William Neuman and Jeffery C. Mays

Other elected officials have vehemently condemned the way the woman, Jazmine Headley, was treated, but de Blasio only made two brief comments about it on Twitter.

On Wednesday, the mayor broke his silence to apologize to Headley, to criticize how she was treated and to defend his response to it.

“I want to apologize to her on behalf of all 8.6 million New Yorkers,” de Blasio said during his weekly news conference Wednesday, at a public housing complex in Brooklyn.

He added: “What happened to Jazmine Headley and her son Damone should never have happened, should never happen to anybody.”

He said that he first learned of the incident Sunday evening and then inquired about it to officials at the Police Department and the Human Resources Administration.

“I reached out to the commissioners involved for an update on what had happened and why,” de Blasio said. “They both told me they were getting facts immediately. Until I got their side of what happened, I could not speak to the public. Once I had it, I did.”

He added, “What I say has to be definitive.”

By Tuesday morning, prosecutors had dropped the charges against Headley — which included resisting arrest, acting in a manner injurious to a child, obstructing governmental administration and trespassing. She was finally released from Rikers Island on Tuesday evening after a State Supreme Court judge in Brooklyn ruled that she would not be transferred to New Jersey to face an unrelated credit card fraud charge, for which she had an outstanding warrant.

Headley appeared in court in New Jersey on Wednesday. Brian Neary, her lawyer, said that she was accepted into a pretrial intervention program that would require her to do 20 hours of community service and report periodically to the authorities in order to have the charges dismissed.

The incident occurred Friday while Headley and her son, Damone Buckman III, were waiting at a social services center in Brooklyn. A bystander took cellphone video of it, which they then posted on Facebook that same day. The video quickly drew attention online and sparked widespread outrage. By Sunday, it received extensive media coverage.

Headley, 23, had gone to the benefits center to inquire about receiving child care vouchers. She had waited for hours and was sitting on the floor when she apparently got into a dispute with a security guard.

That video, and a second video posted online, shows several people in uniform grappling with Headley, who is on the floor, and attempting to prevent the officers from taking Damone from her arms. The incident involved police officers and uniformed peace officers employed by the Human Resources Administration.

De Blasio first addressed the incident Monday afternoon, when he posted a message on Twitter, calling it disturbing and saying that the police department and the Human Resources Administration would “get to the bottom of what happened.”

On Tuesday, he posted another Twitter message, praising the Brooklyn district attorney’s office for its decision to drop the charges.

But while the mayor stuck to Twitter, other elected officials spoke out publicly. On Tuesday, the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, appeared to refer indirectly to the mayor when he said during a rally in support of Headley on the City Hall steps that “every leader in this city” had an obligation to speak out about the incident and to call for her release from Rikers Island.

De Blasio, who has showed himself loathe in the past to criticize the police, was quick to blame the peace officers, although he said that a review of the incident had not yet been completed and it was not clear what each of the officers had done.

“It’s unbelievable to me that people who have the title ‘peace officer’ would do this to a woman and her baby,” he said. “I believe that by the time the NYPD arrived, the situation was already out of hand and should not have been.”

Two peace officers have been placed on modified duty.

De Blasio has often refused to apologize for mistakes made by city agencies. But Wednesday, he tried to empathize with Headley. He used words such as “outraged” and phrases like “disgusted as a parent,” to describe his feelings.

“I’ve been in those benefit centers. I’ve talked to a lot of people in need in this city,” the mayor said. “Whatever was happening, there was no reason to get physical. She was not presenting a danger.”

The news conference centered on the mayor’s plan to shore up the city’s crumbling public housing system, which houses 400,000 low-income New Yorkers and faces a daunting $32 billion in unmet capital needs.

The plan, details of which The New York Times reported last month, aims to finance repairs to apartments by selling unused air rights and allowing private developers to construct residential buildings on underutilized land, like parking lots. It would also seek to include more than a third of public housing stock in a federal program that would hand over day-to-day management to private partners, while maintaining the affordability of those apartments.

The de Blasio administration also struck a deal with the New York City Housing Authority’s biggest union, which would allow caretakers and supervisors to work longer hours and weekends in order to make apartment repairs when residents are typically home.

The agency also expects to replace 297 of its lowest-performing boilers by 2026 and replace 405 elevators at 30 developments, where 58,000 residents live. NYCHA will also take measures to cut the rat population at its developments by half by the end of 2020.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/nyregion/deblasio-nypd-mom-baby-arrest.html" id="04183034-7742-30e6-a8d4-d6c6bd9bd13d">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — Since it became well publicized during the weekend, Mayor Bill de Blasio mostly kept silent about an incident last week in which law enforcement personnel at a Brooklyn government office ripped a 1-year-old boy from his mother’s arms and arrested her.

Days Later, Mayor Apologizes to Woman Whose Child Was Torn From Her Arms

That realization, in part, led Mayor Bill de Blasio to embrace an unconventional solution: Make Manhattan bigger.

To safeguard the area from the effects of climate change, including storm surges and rising sea levels, the city is proposing artificially extending the southern tip of Manhattan.

The idea would be to use landfill in front of the financial district and South Street Seaport to extend the coastline of the island by as much as 500 feet into the East River, creating a rising berm that would, at its highest point, be well above future sea levels.

The plan is similar to a 2013 proposal by de Blasio’s predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, who called for creating a development, much like Battery Park City, along the East River, which would have been at least partly financed by developers interested in building residential or office towers on the new land.

But de Blasio’s plan and an accompanying study were short on details, and the mayor said the city did not have the estimated $10 billion it would take to pay for it. It would also have to go through environmental reviews and would be subject to input from the community, all obstacles that could alter or block the plan.

The mayor said the project should be financed by the federal government, which he said was unlikely as long as President Donald Trump was in office, given Trump’s skeptical view of climate change.

De Blasio initially revealed the proposal in an online essay posted by New York Magazine on Wednesday night, headlined “My New Plan to Climate-Proof Lower Manhattan.” He wrapped the plan in the cloak of the Green New Deal, the proposal for a massive federal program to finance alternative energy technology and other initiatives aimed at building an ecologically sustainable economy, championed by, among others, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

De Blasio, a Democrat, has been toying with the idea of running for president, and since the start of the year he has made bold announcements aimed at gaining national attention. Earlier this year, he announced what he said was a universal health care system for city residents, but on closer scrutiny it amounted to a relatively small increase in the budget for the city hospital system.

The climate proposal, although couched in planet-saving terms, was largely a variation of earlier plans.

De Blasio said Thursday that he did not know what would go on the new land created under his plan. He said that it might be open space and parks or that it could also contain buildings.

“Our focus is not private-sector development as it was” in the previous administration, de Blasio said at a news conference on West Street. “Our focus is on resiliency.”

He called his plan “audacious,” adding, “We had to come to grips with the sheer magnitude of what had to be done.”

Margaret Chin, a councilwoman who represents lower Manhattan, said she was “sounding the alarm” about the potential for development on any new land that is created.

“You want to extend the shore line to protect the inland and not allow private developers to seize the opportunity to build tall buildings and take all the views,” Chin said. The area should remain as open space and the federal government should pay for resiliency measures, she added.

De Blasio’s plan also included some less ambitious elements for which the city has the financing. The city will spend $165 million to elevate the wharf and esplanade in Battery Park and to create a protective berm at the back of the park. And the city committed spending $200 million to build what officials called “flip-up barriers” along a nearly mile-long stretch of shoreline north of the Brooklyn Bridge, which could be activated to block a storm surge.

Construction of both those projects would begin in 2021.

“They’re certainly right to identify the climate and flooding risks to New York City and to lower Manhattan, but I question the extent they’re considering the impact on the rest of the city,” said Nilda Mesa, a former director of the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability under de Blasio, who is now an adjunct professor at Columbia University. “Water goes where it will and you cannot contain it. If you’re going to keep it from coming ashore in one place it still has to move and what does that mean for Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey and the Bronx?”

In pointing out the need for the plan, de Blasio emphasized the importance of lower Manhattan for the city and the country, citing the area’s $60 billion worth of property, and characterizing it as “one of the core centers of the American economy” that contains 1 out of every 10 jobs in New York City.

“The security of lower Manhattan should be a national priority,” the mayor said.

But Francisco Moya, a city councilman from Queens, called the city’s resiliency planning too “Manhattan-centric.”

“It can’t be a tale of two cities. The outer boroughs should not suffer because of rich development happening in more affluent areas,” Moya said in an interview. “The people of Queens pay taxes and we should not be ignored when it comes to the issue of climate change.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/nyregion/manhattan-climate-change-hurricane-sandy.html" id="34d3ab25-5de4-3e72-a8fc-3312c1a1d0e7">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — After Hurricane Sandy flooded lower Manhattan and caused massive damage to the city’s financial center, climate scientists agreed it was only a matter of time before a new superstorm would bring the same kind of damage — or worse.

How to Protect Manhattan from Climate Change? Make It Bigger.

But the proposed ban, backed by animal welfare advocates, has met an unexpected challenge from a diverse set of opponents, including black pastors and Hasidic leaders. They say a prohibition would fly in the face of centuries of religious and cultural tradition.

Black ministers have staged protests, saying that for many African-Americans, wearing furs is a treasured hallmark of achievement. Hasidic rabbis point to the many men who wear fur hats on the Sabbath. And fur shop owners and garment manufacturers have raised alarms over the potential loss of jobs and an attack on an industry with a deep history in New York.

With the council holding a hearing on the proposal Wednesday, the deep dissension was evident outside City Hall. Protesters yelled, “Put people first,” and counterprotesters responded, “How many animals have to die?”

Each side had celebrity power: The anti-fur movement was represented by Tim Gunn, the “Project Runway” style guru; the pro-fur crowd had Safaree Samuels, a rapper and television personality, who was wearing a lynx coat that he said he had bought for the event.

The bill being considered by the council would ban the sale of fur garments and accessories, but it would allow the sale of used fur garments and new apparel using fur from older garments. Violators would be subject to fines of $500 to $1,500, and any money made from selling banned fur would be subject to forfeiture. The bill would not ban wearing fur.

Los Angeles is the largest city in the country to have banned the sale of fur; other cities include San Francisco and West Hollywood, California. But New York City is the largest fur retail market in the United States, according to FurNYC, a trade group representing 130 fur retailers in the city. The 150 fur businesses in the city create 1,100 jobs and produce $400 million in revenue per year, according to the group.

Maria Reich, 43, chief executive of Reich Furs, a Manhattan-based manufacturer of fur coats, said a ban on fur sales would have a drastic effect on the 20 or so people she directly employs and an additional 30 contractors she uses to create her pieces.

“The morale is down. They are scared,” Reich said of her employees. “These are people who have a craft and have been working in this industry for 30 or 40 years. They don’t know what they will do next, and they have families to support.”

Reich Furs is on West 30th Street, in what is known by those who frequent the area as the Fur District. The company was started in the 1940s by the grandfather of Reich’s deceased husband. The business is in its fourth generation of family ownership.

“There’s a political agenda. If this ban happens, the leather industry will be attacked; the meat industry will be attacked,” Reich said. “There’s a slippery slope. Are politicians going to tell us what to do, what to wear and what to eat? It’s a little bigger than fur.”

Dan Mathews, a senior vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an advocacy group, said the city’s fur-making tradition should not impede a ban.

“Once in a while, we just take a look around and decide that certain practices should not be part of our modern society,” he said, “and electrocuting and skinning animals alive for a luxury product is something that just turns people’s stomach, and that’s why it’s going by the wayside.”

The bill was introduced by Johnson, the council speaker, and an enthusiastic animal lover who, in 2017, co-sponsored a bill that led to the ban of circuses using wild and exotic animals in the city. At the hearing Wednesday, he called the fur industry brutal and pointed to the cruel treatment of animals raised or killed for their pelts.

Johnson played a video showing animals living in cages and then being electrocuted or having their necks broken. “The evidence of cruelty in the fur industry is overwhelming,” he said.

Local furriers should “diversify” and embrace innovations in the fashion and garment industry that can take the place of fur. “There is no such thing as ‘ethical’ fur, or ‘ecological’ fur, or ‘excellent welfare’ fur,” Johnson said.

But it was unclear how much support the bill has in the City Council or when Johnson might seek to bring the measure up for a vote. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that he supported “the underlying idea” of a ban, but added that he was concerned about the effect on workers in the fur industry.

“I think if something happens here there has to be some sense of how to phase it in, in a way that really does try and protect some jobs,” de Blasio said in March.

Councilman Chaim Deutsch of Brooklyn said that he opposed the ban for several reasons, including that many Hasidic Jewish men wear hats made of fur, known as shtreimels or spodiks.

“If we ban fur and then you have people that are still out there wearing it, considering the fact that hate crime in New York City is on the rise, people will be targeted on the streets, saying, ‘Why are you wearing this if there’s a fur ban?’ ” Deutsch said.

In its current form, the bill includes an exemption for fur items worn as a “matter of religious custom,” but Deutsch was nonetheless wary.

“Today they’re going to ban fur, tomorrow our pants are going to start falling down because they’re going to ban leather, we’re not going to have belts,” he said. “We’re not going to have shoes. Once you start with one thing, where does it end? What is next? We can’t eat chicken? We can’t eat meat?”

For Mobilizing Preachers and Communities, a group of mostly black pastors who have come out against the ban, the opposition is more secularly based.

“In our culture, fur is a sign of status, achievement, that we’ve made it against all odds,” said the Rev. Johnnie Green Jr., pastor of Mount Neboh Baptist Church in Harlem, who leads the group of pastors opposing the ban. “Show up to any black church on a Sunday in the winter, and you will see a heap of mink coats.

“To ban the sale of fur in New York City, but allow it to be sold in Westchester, is culturally insensitive,” he added, referring to the suburbs north of the city.

Green owns a mink coat that hits below the waist and says he likes to wear it when he travels and on special occasions. “I wear it because I like the way it looks,” he said. “I like what it represents. I like the style.”

The pastor dismissed the argument against animal cruelty. “I’m more concerned about saving black lives,” he said. “When the activists are more concerned about saving black lives than black minks, let me know.”

Samuels, the rapper, is known for his affinity for furs. “My stylist let me know about it, and I was like, a fur ban in New York City? How could they do that in one of the fashion capitals, if not the fashion capital, of the world?” he said.

Asked for the price of his new coat, he turned to his stylist. “How much was this one, Messiah?”

“Fifty-five thousand?” he asked.

“Furs are expensive,” Samuels concluded. “It’s an expensive habit.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="0cbfd22a-7747-3432-a058-a712d1357c1d" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/nyregion/fur-ban-nyc-sales.html">The New York Times</a>.

Proposed Fur Ban in New York Pits Animal Welfare Advocates Against Black Ministers

NEW YORK — As Corey Johnson, speaker of the New York City Council, urged his colleagues Wednesday to ban the sale of fur in the city, he argued that it was the “moral thing to do.”

Proposed fur ban in New York pits animal welfare advocates against black ministers

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Pulse Ghana is the most followed news and entertainment platform, informing and engaging young Ghanaians round the clock, providing updates by the hour.

William Neuman and Jeffery C. Mays

Articles written by the author

Days Later, Mayor Apologizes to Woman Whose Child Was Torn From Her Arms

How to Protect Manhattan from Climate Change? Make It Bigger.

Proposed fur ban in New York pits animal welfare advocates against black ministers