NYC NOW - August 6, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

A Manhattan judge is issuing an arrest warrant for notorious New York City landlord Daniel Ohebshalom for failing to make court-ordered repairs at two of his buildings in Washington Heights. Meanwhile, new elevators are coming to the Classon Avenue subway station on the G line by the end of 2026. Plus, WNYC’s Janae Pierre speaks with reporter Jessy Edwards about the hundreds of lawsuits alleging sexual assault by corrections staff at Rikers Island Women’s Jail and the repeated mention of one officer’s name in particular.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Junae Pierre. A Manhattan judge says he's issuing an arrest warrant for a notorious New York City landlord after the property owner failed to make court-ordered repairs at two of its buildings in Washington Heights. The judge's decision Monday afternoon could mean another stint in jail for landlord Daniel Ope Shalom. He served two months in Rikers Island earlier this year for failing. to make hundreds of repairs on the same properties on West 170th Street. An attorney for Ope Shalom says his client hired contractors to correct many of the violations,

and he urged the judge not to order his arrest. New York City's public advocate ranked Ope Shalom as the city's worst landlord last year. Ope Shalom lives in California. New elevators are coming to the Classen Avenue subway station on the G-line. MTA officials were in Brooklyn to celebrate the project's groundbreaking on Monday. They say the work will be finished by the end of 2026. MTA chair Jan O'Leber says riders can expect much more than new elevators at the station. We're talking about adding three new elevators and 3,500 square feet of space through customer circulation improvements,

a wider mezzanine, seven refurbished staircase, four new turnstiles. The project is funded primarily by money from the bipartisan infrastructure bill. The groundbreaking comes as the MTA has shelved work to add. elevators to 23 other subway stations. Those projects were supposed to be paid for with money from congestion pricing, which was put on pause by Governor Kathy Hockel in June. Coming up, WMYC has been investigating hundreds of lawsuits alleging sexual assault by correction staff at Rikers Island Women's Jail. And we discovered one officer's name that kept coming up over and over again. That story after the break. Over the past eight months, WMYC

reporters have been digging into a flood of lawsuits filed by women who say they were sexually assaulted by corrections officers and other staff at the Rikers Island Women's Jail. What they discovered is that, in many cases, the names of certain officers come up time and time again. One of those names is Officer Champaign. It appears in almost two dozen lawsuits, in allegations spanning almost two decades, and yet the city's correction department had no record of an officer with that name. WMYC's Jesse Edwards joins me now to discuss what she's learned about Officer Champaign's identity. And a warning.

This story contains detailed accounts of sexual assault. Hey, Jessie. Hey, Jenny. So tell us first how these lawsuits came about. Well, two years ago, New York passed a law that gives sexual assault survivors a one-year window to file lawsuits about claims that were outside of the statute of limitations. That one-year window closed last year, and thousands of lawsuits were filed in this window. We reported in March that more than 700 of these lawsuits came from women who alleged they were sexually assaulted by jail staff while being held at the women's jail on Rikers.

The lawsuits are actually filed against the city because these women say that city officials knew or should have known, that there was an issue of sexual assault behind bars at Rikers. But what was really startling as we were going through these hundreds of lawsuits one by one was that certain guards' names were coming up time and time again, especially this one name, Champagne. What do these two dozen women say happen to them by Officer Champagne? Well, the allegations span from the late 80s through January. to the early 2000s.

These women allege in their lawsuits that Officer Champagne touched their breasts and genitals, that he forced them to perform oral sex, and in some cases raped them vaginally while they were jailed on Rikers Island. In some cases, they say this was done in exchange for a cigarette or candy or a little bit of food. One thing that's important to note is that in 1996, so right in the middle, middle of the period that we're talking about. New York passed a law that made it legally impossible for incarcerated people to consent to sexual relations with jail stuff. So I'll tell you about one woman who I spoke to. She's going by the name Lisa, a nickname, as she's afraid of retaliation.

She says she was impregnated by Officer Champagne. I didn't go impregnant and I had a miscarriage. I never told anyone, though. I never even told him. I didn't dare tell him. Why didn't you tell him? I was afraid. You had to do whatever the officer said. Oh, wow. Such horrific allegations. So, Jessie, what did you learn about this officer champagne? Who is he? Jeney, this name champagne was a real mystery. I reached out to the Office of Payroll Administration that told me they had no record of an officer champagne having ever worked for the Department of of correction. But four women state in their lawsuits that they believed Champagne was a nickname, and they thought that they knew the real name of the officer. They said that name was Fant.

So we spent months filing city records requests, going through payroll records, digging through pages of old, handwritten personnel files, and we found the one officer Fent who worked at the woman's jail during the period of the allegations. His name is Keith Fant. He's retired now, but he still collects a city pension. The four women who I spoke with directly, they identified Fant as the man they say sexually assaulted them through photographs that he'd posted to a social media account. There were eight other women who looked at these photos as well, and they also positively ID them. So what did Fant say when you spoke to him about these allegations? Yeah, I managed to reach him on the phone, and he confirmed to me that he went by the name Champagne while he was working at Rikers.

He denied all of the allegations. He told me that he was perplexed about why his name came up so many times. He acknowledged that it doesn't look good, and he suggested that the women were trying to get some money. Did any of the women who filed these lawsuits report what they say happened to them while they were being held on Rikers? Several of the women that I spoke to said they didn't because they were too afraid. A number of the women say that this officer champagne threatened them were being sent to solitary confinement or having their release date extended. But one woman I spoke to said she did report the alleged abuse in 1999.

Her name is Karen Klein's. But instead of an investigation being opened, She says she was actually sent to a mental observation unit and medicated with Prozac, which is an antidepressant, and Syracial, which is an antipsychotic. They said no more to me about it, and then I was under the influence of so much medication, like I just suppressed it, because I felt that was my reason for ending up out of general population. now because I didn't open my mouth. No one cared. What have city officials had to say about all of this?

The Department of Correction didn't answer a detailed list of questions. And what's become clear to me is that the city has been very reluctant to look into these claims. For example, Mayor Adams, he promised an investigation back in March. I followed up with his office a couple of weeks ago and a spokesperson told me that the only investigation happening was through the law department, and Jeney, as we know, the law department is a city agency that's actually charged with defending the city against these lawsuits. The Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, she's the prosecutor who has criminal jurisdiction over Rikers Island. Her officers seemed reluctant to proactively investigate these claims as well,

but after weeks of probing, her office told me that it will be looking into the cases to see if a criminal investigation is warranted. That's WMYC's Jesse Edwards. Jesse, thanks for your reporting. Thanks, Jeney. You can find more of Jesse's reporting on our website, got the miss.com. And subscribe to our podcast, NYC Now, to hear a special episode on this reporting that will debut on Saturday. Before we go, we have a note now about a story we aired last month that looked at an increase in 311 complaints related to helicopter noise in the city.

Some people we quoted provided incomplete information regarding street improvements and the relative cost of commuting by helicopter. We've posted an updated version of the story on the WMYC website. Accurate reporting is a top priority of our newsroom. You can read more about how we handle corrections at WMYC.org slash corrections. Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.