Every Saturday, The Week in Rewind spotlights a sampling of the wide-ranging editorial work of the Bronx Times.
Bronx DA, NYPD take down alleged trafficking ring at 7 Days Hotel
The Bronx District Attorney’s office and the NYPD announced last Thursday the indictment of six people for their alleged involvement in a trafficking ring at the 7 Days Hotel in Unionport.
The investigation, which was led by an undercover NYPD officer posing as a pimp, found that the alleged crimes took place for more than three years — from August 2019 to November 2022. Pimps were supposedly given discounted room rates in exchange for cash tips to hotel employees — who didn’t properly check traffickers’ and women’s identification, or report the activity to the human trafficking victims’ hotline as required by New York state law.
Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said that according to the investigation, 7 Days Hotel employees were allegedly “paid to look the other way” while pimps trafficked 16 girls and young women over the three-plus year period — seven of whom were underage.
Akeem Lee, Marvin Flint, Anthony Reyes, Golam Rabbani, Robert Olaguibel and Patrick Walker have been charged with a plethora of crimes, among them enterprise corruption, sex trafficking of a child, promoting prostitution, rape, intimidating a victim, and falsifying business records. The defendants include Lee, Flint and Reyes, alleged pimps, and the hotel manager, front desk clerk and security guard — Olaguibel, Rabbani and Walker, respectively.
Amalgamated Houses faces $150M in capital needs, new co-op board seeks relief from the state
Without intervention, roughly 827 residents in the nation’s oldest affordable housing co-op, Van Cortlandt Village’s Amalgamated Houses, could face gas service shutoffs by July 1. A newly-formed board of cooperators say that preventing the looming gas shutoffs is just one item in a laundry list of necessary repairs believed to cost around $150 million for the near century-old co-op.
The board of cooperators, known as Amalgamated Cooperators United (ACU), cite a longstanding financial crisis and looming default on its insurance coverage if it fails to make a $400,000 down payment on June 1. Amalgamated’s monthly operating reserves in a given month are less than $200,000, according to Amalgamated cooperator and member of the co-op’s new board, Robert Scott.
During a Feb. 15 board of directors meeting, the board painted a financial picture that included cash and reserve funds totaling just $176,076. Amalgamated also owes roughly $1.5 million in payments to past vendors.
SUNY ditches COVID vaccine mandate, symbolizing the beginning of the end of the pandemic
The State University of New York (SUNY) system announced Tuesday it would be rescinding its COVID-19 vaccine mandates come summertime, signaling a new beginning for college students in the Bronx and across the state in what officials hope is a post-pandemic world.
The system will continue to encourage students to get vaccinated against COVID and will also continue to monitor COVID data, as well as update requirements in response to changes in conditions or changes of state, federal or local policies.
The pandemic disrupted the American education system drastically in 2020 and 2021 — sending swaths of kids home for remote learning. And for college students, many had to make some of their most prolific early adult transitions completely online.
Even with the new SUNY policy, however, some City University of New York institutions, community colleges and private schools in the Bronx are maintaining their vaccination policies.
As of Tuesday, College of Mount Saint Vincent, Lehman College, Mercy College, Hostos Community College and Bronx Community College still required students to be fully vaccinated against COVID.
There’s only two movie theaters in the Bronx. A local nonprofit is doing something about it.
When the Bronx Times published the article “There’s only two movie theaters left in the Bronx. Does anyone care?”, it evoked plenty of reaction from readers.
“It’s a little too early to say anything, but not all Bronxites are taking this lying down. Expect some positive news soon,” wrote Ian Keldoulis — a board member of the nonprofit Bronx Independent Cinema Center (BICC) — on an Instagram post about the article.
The BICC then announced its intention, in an April 4 press release, to reopen the landmark Loew’s Paradise Theatre at 2417 Grand Concourse near Fordham Road. The historic theater, which first opened its doors in 1929, has been defunct as a movie house for decades, and over the years has taken shape as a music venue, an event space and even a church. Today, it sits vacant, but in step two of its four-step plan, the BICC aims to raise $3 million in an effort to purchase the theater outright by 2025.
The plan is to create a space for likeminded individuals regarding film and filmmaking. A place where Bronxites can call their own instead of being forced to go the Film Forum, the Angelika, the IFC or the New York Film Academy — all art house movie theaters located south of 14th Street in Manhattan. The only remaining commercial movie theaters in the Bronx are the AMC Bay Plaza Theater 13 and the Concourse Plaza Multiplex Cinemas on 161st Street.
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