  Door opening and walking up the stairs.

Her fifth floor walk up is about 400 square feet. You can see the top of the Empire State Building from nearly all of the seven windows. In 1979 the rent was 175 dollars a month. She says it wasn’t just the price that lured her here.

Wypijewski: On summer nights the old ladies would sit in their folding chairs downstairs, and they would be in their housecoats, and there would be gossiping about this and that. It was very old Lower East Side, there was something timeless about it.

In the last thirty-three years, she’s put a lot of time and money into her place, plastering, redoing the floors, and building floor to ceiling bookcases. She’s a freelance writer and editor, who loves to read. Now she pays 609 dollars a month, still cheap for Manhattan. But she says she and her neighbors invest more in the property than money.

Wypijewski: Chances are, if you have a low rent, you’re not going anywhere. We are the most involved in the building, we are the one who bang on the door of the neighbor when we smell smoke. Really it’s the long range tenants who are defending their homes.

But some landlords tell housing officials it’s impossible to maintain buildings on widely varying rents. Rent control laws date from the 1940’s — they were emergency measures to keep housing affordable during inflation. In 1969, New York added rent stabilization so landlords could increase rent by a percentage every year.

New York’s one of the only cities still hanging on to rent regulation, says Jack Freund. He helps run the Rent Stabilization Association, representing landlords in this fight.

Freund: The owner in effect has lost control of a very key portion of a bundle of rights that constitute ownership in the United States, and that is the right to exclude somebody from their property, and the right to use that property for their own purposes.

Tenants can hand both rent controlled and rent stabilized apartments down to family, and landlords can’t kick them out or change the rent. That’s called property in perpetuity. And the landlord plaintiffs in the possible Supreme Court case take issue with it. Stabilized tenant JoAnn Wypijewski is also a tenant rights activist. She says these individuals aren’t gaming the system. Many depend on the regulation to survive, but says landlords never see it that way.

Wypijewski: They don’t go to the City Council meetings and there sits an old man who is saying to the council members, this is what I make every month, this is what I get from Social Security, this is what I get from my pathetic little pension. You are looking at the future homeless.

All this may begin to change in two weeks when The Supreme Court will decide whether to hear the case. Jack Freund, the landlord advocate, says he thinks they will but doesn’t want to jinx it. But JoAnn Wypijewski thinks the court won’t hear the claim, and that she’ll live in her apartment another thirty years.

Acacia Squires, Columbia Radio News.

The biggest jackpot in Mega Millions history is up for grabs tonight. The multi-state lottery will draw numbers for its six-hundred and forty million dollar pot. Plenty of New Yorkers are ponying up to put their lucky numbers in the mix. Hristina Tisheva went to a convenience store in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, that’s doing a roaring business selling the chance to win a fortune.

–

In one hour this morning Lucky Lotto took in about 500 dollars selling Mega Millions Lottery tickets. Luck is not just part of the store’s name. It was here in 2010 Mary Shammas won 64 million. And just last Tuesday someone else won 250,000 dollars on a ticket bought at the store. A new customer comes in every minute.

SOUND: Several people talking: “Second prize would be good, right?”Third price! 10,000 will be good.”  “3, 19, 20, 32, 43.” “This is for today, right?” “2, 22, 25, 54, 56, 30.” “306. Combo. For tonight, the evening.”

Jagdish Patel works at the store.

PATEL: “Now everybody feel like here is the lucky store, so, that’s why people come in.”

The customers in Lucky Lotto this morning think the big wins are a sign. Tony Maruna spent 200 dollars buying tickets at different stores.

TISHEVA: “Do you know that this store has won a few times before?”
MARUNA: “Yes, I do, that’s why I just came in and bought 40 dollars worth.”

Not everyone is that big of a spender. The average price people paid was between 10 and 15 dollars.

SOUND: Getting money back, cash register closing.  

PARK: “5? Oh, I need another 5. Just give me 5 Quick pick. 10 dollars.”

Mary Park already made plans how to use the money. Even if she wins, as she put it, “just 100,000.” She’ll buy a house first.

Leslie Bright and her mother Cheryl plan to go to Paris. She doesn’t play Quick pick where a machine automatically selects the numbers. Bright says they have a system to pick them.

BRIGHT: “We had some personal numbers and then we had some quick picks. But mostly I did a combination of my birthday and my mom’s birthday. I’m being very superstitious.”

To win the 640 million dollars you have to correctly guess all six wining numbers in one drawing. The odds of this happening are 1 in 176 million. Char Turigiano doesn’t care.

TURIGIANO: “Two dollars Quick Picks for Mega Millions tonight. I don’t know how lucky I’m feeling but I did my taxes so I’m happy.”

There are other winning options as well. You can win 150 dollars by guessing a combination of 3 or 4 numbers from 1 to 56 and the Megaball – a number from 1 to 46. Steven Vislocky bought 20 dollars worth of tickets today. He says he’s happy just to win.

VISLOCKY: “I’m not greedy I’d be happy with anything. Give some to the kids and payoff come bills.”

Vislocky says he’ll save some for his four kids’ education. If he wins, he said he will send them to Princeton University. 640 million will pay the tuition for Vislocky’s kids and for about 500 of their closest friends.

And now the bad news. If the winner happens to live in New York, he or she will have to pay 25 percent federal tax and nearly 9 percent state tax.

The drawing is tonight at 11. You have until 10:45 to buy a ticket. Hristina Tisheva, Columbia Radio News.

The number of jobs in New York State is growing. And so is the unemployment rate. That’s according to statistics released yesterday by the New York Department of Labor. John Light looked into the apparent contradiction, and whether this is good or bad news for New Yorkers.–

JOHN LIGHT, REPORTER:
Between January and February, New York State added just over twenty one thousand jobs. But unemployment also increased — from 9.3 percent to 9.6 percent. It turns out that this sort of paradox is actually not that uncommon. Economists said one explanation has to do with people who have given up looking for work.

JULIE ANNA GOLEBIEWSKI:
When discouraged employees exit out of the labor force, they’re no longer calculated.

JOHN LIGHT:
That’s Julie Anna Golebiewski. She’s an economist with the city’s Independent Budget Office.

JULIE ANNA GOLEBIEWSKI:
They no longer enter into the calculation of the unemployment rate. But when they enter back in, all the sudden we have new unemployed people that were not counted previously.

JOHN LIGHT:
A similar thing may be happening with workers that were formerly self-employed, said James Parrott, an economist with the Fiscal Policy Institute.

JAMES PARROTT:
It’s not unusual when the economy’s been weak, as it certainly has for the last few years, for people who lose payroll jobs to then turn to self employment. So they were not among the unemployed.

JOHN LIGHT:
Now, Parrott says those self-employed people are entering back into the workforce.

JAMES PARROTT:
That accounts for how you could have a person taking a payroll job and yet not reducing the number of people unemployed. Because they were employed before, but employed on a self employed basis.

JOHN LIGHT:
So this is all sounds like good news, indicating a slow economic recovery. But not necessarily. Golebiewski’s organization, the Independent Budget Institute, says there’s more to consider. It released a report yesterday that said, even though the economy is adding jobs, they’re in relatively low-paying sectors – like the service industry. This is instead of traditionally high-paying sectors, like the finance industry. Michael Bloomberg talked about that yesterday, at a breakfast forum hosted by the wall street journal. He blamed efforts to regulate banking for the sluggish recovery.

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG:
I don’t know why anybody would want to go out and make loans when if the loans go bad, people want to put the lenders in jail. I mean, we’re out there killing the financial industry, and yet the financial industry is what we need to get people to create the jobs. You can’t have it both ways.

JOHN LIGHT:
But even though the financial sector isn’t driving recovery, economist Julie Anna Golebiewski says that may actually be a good thing.

JULIE ANNA GOLEBIEWSKI
We were so exposed to financial activities previously, we really are diversifying the economy so we wouldn’t be as exposed to fluctuations in that industry.

JOHN LIGHT:
So even though the recovery is slow, a Wall Street crash like the one saw in September 2008, may be less likely to bring down the economy in the future.

John Light, Columbia Radio News.

With the recent passing of musicians Whitney Houston, Davy Jones, and now Earl Scruggs, 2012 has already been a big year for losses in the music industry. But even when your favorite entertainer has passed on, there’s still a way to spend an evening in their company. Will Sloan reports.

When Whitney Houston died in February, one person who mourned was Carlene Mitchell, a Florida-based R&B performer and one of the country’s top Whitney Houston tribute artists.

“She’s a beautiful soul,” says Mitchell. “She’s brought a lot of gifts to all of us, not just in her music, but in how she would impact all of us, in our hearts.”

This is Mitchell singing at “80’s Ladies: A Soulful Tribute.” Mitchell has performed as Houston for fifteen years, and has followed her career through thick and thin. After you spend that much time in a celebrity’s mind and body, you start to develop loyalty. Mitchell doesn’t like to talk about the unsavory details of Houston’s final years.

“It takes a lot of responsibility to say that you’re going to be a tribute artist. You want to be the ambassador, you want to be the spokesperson for that person. So when people want to talk to me about Whitney, there are certain things I want to share.”

When a celebrity has passed away, impersonators and tribute acts can find themselves in crisis. Deborah Smith Ford writes a column on the culture of celebrity impersonation for Examiner.com, and has seen this first-hand.

“It affects them like just like a friend or family member and then some,” says Ford. “What’s sweet and sour is, they’re usually more popular, at least for a while, and they have to get out there and be there knowing that person isn’t there anymore.”

How soon is too soon to do a tribute act after a celebrity’s death? The answer, in fact, may be: it’s never soon enough. Mitchell has performed twice since Houston’s passing, and has found her performances taking a new dimension.

“When I started singing, a particular man was listening, and he had to run out of the room,” says Mitchell. He was just in tears when I started singing ‘I Will Always Love You.’ People didn’t just listen to Whitney’s songs – they lived it.”

Similar feelings arose at the Celebrity Impersonators convention in Las Vegas, held one week after Houston’s death. The Houston impersonators performed to a rapturous reception, says Deborah Smith Ford.

“Not a dry eye in the house, of course. It was just the way to celebrate her music and her life, like you might be actually at a funeral or memorial.”

For mourning fans, tribute artists can be more than a sideshow: they can be therapeutic. Consider one of pop music’s most famous premature deaths, and the thousands of tribute acts it spawned.

Gene Dinapoli has putting on his white suit and blue suede shoes as Elvis Presley since he was 14-years-old, and has been performing full-time for 11 years. But don’t call him an Elvis impersonator.

“The word ‘impersonate’ means ‘to assume the identity of.’ And I never once in my 32-year career ever thought that I was Elvis Presley,” says Dinapoli. “Physically, I don’t look anything like the man. He was a six-foot blue-eyed Southerner, and I’m a 5 foot 6 New York Italian.”

Dinapoli’s Elvis covers can be downloaded on his website, but he’s also available for birthday parties, corporate events, restaurants, bars, and other venues.

“So where I differ from other people is, I make sure I give 150%. ‘Cause if you don’t walk out of there an Elvis Presley fan, you’re gonna walk out there a Gene Dinapoli fan.”

Danapoli is protective of Elvis, just as Carlene Mitchell is with Houston. But both acknowledge that their chosen celebrities’ later years were not their professional peaks. A good tribute act can take fans to another world, where stars like these stay forever young.

And, fans in Halstead, New York can see Elvis live again tonight, as Dinapoli performs at Al Dente restaurant. Will Sloan, Columbia Radio News.