Today we hit up the courts in downtown Manhattan.
It was the opening of the murder trial of NY rapper Freaky Zeeky who was injured in a gun battle in May 2003 that left him injured and his bodyguard dead allegedly at the hands of Chauncey Dillon, 29. Our whole RW1 class went down into the courtroom and watched from the very beginning as they went through the jury selection process and everything. Wow, that’s amazingly boring. They have about 20 or so people and when they call them forward, they’re allowed to say if they have any moral objections or something else that would prevent them from being impartial. Some people claimed that their jobs would prevent them, and one guy said that he got queasy at the sight of gory violence. Once that was over, the trial got underway. Opening statements were presented by both sides, and the prosecution got one witness, some surveyor/inspector from the DA’s office before a recess was called at 1 pm.
By that time we headed over to Luke Rettler’s office, chief of the Homicide Unit at the DA’s office. He gave us a pretty interesting account of drug gang, particularly one that he helped bring down about 10 years ago called “YTC” or “Young Talented Criminals” (who were involved in selling Yellow-Top Cocaine) that operated in the Harlem and the UWS area. He had a slide presentation with mugs of all the thugs and surveillance photos of them selling cocaine on the street. All of them had various street names that he knew, like “O-Dog” and less creative ones like “Timmy”. Timmy apparently was a real all-star member of YTC. He was referred to as a “pitcher,” someone pretty low on the drug gang food chain, who was responsible for handing off drugs to buyers. In drug lingo he was also referred to as a “Dixie Cup,” meaning that if he got caught or killed, that the gang could just throw him away without a second thought. Apparently this guy during gun battles (eight that he was involved in) managed to shoot himself six times, and also burned down an apartment building when he lit some candles inside because he was cold. And when he finally was caught and made deals with Rettler’s office, and Rettler did a sort of pre-trial rehearsal with him in the courtroom and told him that he had to swear on a Bible, Timmy stole a Bible from the hotel that he was staying in and brought it to his court appearance. Not quite the quickest of cats. And apparently the jury believed him basically because he “wasn’t smart enough to lie.”
Tomorrow, for my story assignment for the week me and a few others are assigned to a Brooklyn court. We’ll be there all day and then have a story due at midnight. Wednesday I’m covering a story for Wired News, which should be cool.
This past weekend I went up to Hartford again to take care of Martin while Heidi was away in Switzerland. She was supposed to come back on Sunday night but she got held up in Amsterdam for some reason. Martin worked all day Saturday, so I spent most of the weekend watching Star Trek TNG: Season 3 on my laptop and then when he was home, playing FIFA 2004 on his XBox. We hit up Frank Pepe’s for dinner on Sunday night in New Haven — man is that good pizza.
My ride home on the Chinese bus turned out to be a van, and a couple people were left standing at the curb when they hadn’t bought their online tickets to guarantee them a space. Our driver (who provided the great, but yet somewhat scary quote for the subject line) was this energetic guy who kept getting pissed at the traffic and would radio in with the other Chinese bus drivers every so often. One thing nice about the van is that he dropped me on 125th/2nd Ave instead of going down to 86th, which puts me closer to my apt. We ended up hitting traffic due to construction and an accident in a few places and so what should have been a 2 hr trip ended up being a 3.5 hr trip. The driver told me a few interesting tidbits about Fung Wah Transport:
– If you buy five one-ways in the span of six months, you are a priority passenger and get a guaranteed spot.
– If you buy ten one-ways in the span of six months, you get a free ticket.
– Hartford’s business has been rapidly increasing as of late. They are the only Chinese bus company to serve Hartford (they stop en route from NY to Boston).
Books finished in the last couple weeks:
V.S. Naipaul’s Beyond Belief
9/11 Commission Report
Randy Kennedy’s Subwayland
All excellent. Given that I have a 2 hour round trip commute to Crown Heights, I can tear through books pretty quick.
