By David Sims

February 26, 2010 – A Housing Authority Caretaker who was assaulted by residents but then had internal disciplinary charges filed against her, which she claimed came in retaliation for her benefits application, was exonerated Feb. 3.

“I came to work on Feb. 26, 2009, and I was jumped on the job by some tenants that live here,” Teresa Roberts said in a phone interview. “The HA denied my claim and then pressed charges against me, trying to take my job.”

Kept Adding Charges
Ms. Roberts was charged by the HA with six separate violations: two for allegedly assaulting and verbally harassing a resident, and four for allegedly making threats to the same resident on the phone, all during the summer of 2009. When two of the phone charges were dismissed by the arbitrator for being too vague, the HA filed two more phone-threat charges with more specific details.

When witnesses testified against her in the arbitration hearing, the case fell apart, said Ms. Roberts’ attorney Liam Castro, of Isaacs, Devasia, Castro & Wien LLP. “It turned out that the people who she was alleged to have assaulted had criminal charges against them for having attacked her son, and pending charges for having assaulted her,” he said.

“All of her alleged misconduct allegedly occurred after these two incidents, where she was attacked and her son was attacked,” he continued. “I said it sounded like the charging parties were looking for leverage against her… HA chose to pursue it; they said they had a tape of Ms. Roberts making threats.”

HA officials tried to introduce the audio tape of an alleged threat made by Ms. Roberts in the arbitration hearing, but a witness testified that the alleged victim had falsified the recording to make it sound like a threat.

‘She Feared for Her Life’
“I listened to the tape,” said Mr. Castro. “It seemed to be a venting situation. [Ms. Roberts] said, ‘I can’t rest until these people are gone, until they’re in the grave.’ What she seemed to be saying was, ‘I fear for my life.’”

A witness then testified that the alleged victim had filed the charges against Ms. Roberts in an effort to get her to drop criminal charges relating to the assault in February. The witness also said that the alleged victim had admitted to her that she had failed to instigate a fight with Ms. Roberts that she hoped would buttress her charges.

Mr. Castro moved for all of the charges to be dismissed, but before the arbitrator ruled, the HA withdrew them outright. “To me, the charges that were brought by these two residents were not thoroughly investigated, not by a longshot,” he said.

Ms. Roberts said she was pleased by the verdict but was still fighting for the benefits she was owed by the HA under the union assault clause provision, which pays for the difference between her salary and Worker’s Compensation benefits for a maximum of 18 months.

Claims Union Hasn’t Helped
“I’ve been out of work almost a year. I had neck injuries, an injury to my back, my right knee was injured, my right arm was hurt,” she said. She also claims that her union, Teamsters Local 237, has failed to help her in her fight with the HA.

“On numerous occasions I have requested Local 237 assistance with this move by HA to violate my contractual rights, to no avail,” she said in a letter to the HA director at the union.

“She needs Local 237’s help to obtain the benefits she deserves for being assaulted while at work,” Mr. Castro added. “[It] has not given her the representation she deserves.”

By Tommy Hallissey

May 29, 2009 – After the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association threatened to sue the Department of Correction over its handling of at least 10 cases of swine flu on Rikers Island, the agency May 21 decided to screen all inmates and take other steps to safeguard officers’ health.

A day before the lawsuit was to be filed, COBA received a letter from DOC Senior Deputy Commissioner John J. Antonelli that said the department would heed many of the recommendations of the union, prompting COBA President Norman Seabrook to shelve the lawsuit.

Preventive Steps
Correction is now screening all inmates, distributing masks and latex gloves to Correction Officers who want them, reducing unnecessary court appearances, using what had been closed facilities on Rikers Island, and sanitizing jails where there have been infections. It has also created a task force to look at other possible precautions.

“I appreciate the Office of Labor Relations intervening upon my request and responding to this crisis,” Mr. Seabrook said. “It is unfortunate that Correction Officers are treated as second class citizens in the City of New York by the Mayor’s Office.”

Earlier in the week, he had responded angrily to the lack of action after four confirmed cases of swine flu and four probable ones were found in a single Rikers Island jail.

‘A Feeding Frenzy’
“The swine flu is a feeding frenzy at Rikers Island,” Mr. Seabrook said because of the close quarters.

A Correction Department source said that the inmate who developed the first case of swine flu at Rikers had been in the prison almost a month and likely came into contact with about 1,000 different people, including inmates and staff, while incarcerated. That inmate entered the jail on April 28 through the Brooklyn courts and was ultimately held at the Anna M. Kross Center. Mr. Seabrook called for portions of that jail to be shut down temporarily to stop the spread of the disease.

Correction Department spokesman Stephen Morello said that those portions of exposed areas of the jail were quarantined.

Mr. Seabrook, though, said at a May 19 press conference after his meeting with Correction Commissioner Martin F. Horn, that not enough was being done to protect Correction Officers from the dangers of the disease.

Predicts Spread to Courts
“We’ve asked the City of New York to implement certain policies and procedures that would help limit the spread of this bug and they have refused at this time,” he said. “They are not negotiating in good faith and they have to understand that this bug is going to affect thousands of people eventually.”

He said it would spread from Rikers Island to the court system.

Mayor Bloomberg fired back at Mr. Seabrook in a separate press conference that day. After praising him as a union leader, he said, “If he is an epidemiologist, it’s the first time I’ve heard of it.” The union had contrasted Correction’s wait-and-see response to the greater urgency shown by the Department of Education. In the second wave of the disease, 19 city schools were shuttered in a week after it claimed the life of a Queens Assistant Principal.

Move Bail Hearings to Rikers?
To prevent the rapid spread of the disease, the union asked the city to expedite bail hearings by having them on Rikers Island. The union says this change, which would require the city to have judges at the jail compound, would reduce the amount of time most inmates would spend at the facility.

COBA attorney Richard J. Koehler, a former Correction Commissioner, said this had been done before during a tuberculosis scare in the 1980s. “They are not treating it like an emergency in the jails,” he said. “They have in other areas but not in the jails.”

The union has also suggested that the department distribute masks to Correction Officers; the department agreed to do so. Mr. Morello said that because of the health scare all new inmates would now receive a health screening.

Mr. Koehler countered that the health screenings were given after the inmates had already been exposed to other inmates in a holding pen. Mr. Morello also said that every inmate would be examined for flu-like symptoms. Mobility of prisoners in parts of the jail where sick inmates are housed will be minimized.

Mr. Morello would not say how many cases there would have to be before the Correction Department would be willing to shut portions of Rikers Island.

“I’m not saying shut down Rikers altogether,” Mr. Seabrook said. “What I am saying is make sure we are being treated equally and fairly, close half of the Anna M. Kross Center, reopen the other two jails, one in Queens and one in Brooklyn, house those inmates there, decontaminate the facility and then start to put them back there as we know it is safe to do.”

By Liz Robbins

May 21, 2009 – The city shut two more school buildings in Queens on Wednesday and another charter school decided to cancel classes amid a sharp increase in flulike illnesses that brought the total to 30 closed schools across the four boroughs.

As the number of cases rose, worried parents flooded hospital waiting rooms with their children as officials tried to exercise caution in shutting more schools.

Since the swine flu virus first surfaced last month at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, Queens, which had 69 confirmed cases, schools have been a major incubator of the virus. After a brief respite the strain, formally known as H1N1, re-emerged, leading 24 city schools to close in the last week. In addition, six more private and parochial schools in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan elected to shut down because of the rising numbers of ailing students.

By Wednesday afternoon, the city closed P.S. 242 in Flushing and P.S. 130 in Bayside, a building that also includes part of P.S 993, which offers special education. The New York City Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries industries, which shares a building with a South Bronx elementary charter school also closed Wednesday. The charter school had closed on Tuesday.

Despite the 201 confirmed cases of the virus in New York City, most have been mild and there has been only one confirmed death from the virus, that of a 55-year-old educator. The funeral for Mitchell Wiener, an assistant principal at I.S. 238 in Hollis, Queens, who died of complications from swine flu on Sunday, was held this afternoon in Flushing.

I.S. 238 is the only school in the city where students — four of them — have confirmed cases of the new strain of virus. The criteria for closing a school because of concerns about swine flu has become a point of contention with educators and parents, and one that the city has yet to spell out.

“I know people would like there to be a perfect formula where you can push a button and decide,” Dt. Thomas R. Frieden, the departing city health commissioner, said at an afternoon news conference. “It has to do with how many kids are sick, for how long they’ve been sick, what proportion of the school that represents, how that’s changed from day to day. We’ve seen different patterns.”

The United Federation of Teachers has been monitoring absentism in the schools because of the flulike symptoms and said it planned to hold a news conference on Thursday to discuss its findings.

The effect of the increased school closings has become evident in the crowded hospital waiting rooms over the past few days, said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “While there are abnormal number of people going to the hospital, who are worried, virtually none, a very tiny percentage of them have any symptoms whatsoever,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

Alan Aviles, the chief executive of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, said that across the system, there has been a 20 percent increase in emergency room visits by adults and a 50 percent rise among children. The greatest volume of patients was at Elmhurst Hospital Center and Queens Hospital Center, Mr. Aviles said.

On Tuesday, a tent was erected outside of Queens Hospital to act as a field triage unit, “simply because there were so many parents,” Mr. Aviles said, though its was taken down on Wednesday.

The National Pediatric Center in Corona was packed a line of with parents and young children that spilled onto the sidewalk on Wednesday afternoon, and a half-dozen strollers were parked at the door.

Sandra Neira, 26, who wanted her son Manuel, 5, examined because of a cough and slight cold, said she was told she had a wait of a couple of hours.

Ms. Neira said her son’s school, P.S. 143, told her to have him examined and to return with a doctor’s note.

“It’s just a little cough,” she said. “But it’s better to be careful.”

Dario Centorcelli, a spokesman for Elmhurst Hospital Center, said the hospital was able to handle the volume.

“The range is probably from people coming in for precautions or people with low grade fevers, kids that may be sick for one reason or another,” Mr. Centorcelli said.

One child who was treated at Elmhurst Hospital did die, Mr. Centorcelli said, but preliminary tests returned Tuesday night from New York City’s Department of Health showed that the 16-month old infant, Jonathan Zamora Castillo, of Corona, Queens, did not have the H1N1 virus. As a precaution, tissue specimens were sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to rule out the strain as a definitive cause.

As the virus continued to spread in schools, the mayor and health commissioner on Wednesday addressed concerns about the spread of the flu at Rikers Island, where there were four inmates with confirmed cases of the swine flu, and four more probable cases. Last weekend, some inmates had reported flulike symptoms. pending.

Although the mayor said that there was no indication the virus had spread at Rikers, the union for the corrections officers was wary. The Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association had asked for the city to shut down the affected area of Rikers or at least move some inmates to other locations to isolate the sick and prevent transmission. In addition, it had wanted a complete sanitation of the facility.

But when the Department of Corrections did not acquiesce, the union threatened a lawsuit and on Tuesday filed a letter of complaint with the city Department of Labor accusing the Department of Correction of maintaining an unsafe working environment at Rikers.

“Our objective is to reduce the number of transmissions and to protect the correction officers,” said Richard Koehler, the chief counsel for the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, who said he intends to file the suit on Friday.

“We want a task force set up,” Mr. Koehler added. “We want independent medical people to do screening on the island; we don’t want to be sitting around without a plan.”

A spokesman for the Department of Corrections said it did have a plan in place, which includes screening every new inmate for symptoms, checking prisoners who seek medical attention for swine flu, and limiting the circulation of inmates in areas where any had been infected.

“I’m not going to comment on the complaint that they filed,” the spokesman, Stephen J. Morello, said. “I would say that we continue to take aggressive steps against the flu and we assess those steps on a day to day basis. This is all part of the plan we developed and implemented in close cooperation with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

By David Brown and Robin Shulman

May 20, 2009 – A survey of people hospitalized because of swine flu in California has raised the possibility that obesity is as much of a risk factor for serious complications from the flu as diabetes, heart disease and pregnancy, all known to raise a person’s risk.

In all, about two-thirds of the California patients had some underlying medical condition, according to a report yesterday in the weekly bulletin of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nationwide, 47 states and the District have reported 5,469 cases and six deaths since the start of the outbreak in late April, according to the CDC’s count. Yesterday, officials in Missouri reported a seventh U.S. death — that of a 44-year-old man who had no underlying medical problems, wire services reported.

“We were surprised by the frequency of obesity among the severe cases that we’ve been tracking,” said Anne Schuchat, one of the CDC epidemiologists managing the outbreak. She said scientists are “looking into” the possibility that obese people should be at the head of the line along with other high-risk groups if a swine flu vaccine becomes available.

Other studies have shown that pregnant women are also at higher risk for serious influenza infection, especially in the third trimester, when the fetus and womb compress the lower parts of the lungs. This makes it harder to breathe deeply and cough forcefully; it may also alter blood flow in the chest. A similar thing may be occurring in severely overweight people, some experts speculated.

The average age of the 30 Californians hospitalized for swine flu was 27.5 years. Nearly three-quarters were women, and 65 percent were Hispanic. Half lived in two counties bordering Mexico.

Of the 30 people, 11 had a lung ailment such as asthma or emphysema, six had an immune disorder, five had heart disease, five were pregnant, four had diabetes and four were obese.

In New York, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) said officials were investigating whether 16-month-old Jonathan Castillo, who died with a high fever Monday night at a Queens hospital, had contracted the H1N1 virus. The toddler’s 3-year-old sibling was treated for flulike symptoms and released.

The mayor said lack of health insurance or immigration status should not deter people who feel sick from seeking attention.

“Whether you have health insurance coverage or your immigration status is in question, it doesn’t matter,” Bloomberg said. “We will not ask about that.”

The mayor also said four inmates at a Rikers Island jail had been confirmed to have the H1N1 virus and four more are likely to have it.

The union representing the city’s correctional officers criticized the response to the swine flu outbreak among inmates and filed a letter of protest with the state Labor Department.

“If I had to design a place where you could put people who were sick and get as many people sick as possible, it’s the New York City jail,” said Richard J. Koehler, a lawyer for the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association.