By Tom Tracy
Parting shots The downstairs neighbor of a Mill Island cop is suing the city for putting him in uniform after their 17-month-old child was wounded when his gun accidentally discharged inside his home. Officials allege that Police Officer Patrick Venetek, an Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran, was cleaning his service weapon inside his Mayfair Drive South apartment on the afternoon of February 7 when the gun misfired. The bullet punched through the floor into the downstairs apartment, where it struck little Jonathan Porcellini in the arm. The toddler was left with a small flesh wound, although it was too early to tell if Justin suffered any nerve damage, his mother said at her lawyer’s office on Thursday. Her attorney, Roy Gordon, said the lawsuit had been filed on February 14. A negligence suit that will “highlight the inadequate training of young police officers” will be filed later with the help of the City Controller’s office, he explained. Gordon added that his suit would also “bring into question the quality of background checks performed by the New York City Police Department” – inferring that Venetek’s mental state following his assignment at Abu Ghraib will be called into question. On the day of the accident, Venetek, who is currently assigned to the 1st Precinct in Manhattan, maintained that the gun went off after it fell off his table. According to published reports, Venetek admitted that he was cleaning his gun with “available light” because Con Edison had just shut off his electricity. No charges had been filed against Venetek as this paper went to press. Venetek and the NYPD will be named as co-defendants when the suit is ultimately filed, Gordon said. As a rule, city officials do not comment on pending litigation. Committed to escaping A mentally ill murderer facing a re-commitment hearing which would land him back in a secure psychiatric facility he tried to break out of played a mind game on the judge presiding over his case – claiming that his plan to escape the institution proved his sanity. Despite his claims, a judge found the patient, identified only as Vadim B. in court records to be too mentally ill to be on his own. During a proceeding held on February 5, officials said that Vadim, a Brooklyn transplant from Arizona had killed his mother with an iron back in 1999. Although he was indicted for murder, he was committed to the Kingsboro Psychiatric Center after it was determined that he was suffering from auditory hallucinations. Between 2000 to 2006, Vadim had been determined to be no longer a danger to himself or others and weaned off his medications. That’s when he began exhibiting “bizarre” behavior and started bullying other patients in the hospital, according to court testimony. In August, 2006, Vadim was charged with assaulting hospital staff as he tried to escape from Kingsboro. He reportedly had several thousand dollars on him as he escaped. At his hearing, Vadim asserted that the money, as well as his “goal oriented” escape plan, proved that his bid for freedom was not impulsive or the result of acute psychosis and contended that prosecutors had failed to “show he suffered from a dangerous mental disorder.” Judge Matthew J. D’Emic disagreed, claiming that “even if this analysis were true, it ignores the reality of his actions of that year where certain ‘anti-social strategies’ were noted.” “Taken in their totality, this behavior clearly shows that the defendant suffers from a psychiatric disturbance, manifested by paranoia and dangerous impulsivity,” D’Emic wrote in his conclusions. We’re all human — even on the subway A judge recently shot down the MTA’s bid to quash a transgender woman’s lawsuit, which claimed that three NYCTA employees spoke a “steady stream of discriminatory, transgender-phobic epithets” at her. The biased tongue-lashing occurred for ten minutes as the plaintiff, Tracy Bumpus, a 40-year-old male who has a female gender identity, entered the Nostrand Avenue A station on July 19, 2007 and claimed that she was having problems with her MetroCard. After she made a complaint with the NYCTA, she returned to the station to be confronted by the train station employees again, who all pointed and laughed at her, according to a complaint reviewed by Judge Robert Miller. The NYCTA employees contend that the suit should be dismissed because Bumpus did not file her complaint within the legal 120-day window and that she did not identify the three employees by name, calling at least one of them a “Jane Doe.” NYCTA attorneys also claimed that their employees were exempt from discrimination claims in cases when the New York City Human Rights Law is used, according to a recent amendment of the New York City Public Authorities Law. Miller refuted these arguments, claiming that the Human Rights Law which “affords protection to transgender people in New York City” trumped their motions. “By riding the subway, a transgender person doesn’t become less of a person,” Miller wrote in his findings. NYC Transit’s lawyers contended the agency was immune from liability under the city Human Rights Law. But Miller ruled, “By riding the subway, a transgender person doesn’t become less of a person and lose the protection of the Human Rights Law.” Bumpus, an anatomical male at birth who has assumed a female identity, said she was trying to catch an A train in Brooklyn in July 2006 when her MetroCard malfunctioned. When she sought assistance, a female transit worker called her a “dyke” and ridiculed her, the suit said.
