The Blaz's Knuckle Standard school reopenings

 NY Post

They’re reading, writing, and roughhousing at a highly regarded Queens high school — according to more than a dozen videos of students brawling in hallways, the cafeteria and outside, insiders confirmed.

The 14 clips of wild fistfights at or near Benjamin Cardozo High School on 223rd Street feature both girls and boys. Crowds of noisy classmates surround the combatants, egging them on.

“Fight! Fight!” a boy is heard shouting as two girls face off, before finally swinging at each other in a frenzy.

In one fight close to the nearby playground of PS 213, video shows a teen thrown to the ground, trying to shield his head from further kicks and blows.

Footage in front of shops on Springfield Avenue near Horace Harding Expressway shows a boy knocked flat onto his back, motionless.

Fight videos were taken down from the Instagram account @cardozohighschoolfights after The Post asked the NYPD about them. Two showing fights that happened off-site remain online, including one warning of “graphic or violent content.” 

“We are actively looking into the incidents,” said NYPD spokeswoman Sgt. Jessica McRorie, citing five complaints of violence in or near Cardozo since Sept. 13, when classes began.

In one case, a student menaced another kid with a Taser, though no arrests were made, she added.

In most cases, the fights were “handled administratively,” a source with knowledge of the videos told The Post, referring to school officials.

 

Middle Village event space fight and drive-by shooting revisited

 

 

 Impunity City

A pleasant weekend evening in the borough of Queens devolved into another incident of the gun violence that is still persistently casting it’s shadow on the streets of New York City. This time the violence came to Middle Village, where a shuttered commercial property that once was home to a hardware store that went out of business 2 years ago.

 In recent days, or maybe longer according to area residents complaints, the vacant property has been re-appropriated as a pop-up event space for DJ and bottle parties where high end booze is consumed in mass quantities. Basically these are glorified but unregulated nite clubs, no different than the speakeasies of the last 20’s this nation went through last century. From the looks of this place, the entrance to the event space was in the back.

 The local area newspaper Juniper Park Civic immediately had the scoop, naturally because it’s base is right there where the incidents occurred. The Civic also updated their tweets to include a DOB record of a violation given for a complaint over a month earlier for illegal partying in the former hardware store.

Given that this was another incident adding to the city’s continuing gun crisis and increasing rise in unabated shootings in the face of the equal rise in gun possession arrests, compounded by the fact that a building landlord would flout regulations and violations by continuing to permit illicit parties in his space, it would be wholly inconceivable if this wasn’t picked up by all the major local newspapers and news websites and even the other Queens weekly periodical newspapers.

But it was conceivable. Because despite the severity of the crimes committed and of gun violence being a daily occurrence in the five boroughs, the NY Post didn’t cover it, the NY Daily News didn’t cover it, Gothamist didn’t cover it, QNS, Queens Chronicle, Queens Post and Ridgewood Post didn’t cover it. Hardly any local Queens blog covered it (sans Queens Crap, which my ally and original Queens Crapper dutifully posted Junipers tweet immediately with a deliciously sardonic headline). 

 

New Bad Update:

A few nights after the Queens Chronicle article about the community's complaints about the closed business cum pop up nite club, another illicit party went on with total impunity.

 

 

 

 

 

Flushing Street Fighter

  

Flushing Post

 A man has been arrested on assault charges after getting into a fight over a parking space in Flushing yesterday.

Joe Zou, 24, allegedly got into an argument over a parking spot on Kissena Boulevard near Barclay Avenue at around 4 p.m. Monday, police said.

Zou, who was driving a white Audi, got out of his vehicle and punched a 35-year-man in the face. The victim was vying for the same spot.

A man came to the defense of the victim only to be struck by Jonathan Zhang, 34, who was also with Zou.

The pair then got into the Audi and tried to ram their vehicle into the two victims. The car jumped the curb and smashed into a bakery at 41-39 Kissena Blvd. The duo were then apprehended by officers from the 109th Precinct.

Principal at Forest Hills High School is terrible at his job

 

Queens Chronicle

 
Teachers at Forest Hills High School have become increasingly disturbed by incidents in the building, including fights, drug usage and even one instance in which a student threw urine into a classroom.

One teacher described the fourth floor of the building as “The Wild West Show.”

In a poll last Thursday, UFT members voted no confidence in Principal Ben Sherman, who has held the spot since early 2017, by a 195-21 vote.

Adam Bergstein, United Federation of Teachers chapter president of Forest Hills High School, said he heard from many different people in the school.

“The concerns were brought to me from every different constituency in the building and I mean, administration ... teachers were fed up and overwhelmed and disgusted, the aides in the building, students,” he said.

Bergstein added, “Ninety percent of the staff feel as though the principal is incapable of managing Forest Hills High School and, or maintaining the building at the level it’s been at for decades.”
A main issue has been theft, which teachers say has increased since Sherman removed aides from the locker rooms.

Sherman could not comment because he was not cleared to do so by the Department of Education

 According to UFT Consultative Council minutes from a Dec. 6 meeting acquired by the Chronicle, a physical education teacher said a locker room attendant is needed, to which Sherman said safety and hallway issues predate him and that the hallways significantly improved. A teacher responded by saying groups of students still congregate all over the building.

“Mr. Sherman answered that some of these problems are not fixable; there are 24 staircases and there will always be students roaming, vaping and smoking,” according to the minutes.

“There’s pot almost every day,” a history teacher said. “And usually it’s the students smoking in the bathrooms or the stairwells. He doesn’t have a policy anymore for getting kids to class and not being late like the previous principal did.”

One teacher said Sherman indicated marijuana is legal in many states and would soon be in New York.