County Exec Nominates FBI Special Agent Geraldine Hart For Police Commissioner

COUNTY EXECUTIVE BELLONE NOMINATES GERALDINE HART, FBI SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE OF LONG ISLAND, AS NEXT SUFFOLK COUNTY POLICE COMMISSIONER

Hart Leads and Directs Operations and Investigations of FBI Long Island Office

Would Become First Female Police Commissioner in the History of the Suffolk County Police Department

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone today announced the nomination of Geraldine Hart – Senior Supervisory Resident Agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Long Island Office — to serve as the next Police Commissioner for the Suffolk County Police Department.  Hart, a 21-year veteran of the Bureau, would become the first woman to hold the position of Suffolk County Police Commissioner in the history of the Department.

“Geraldine possesses the integrity, competence, and excellence that we are looking for in someone to lead the Suffolk County Police Department,” said Suffolk County Executive Bellone.  “As our next Police Commissioner, she will bring a fresh perspective and build on the progress that we have made over the last two years.”

Geraldine Hart, nominee for Suffolk County Police Commissioner, said: “I am honored for the opportunity to serve the residents of Suffolk County and privileged to serve with the brave, hardworking men and women of the Suffolk County Police Department.  I am extremely optimistic about the future of the Suffolk County Police Department and what we can accomplish together.”

As the Senior Supervisory Resident Agent of the FBI’s Long Island Office since February 2014, Hart has effectively led and directed the operations and investigations of 115 FBI Special Agents, Task Force Officers, and support personnel, affecting a diverse region of over three million residents.  In this role, Hart directly supervises the Long Island Gang Task Force, as well as spearheaded the first multi-agency MS-13 Intelligence Center to centralize and facilitate the sharing of gang intelligence, with an emphasis on enhanced collaboration between the FBI, Suffolk County Police Department, New York State Police, Nassau County Police Department, and local governments.  

In addition to her work combatting gang violence, Hart oversees complex investigations that include public corruption, white-collar crime, terrorism, counter-intelligence, child exploitation, and cyber crimes.  Hart is also actively engaged in liaison activities, such as providing active shooter training opportunities for Nassau and Suffolk School Superintendents, houses of worship, and the first FBI Teen Academy in Central Islip and Brentwood.  Her leadership abilities were recognized at the highest levels as the recipient of the 2015 Director’s High Impact Leadership Award, which is given to a select number of individuals in the Bureau based on an anonymous survey among their peers who rank them for superior leadership abilities.  

Hart began her career as an FBI Special Agent focused on Transnational Organized Crime, where she helped lead and execute complex investigations end enforcement actions to dismantle violent organized crime enterprises, such as the Lucchese crime family.  In 1999, Hart was assigned to the Lucchese Organized Crime Squad, working on an investigation that led to the conviction of fugitive Frank Federico, who was responsible for the murders of garbage-industry haulers and informants Robert M. Kubecka, of Greenlawn, and Donald Barstow of Stony Brook (United States v. Federico).  That same year, Hart was awarded the Office of Inspector General’s Integrity Award.

As an FBI case agent, Hart, in 2005, worked closely with the Suffolk County Police Department to investigate two former NYPD detectives who secretly worked as mafia associates on behalf of the Lucchese crime family.  The investigation led to the indictments of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, who were ultimately convicted of committing murder and disclosing sensitive law enforcement information to mob bosses.  The investigation also led to the discovery of a body in Brooklyn in connection with the criminal actions of these two individuals (United States v. Eppolito).  For her performance on the case, Hart received the United States Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement, the highest award given out in the FBI.

In 2012, Hart was promoted to Supervisory Special Agent to supervise a task force comprised of FBI Special Agents and NYPD Detectives investigating the Genovese, Colombo, and Bonanno crime families.  In January 2014, these investigations resulted in the takedown of five organized crime members for murder, one tied to the Lufthansa heist at John F. Kennedy Airport, along with a body that was identified and dug up dating to the 1970s.  Hart also directed large-scale investigations into allegations of corruption at the District Council and local union level, which resulted in successful prosecutions.

Hart received a Bachelor of Arts from St. Francis College and Juris Doctor from St. John’s University School of Law.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - How Sweet It Is To Live In Suffolk

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

This is a story about coat-snatching at the lofty Harvard Club—and how sweet it is to live in Suffolk.

I remember when I covered Suffolk cops-and-courts many years ago, attorney Nancy Carley, who had been from New York City, commenting that many of her women lawyer friends had achieved high positions in the city, became judges and so forth, but she was happy that she come out here because living in Suffolk was “sweet and easy.”

I, too, am from the city, but have lived in Suffolk since I was 19.

Going to New York for me always requires a bit of adjustment, but then, like a salmon returning home, I adjust to the sirens and horns and noise and overall static. 

And so it was the other day when I journeyed into Manhattan with my friend and physician Dr. Allen Fein.

Allen, in an auction at the Artists-and-Writers Game, had won a lunch with journalist David Andelman. David, a Harvard alum, suggested lunch at the Harvard Club of New York City, in midtown off Fifth Avenue. Allen liked the idea of the lunch there because, originally from Canada, he graduated from McGill University, the “Harvard of Canada,” he mentioned. 

He invited me, as also a journalist, to go along. And I happened to know Mr. Andelman.  David had been a New York Times correspondent on Long Island nearly 50 years back. He had gone on at the Times to be a foreign correspondent and most recently was editor of World Policy Journal. He is the author of books including A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.  He is a contributor to USA Today and CNN and has been president of the Overseas Press Club.

The Harvard Club is like one of the elegant, wood-burnished clubs one associates with England.  (I was at one once, where members of Parliament spend time, across from the Houses of Parliament. I had written a book on Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” plan—Weapons in Space—and was invited to give a presentation to members of Parliament and several later took me to the club.)

Entering the Harvard Club, I hung my old, trusty trench coat on the coat rack—having a slight, and unusual, premonition about whether I would see it again. But looking out at the fancy club, I figured I couldn’t bring the trench coat to the table.

David regaled Allen and me with stories including how he was first assigned to Long Island and questioned that, telling Times managing editor A.M. Rosenthal that he wanted to be a foreign correspondent. The editor responded that covering Long Island would be good training for covering a foreign country. 

It was nice seeing David again. The lunch was fabulous as you would expect at such a club.

And then Dr. Fein and I said goodbye to David and went to that coat rack—and, as I had somehow feared, my been-through-a-lot trench coat wasn’t there.

I reported its disappearance to the folks at the Harvard Club’s main desk and they said they would keep a look-out for it. I checked with them several times in ensuing weeks, but no information on the trench coat. 

Then they called to say they had identified a person who took the coat—and he said I had come to his place in Manhattan the same day I was in the city and that he handed the coat back to me.

That was ridiculous, just not true, I responded, relating the cold trench coat-less walk—it was a winter day—to catch transportation to come back home.

“We will turn this over to Harvard Club security,” I was told, firmly.

A week later another call came. The coat had just been brought back to the Harvard Club by the fellow who took it. Arrangements were made to return it to me. One of Dr. Fein’s patients with an office in Manhattan was kind enough to pick it up and bring it to Allen’s office. 

So that’s how my trusty trench coat was lost and found and I had the sort of experience that, I daresay, one might have in the often chaotic city, a complex place where crazy things sometimes happen.

Ah, Suffolk, I’ve lived here for 57 years—and compared to the City of New York, as Nancy said, it’s “sweet and easy.”

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Praise William Heronemus For Today's Wind Energy

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Let us praise William Heronemus.

Mr. Heronemus was a pioneer in wind energy. And he was the first person, in a study done for Suffolk County government back in 1975, to propose the harvesting of great amounts of power from wind energy for Long Island. “Windpower alone, but preferably wind power carefully joined to solar collector systems…could free the entire region from all of the problems associated with proliferation of fossil or nuclear central power plants, and would create thousands of employment opportunities,” wrote Dr. Heronemus for the county.

The study, a comprehensive analysis of existing and future Long Island energy use, was done by Dubin-Mindell Bloome Associates, and Dr. Heronemus played a major part.

This was decades before Deepwater Wind established the first offshore wind farm in the United States, two years ago now, east of Long Island off Block Island. Offshore wind power is seen by the Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York State as being a major component of our energy future with now wind farms proposed south of Long Island, one to be built by Deepwater Wind, another by a Norwegian energy company. Meanwhile, all over the globe offshore wind farms have been going up.

Mr. Heronemus was a professor of civil engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He “is known the world over as the ‘father of modern windpower,’” states a website devoted to his work produced by the university’s Wind Energy Center.  https://www.umass.edu/windenergy/about/history/heronemus

He is “generally credited with the invention” of terms including wind farm “in wide use today. All the present researchers in wind turbines owe the grasp of the fundamentals to Bill Heronemus’ work of the 1970s, when he and his cadre published many, many reports on windpower, along with the earlier pioneers forming the backbone of all the engineering, which was yet to come.”

“Bill Heronemus was an engineer’s engineer. He was humble, and would have been horrified and embarrassed to see his life in print like this. But he gave us a vision and a legacy for our own dreams, and changed many lives,” it says. 

A 1968 statement by him is quoted: “In the immediate future, we can expect the ‘energy gap’ to result in a series of crises as peak loads are not met…The environment will continue to deteriorate in spite of ever-increasing severity of controls. Air pollution, oil spills and thermal pollution are likely to be worse, not better in 1985….[An] energy alternative must be sought.”

Mr. Heronemus “not only predicted the worldwide energy difficulties which were to come, including nuclear power plant failures, but saw the grand scale of future of renewable energy development,” says the website.

Nuclear power and Mr. Heronemus’s rejection of it—after being involved in it first-hand as a U.S. Navy captain engineering nuclear submarines—was pivotal to his renewable/alternative energy commitment.

Another University of Massachusetts website devoted to him, this one the “William E. Heronemus Papers,” notes: “After serving in the U.S. Navy, engineering the construction of submarines from 1941 until his retirement in 1965, Heronemus disavowed his work with nuclear energy and joining the University Faculty in 1967, dedicated his life to the study of alternative energy.” http://scua.library.umass.edu/umarmot/heronemus-william/

From work with nuclear power in the Navy, Mr. Heronemus, an Annapolis graduate with two advanced degrees, concluded it is deadly dangerous—and by, instead, harvesting the wind and using other safe, alternative energy technologies, unnecessary.

He came to Suffolk in 1971 and testified at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission licensing hearings for the construction of a nuclear power plant at Shoreham. He testified that a network of windmills should be built instead and they would produce as much power and, importantly, produce “no radiation, no nuclear waste” and thus be compatible with the environment and life. 

He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Wind Energy Association in 1999 and in an acceptance speech said: “There is an absolute requirement for the Earth to remain in thermal balance within our solar system. There is only one ultimate solution to the global warming problem: total reliance upon solar energy. And the most productive of all solar energy processes is the wind energy process.” (Wind energy is caused by the sun heating different parts of the Earth at different rates.)

Mr. Heronemus passed away in 2002, at 82. His vision lives on and is on the way here and, indeed all over the world, to being applied.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Using The Written Word To Protect The Environment

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

I was thrilled to just be informed that I’ve been honored as “Environmentalist of the Year” by the Long Island Sierra Club. As a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury, for decades I’ve taught Environmental Journalism and spend several classes in presentations about John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club.

Muir is especially known for crusading for creation of Yosemite National Park—with his one-on-one three-day camping trip there in 1903 with President Theodore Roosevelt having a great influence on Roosevelt, a conservation-minded Long Islander, not too incidentally. It’s been called the “camping trip that changed the nation.”

Saving wilderness was Muir’s mission. “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness,” he wrote. He and the Sierra Club were instrumental in the preservation of many great natural places. 

Important for the Environmental Journalism class is that Muir emphasized the use of the published word to raise public awareness. He wrote 12 books and 300 articles—his first article, “Yosemite Glaciers,” was published in 1871 in the New York Tribune. 

Thus, I tell my students, Muir and other early writers on nature—Thoreau, Emerson and Long Island’s own Walt Whitman—provided a base. And then came, in 1962, Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring,” her expose on the dangers of pesticides, which laid the foundation for the contemporary practice of what became to be called environmental journalism. 

It was 1962 that I got my first job as a reporter, on Long Island, at the Babylon Town Leader, with my first major assignment looking into the plan of public works czar Robert Moses, a Babylon resident, to build a four-lane highway the length of Fire Island. 

I began combining what’s now called investigative reporting with environmental journalism in many articles challenging the Moses scheme and pointing to preservation with a Fire Island National Seashore, created in 1964.

I went on that year to the Long Island Press and after a few years of daily cops-and-courts reporting was back with a focus on mixing investigative reporting and environmental journalism.  John Hohenberg, professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, was to update what had been a standard journalism textbook that he wrote, “The Professional Journalist,” adding: “It has not taken the nation’s newspapers very long to demonstrate their effectiveness as crusaders to protect the environment. Through their accomplishments, they have gone far toward making up for the long years during which they neglected the issue. It has seemed to make no difference whether a paper is large or small; if it has a public-spirited publisher, a determined editor and a talented and devoted staff, it can—and does—obtain results.” I was elated that he then mentioned my work and that of three other journalists.

I’ve continued to combine investigative reporting with environmental journalism now for more than 50 years—in books, on TV (hosting the TV program “Enviro-Close-Up” for 27 years, visit wwww.envirovideo.com) and on radio, in magazines and newspapers, and in recent years on the Internet on which you are reading this column. 

A lot of my work has been done nationally and some internationally, and this has included breaking the story of how the next mission of the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle involved it lofting a space probe fueled with deadly plutonium. This sparked one of my books, “The Wrong Stuff,” and TV documentary “Nukes in Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens.” I detail accidents that have happened in the use of nuclear power in space by the U.S. and the Soviet Union/Russia. I was invited to speak in Russia and made a series of presentations through the 1990s into the middle 2000s including at the Russian Academy of Sciences. I would not accept an invite now with Putin imposing totalitarianism, and journalists—and environmentalists—in enormous peril. 

But my home and the subjects of much of my journalism have been on Long Island—why the honor from the Long Island Sierra Club is so gratifying. The club has 6,000 members in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.

As I’ve continued the combination of investigative reporting and environmental journalism I started with the Fire Island stories, for 25 years I challenged the plan to build 7 to 11 nuclear power plants on Long Island. Today, after the strong activism of folks at the grassroots and stand-up opposition by governmental leaders, Long Island is nuclear-free. 

Long Island is a wonderful environment—but there are many environmental threats still. Applying to the island’s green environment the remarks of journalist, inventor and diplomat Benjamin Franklin at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and founding of our republic—we have it if we can “keep it.”

A Smithtown angle on this: I was asked, in the preparation of an article the Long Island Sierra Club is putting together, about what might have been my early background involving the environment. I quickly noted a lot had to do with the Boy Scouts in which I was very active growing up in St. Albans, Queens. Very instrument: camping as a Scout and becoming an Eagle Scout, succeeding in getting the Nature merit badge and other merit badges involving the outdoors. My Explorer Scout advisor was Floyd Sarisohn who exactly a decade earlier had become an Eagle Scout in the same Troop 50 in St. Albans. And my ties with Floyd and his wife, Bernice, who moved out to Commack and Floyd started a law practice here when I went off to Ohio to college, were even closer than that. My family—my folks and brother and me—lived on the top floor of a two-family house on Francis Lewis Boulevard in St. Albans. Below on the first floor lived Floyd and Bernice (before they had their two children).  It was so nice, having met a girl from Huntington Beach at college, getting married at 19 and settling in Suffolk in 1961, to reunite with Floyd, my Scouting mentor, and Bernice. Floyd became a judge and Smithtown Democratic chairman. 

The Sierra Club award ceremony will be held on Saturday, March 24, at the Suffolk County Environmental Center in Islip.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

Theater Review – ‘Once’

Theater Review – ‘Once’

Produced by John W. Engeman Theater – Northport

Reviewed by Jeb Ladouceur

Barry DeBois as ‘The Guy’In March of 2012 the musical ‘Once’ opened on Broadway and stunned the theatrical world with an astonishing eleven Tony Award nominations … and eight wins! What’s more, those triumphs included Best Musical, and Best Actor. As proof of the fact that ‘Once’ was no flash-in-the-pan, the show also won 2012’s Drama Desk, and Drama Critics’ Circle awards for Outstanding Musical, and followed-up with the Drama League Award, as well as 2013’s Grammy for top Musical Theater Album.

It must have been some post-awards party!

The Boffo (if somewhat oddly-staged) Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová production closed in early 2015, following nearly 1200 performances on the Great White Way. With a simple set that mimics a soddy Irish pub, a rather one-dimensional book, and austere costumes … not to mention a scarcity of memorable songs (the unforgettable ‘Gold’ is the exception) … this show, in which the cast is also the orchestra, is not your typical big town extravaganza. Nor is the average ‘eager boy meets reluctant girl’ plot anything new. This is a ‘Musician’s Musical’ staged in Dublin with the usual ‘leaving home’ Irish plot.

It’s the story of a ‘Guy’ in his 30’s … a Dublin street musician played to near-perfection by Barry DeBois. He’s a singer-songwriter-guitarist by night, and a vacuum cleaner repairman (of all things) during the day, ‘Guy’ has recently been jilted by his iron-willed girlfriend. She’s forsaken him in favor of life in The Big Apple, leaving ‘Guy’ with a broken heart and a determination to forget about his soulful music altogether. He vows henceforth to stick exclusively to his regular job—fixing those kaput vacuum cleaners ‘…the ones that just won’t suck.’

Bidding adieu to the bar where he’s been singing and playing, ‘Guy’ has every intention of leaving his guitar and his sorrow behind in the on-stage pub; the romantic memories associated with the familiar instrument are just too painful to bear. But that’s when a delightful young Czech woman, referred to simply as ‘Girl,’ detects ‘Guy’s’ angst and, having fallen for his musicianship (and his sad tale of woe), ‘Girl’ ultimately reveals that she, too, has a balky vacuum … if ‘Guy’ can fix it, and keep on playing and singing, she’ll play piano accompaniment for him … gratis.

Deal? … okay, the deal is struck … strike up the band … etcetera.

We learn about a kindly banker … a change of heart for ‘Guy’ (and ‘Girl’ as well) … an overhauled Hoover or two … and the compulsory recording company that quickly spots ‘Guy’s’ talent … all fairly predictable, and not unpleasant stuff.

In the capable hands of Director/Choreographer Trey Compton, the Engeman audience is treated to a show that will strike a chord with every musically inclined troubadour (as some of us envision ourselves) … will resonate with anyone who has ever suffered the pangs of unrequited love (ouch!) … and will please the lucky patrons in our midst who have found serendipitous redemption from misfortune when and where they least expected it.

And speaking of serendipity, local theatergoers who never thought they’d be enchanted by a musical featuring such rarities as a soft-hearted financial loan officer (believe that or not), and a cupid-like thirtysomething Mom with a daughter named Ivanka (I’m notkidding), are in for a huge surprise. Because thanks primarily to the multi-talented Barry DeBois (The Guy) and Andrea Goss (The Girl), the snazzy Engeman Theatre on Main Street in Northport is likely to keep those plush seats filled for the duration of this play’s fairly long run thru March 4^th.

Some might even want to see ‘Once’ … ‘twice!’

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Award-winning writer, Jeb Ladouceur is the author of a dozen novels, and his theater and book reviews appear in several major L.I. publications. His recent hit, THE GHOSTWRITERS, explores the bizarre relationship between the late Harper Lee and Truman Capote. Ladouceur’s newly completed thriller, THE SOUTHWICK INCIDENT, was introduced at the Smithtown Library in May. The book involves a radicalized Yale student and his CIA pursuers. Mr. Ladouceur’s revealing website is www.JebsBooks.com