CITYWIDE

Police Break Up a $1.5m Insurance Scam

The police broke up a $1.5 million insurance scam yesterday with eight arrests in New York City. The men, who all owned limousine or livery cab companies, were separately involved with a scheme where they registered their cars in Albany to avoid the city’s high insurance premiums over the last two years. Six men were charged with insurance fraud in the second degree, and two others were charged with insurance fraud in the third degree.

— Staff Reporter of the Sun

FBI Reports Decrease In New York Crime

Crime in New York City fell 7.2% in the first six months of 2006, according to the FBI’s midyear report on national crime. Meanwhile, violent crime rose 3.7% across the country. Murders, however, increased by 11.8%, from 238 to 266, the report says. Police officials have said that number is inflated by an abnormally large number of assaults reclassified as homicides because victims died from their wounds. Property crime, larceny, and car thefts had the most dramatic decreases, dropping 8.6%, 8.8%, and 12.8% respectively, the report says.

— Staff Reporter of the Sun

Yoko Ono’s Driver Detained by INS

Immigration officials have issued a warrant to detain Yoko Ono’s driver, jailed on $250,000 bail on charges of trying to blackmail her for $2 million, while they decide whether the Turkish native is in this country legally. The driver, Koral Karsan, 50, of Amityville, N.Y., was arrested Wednesday and charged with attempted grand larceny.

— Associated Press

Clinton Calls for Funding for 9/11 Workers

Senator Clinton is stepping up pressure on President Bush to boost funding to monitor and treat workers who were exposed to poisonous toxins while they toiled at ground zero in the weeks after September 11, 2001. At a meeting at Hunter College yesterday, medical officials from Mt. Sinai Medical Center and the Fire Department told Bush administration officials and local representatives that money for federal monitoring and treatment programs would run out by the spring or summer. Mrs. Clinton and Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Vito Fossella, and Jerrold Nadler, joined by an emotional appeal from a stricken former ground zero worker, then publicly called on Mr. Bush to allocate more funding in his budget next month.

— Staff Reporter of the Sun

Jury Finds the City Violated the Constitution

The city violated the Constitution for a few months when its police department created a written policy in May 2001 to require those arrested at demonstrations to be locked up overnight rather than issued desk appearance tickets, a jury found Monday. But the same jury of eight people greatly diminished any potential damages when it rejected a claim that the police department had enforced an unwritten policy to lock up demonstrators for more than two years before it put the policy in writing.

— Associated Press

STATEWIDE

Machines May Not Be Ready for 2007 Election

In an indication that new electronic voting machines may not be implemented for the 2007 general election in New York, the state board of elections discussed possible back-up plans at a meeting in Albany yesterday. The state board is considering changing the certification goal of February to a later date because the proposed machines still don’t fit the state’s requirements, according to a spokesperson for the state board, Lee Daghlian. “It doesn’t look promising for new machines in 2007,” he said.

— Special to the Sun

New Executive Director Of Republican State Committee Appointed

Charting a course away from Governor Pataki, the chairman of the New York Republican State Committee has tapped a political operative from Pennsylvania to be the party’s executive director. Allison Coccia, 32, from Harrisburg, Pa., will be running the day-today operations of the party, which is reeling from historic losses in the November election.