WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

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BULLETIN

WPCNR POLICE GAZETTE. June 12,2010:

White Plains Police Officer Michael Perry, 43, died Saturday afternoon  in the line of duty, of causes unknown, shortly after he had pursued and arrested a man observed by a detective in the Macy’s department store at The Galleria on suspicion of shoplifting at about 4:45 P.M. Saturday.

Officer Perry on foot patrol, responded to a call for assistance from a detective attempting to stop a man the detective observed attempting to steal merchandise from Macy’s. The suspect fled down Court Street and Officer Perry pursued him on foot. 

After apprehending the suspect, Officer Perry handcuffed the suspect in the vicinity of Court Street and Main Street after a foot-chase, followed by a physical struggle, according to Public Safety Commissioner David Chong.

WHITE PLAINS POLICE OFFICER MICHAEL PERRY

Then, Commissioner Chong explained,Officer Perry walked the suspect to police headquarters a distance of  three city blocks, and in the process of booking the suspect, Ricky Prior, 53, (no known address) at the public safety building, Officer Perry experienced chest pains, and while being walked to an ambulance, collapsed, according to Public Safety Commissioner David Chong at a news conference Saturday evening.He was pronounced dead at 5:50 P.M. at White Plains Hospital Medical Center.

Cause of death awaits the Medical Examiner’s report, Chong said. Funeral Arrangements have not been made.

Prior, now in custody, the Commissioner said, may be charged with petty larceny or resisting arrest, but the investigation is ongoing at this time. Chong described Pryor as being “a career criminal, whose rap sheet shows over 300 prior arrests.”

Officer Perry was a 7-1/2 year veteran of the department, and prior to starting his White Plains position, was a member of the State Environmtal Police. Commissioner Chong characterized him as “a hero,” and said “He is a great cop.” Chong said Officer Perry is the first White Plains officer to die in the line of duty in over 60 years. He was a resident of Cortlandt Manor.  He leaves his wife and two twin sons, aged 6,

Commissioner Chong, in opening the news conference, said “This is a very sad night for the White Plains Police Department.”

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WPCNR CITY HALL CIRCUIT. By John F. Bailey. June11,2010:

White Plains  attorney Albert Pirro of The Pirro Group told WPCNR today he has asked the White Plains administration to delay collecting the 15% payment of medical premiums due for retirees  required to have those payments in to the city by July 10, or possibly face cancellation of their medical benefits.

Pirro contends those retirees beginning work with the city before July 1,1995 – should be granted a moratorium on paying their premium share until after his pending lawsuit on behalf of retirees affected is considered by the courts. Pirro contends the city collecting the new payments based on new legislation,  violates the City Charter and the union contract in effect at the time. He told WPCNR he expected to file a Notice of Claim Friday (today)

Pirro said he had asked the Mayor’s office to call a Special Meeting before July 1, (when medical payments are due), to enact a moratorium on collecting the  premiums while the court decides whether the city violated due process by allegedly violating the Charter and union contracts,  as Pirro contends.

Pirro said the Mayor’s Office had advised him there was no time to call a Special Meeting until after July 1, effectively making the legislation “live.” He also said requests for copies of the union contracts in effect  in the mid-90s from the city had so far not been met, for reasons unknown.

Pirro  represents a growing group of retirees of a class action suit on behalf of a newly formed group of those retirees affected, the White Plains Retirees Association. He told WPCNR he was filing a Notice of Claim today, Friday, and would be seeking an injunction to stop the city from collecting the new medical premiums until after his upcoming suit is adjudicated.

Pirro said the Mayor’s Office had indicated there was no time to hold a Special Meeting until after July 1 to amend the legislation, in effect, making the payments effective.

97 Police Retirees in Suit.

Pirro reported that 97 retired police personnel had signed on to be apart of the class action to date. 

He said that many of those persons he has talked to are unable to afford the $1,000 to $2,396 premium share of the medical premiums the new city policy requires. He added that many said they could not afford to pay the premium share (from $275 to $600 every three months depending respectively on single person or family plan coverage)  given a month’s notice.(The new requirement was enacted just two weeks ago, March 24.)

Fear of Loss of Insurance

Mr. Pirro pointed out that in interviewing retirees, they had  advised him that many had pre-existing conditions, which if their medical insurance was cancelled by the city, they felt they would not be able to find insurance with another provider.

The city in letters sent out the end of last week to retirees affected  said unless  the first quarter premium is received by the retiree by July 10, “may result in the cancellation of your health insurance with the City of White Plains.”

Before 1995 Hires in CSEA and Teamsters Protected

Originally, the Mayor’s Office reported to WPCNR that all retirees working for the city before July 1, 1995, would be required to pay 15% of their health insurance premiums.

 Thursday afternoon, in checking out reports from retirees who went to work for the city before that day, that they did not have to pay the 15% because they were part of the recent CSEA and Teamsters union contract settlement, WPCNR was told by the Mayor’s Office that this is correct.

As part of the retroactive CSEA and Teamsters contracts, those retirees (hired by city before July 1, 1995) were granted immunity from the 15% hit the police and fire union retirees are taking, in effect, making the police and fire retirees who joined the city before July 1, 1995 taking a direct hit ($1,102 to $2,396 average)  on their pension incomes.

The CSEA and Teamster unions, though, by settling with the city agreed to forego most of the negotiated raises in 2008-2009, 2009-10 and 2010-11, and agreed that new employees joining the city henceforth would pay 15% of medical premiums.

It was not disclosed at the time of those settlements that retirees who started working for the city before July 1, 1995, who retired in 2008 or 2009 were not forced to pay the 15% as were their union counterparts in the police and fire ranks.

Pirro informed WPCNR that neither the police nor fire unions have copies of the union contracts in effect prior to mid-1995, the key date the new medical premium requirement works from, and is seeking copies of those contracts from the city. As of Friday, Pirro said the city had not furnished the old contracts. 

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B U L L E T I N

WPCNR POLICE GAZETTE. By John F. Bailey. June 10, 2010: Police are actively seeking two individuals suspected of opening fire on each other Wednesday afternoon, the Commissioner of Public Safety David Chong told WPCNR at 2 P.M.

The Commissioner gave the first official details on Wednesday afternoon’s exchange of gunfire between two individuals at the intersection of South Lexington Avenue, Dennison Street and Orawaupum Street.

South Lexington Avenue: Scene of Wednesday Gunplay.

The Commissioner said “This was a dispute between two individuals. It remains an open investigation. No one was hurt or injured (from the gunfire).” He said the police were not sure of what started the dispute and that up to 6 shots were fired. The incident unfolded at 3:50 P.M. Wednesday afternoon and the police received numerous calls on 911 reporting the gunfire.

The Commissioner said the police have two suspects they  are seeking, at this time, but he did not issue descriptions.

The individuals sought were most likely “armed and dangerous,” the Commissioner cautioned.

The police confidential tip line, 422-6200 is open for individuals to call with information that would lead to apprehension of the suspects.

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In addition, special recognition was given to 14 Seniors – Diana Batanaro, Regina Brady, Dennis Halpern, Nam Kha, Stephen Lo, Kelly Martinez-Castro,

Silvana Mazurek, Martin O’Donnell, Anthony  Pescara, Rodolfo Ramirez, David Romero, Nayib Valdivia, Michael Valentino, Arthur Vizoskie –  4 Juniors –  Andrew Cignarella, Rachel Grafman, Marisa Rosario, Kate Weiner –  Sophomore Kristen Greto and Freshman Marisa Barzelatto  for outstanding service of 350 or more hours during their high school careers.                                                               

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WPCNR NEWS & COMMENT. By John F. Bailey. June 9, 2010:  In deleting old articles, I came across this column of mine published in 2005.

I was struck by the somewhat bumbling  orchestration of the BP propaganda and coverage of the  story that is trying to sell acceptance of the Gulf Crisis (“we’re trying as hard as we can,” “We are in charge,” “I have to know whose a– to kick,” “We will make it right,” “The oil leak will be reduced to a trickle on Monday,” “There is no significant quantities of oil underwater,” and the same.  All of which are carefully nuanced to make the American public feel better about something no one in their right mind feels is under control, or is fixable for a long time to come.

In reading and hearing the onslaught of propoganda and mind-clouding  statements from BP, the Obama Administration, NOAA, the Coast Guard, and all the king’s men trying to put the Gulf back together again, it is worth noting how the principles of propaganda and how to make it effective are being employed today. I set these forth so the public can, though they may accept the statements of their leaders, have to question themselves, “why am I accepting what they tell me as true, when I can see with my own eyes, it is not.”

The following principles and techniques are not new, but for the persons willing to face the truth of how we are given information today, you can see how all the powerful and ineffectual people today retain their power and persuade us to accept the unacceptable. The state does this. Our Senators and Congresspersons use these principles. Our County government and legislature, and yes, our city. Read them, so you may recognize when you are being played:

 The “Playbook” sets forth the principles of propaganda. They are from the one person who perfected propaganda to an evil art that worked chillingly well. These are the principals of how to lead an educated, democratic nation of decent people, to do one’s will for evil.  Please note the author listed at the end.

The function of propaganda lies in calling the masses’ attention to certain facts, processes and necessities, whose significance is for the first time placed within their field of vision.

The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct. Its effect, for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the intellect.

All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be.

The more modest its intellectual weight, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be.

The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance. The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small,
but their power of forgetting is enormous.

Effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.

The function of propaganda is not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.

As soon as our own propaganda admits so much as a glimmer of right on the other side, the foundation for doubt in our own right has been laid. The masses are then in no position to distinguish where others injustice ends and our own begins.

It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.

The masses are slow moving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember them.

When there is a change, it must not alter the content of what the propaganda is driving at, but in the end must always say the same thing. For instance, a slogan must be presented from different angles, but the end of all remarks must always and immutably be the slogan itself. Only in this way can the propaganda have a unified and complete effect.

All advertising, whether in the field of business or politics, achieves success through the continuity and sustained uniformity of its application. The cleverest trick used in propaganda was to accuse your enemies of doing themselves what you are doing.

Propaganda is a means to an end. Its purpose is to lead the people to an understanding that will allow them to willingly and without internal resistance devote themselves to the tasks and goals of a superior leadership.

Propaganda is the sharpest weapon in conquering the state, in defending and building the state.

Propaganda in the end, miraculously makes the unpopular popular, enabling even a government’s most difficult decisions to secure the resolute support of the people.

There are no (opposing) parties in any longer. How could we have overcome them had we not waged a campaign for years that persuaded people of their weaknesses, harms and disadvantages? Their final elimination was only the result of what the people had already realized. Our propaganda weakened these parties.

Propaganda is a matter of productive fantasy. It requires alert attention to the events of the day, and a complete knowledge of the soul of the people for only then can one speak in a way that the people will understand. Propaganda must be the science of the soul of the people. It requires an organized and purposeful system if it is to be successful in the long run.

The effective propagandist must be a master of the art of speech, of writing, of journalism. He must have the gift to use the major methods of influencing public opinion such as the press, film, and radio to serve his ideas and goals.

Effective propaganda avoids any form of bureaucracy. It requires lightning-fast decisions, alert creativity and inexhaustible inventiveness.

References
Text is from the chapter on propaganda in Adolf Hitler’s autobiography,
“Mein Kampf”, and  a speech from Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph
Goebbels, at Nuremberg in 1934.
Many of the quotes have been shortened and edited for clarity. The content or
focus of each sentence has not been changed. The reader is encouraged to
check the original texts.