Week in Rewind

The Week in Rewind spotlights some of the editorial work of the Bronx Times for the week of July 31- Aug. 4

An e-bike is the suspected cause of one of four fires that left three people injured and required more than 280 total first responders in the Bronx on Monday, according to the FDNY.

Fire officials received the first call just before 6 a.m. on July 31 and responded to a basement fire at a four-story building located at 768 E. 187th St., near Southern Boulevard and Prospect Avenue in the Belmont section. According to the FDNY, it was an all hands response that warranted 12 units and 60 firefighters.

After the blaze was marked under control at 6:36 a.m., the FDNY requested the disposal of an e-bike at the building. According to the agency, one civilian suffered a minor injury and another suffered a serious but non-life threatening injury and was transported to St. Barnabas Hospital. The official cause of the inferno was still under investigation Tuesday evening.

E-bike fires are an all too familiar phenomenon in New York City. Earlier this summer, the FDNY attributed an apartment blaze in Concourse Village to an electronic lithium-ion battery — the kinds of batteries that power most e-bikes. That fire injured nine people in June.

That same month a fire also engulfed an e-bike shop in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The fire and thick smoke spread to apartments above the shop, killing four people and injuring three others, including a responding firefighter.

The e-battery fire issue — apart from perhaps the Twin Parks North West apartment fire in Fordham Heights that killed 17 people in January 2022 — has been central to various regulatory proposals and policies across New York City.

In two recent examples, Fordham University banned e-scooters, e-bikes and e-skateboards across university property citing fire danger last December, and state Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz announced in March that he’d be championing two bills that would regulate the use of low-quality lithium-ion batteries.

The FDNY posted a video to Twitter on Monday morning cautioning New Yorkers to be proactive in e-battery fire prevention.

“The FDNY is encouraging New Yorkers (with) lithium-ion powered mobility devices to follow practices to prevent fires and keep you safe,” the Tweet says. “Do not leave batteries charging unattended or overnight when you’re sleeping. Do not use power or extension cords to charge.”

A new affordable housing development in Williamsbridge is almost full, with low-income residents and families who were living in homeless shelters settling down in the Northeast Bronx.

A ribbon cutting was held on Thursday for the $91 million development called Williamsbridge Gardens, and project partners praised the completion of a project that came to fruition during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The development has 170 income-restricted apartments across two eight-story buildings on East 211th and 212th streets between White Plains Road and Holland Avenue. Half of the units include supportive services for people who are formerly homeless and lived in shelters who have a mental health diagnosis, along with their families. The rest of the units are reserved for households making 80% of the area median income (AMI) and lower.

The local AMI encompasses all five boroughs as well as Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. The NYC Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) considers 80% AMI the upper limit of “low-income,” with 81% reaching “moderate-income.”

The project is intended to provide access to the services and homes that families need in order to thrive and “break the cycle of housing insecurity,” said New York State Homes and Community Renewal Commissioner RuthAnne Visnauskas.

The development was built on a vacant parcel one block away from the Gun Hill Road 2 and 5 subway lines and is a short walk from the Williamsbridge Metro-North train station. It’s also close to Van Cortlandt Park and is in walking distance of grocery stores, retail and health care.

The project is a joint venture between CUCS, L+M Development Partners and B&B Urban.

While the complex was officially celebrated just last week, it was completed back in January. Tenants began moving into the building in mid-February, and it is now 90% occupied, project spokesperson John DeSio told the Bronx Times.

Investigators found that Bronx anti-gun violence activist Michael Rodriguez was hiding “in plain sight” when they seized illegal guns and drugs from his Yonkers apartment.

Orange County New York law enforcement officials announced the arrests of 15 people for an alleged interstate drug trafficking conspiracy on Tuesday. Said to be the main supplier of the drug network was 48-year-old Michael Rodriguez — a Yonkers resident and the director of the nonprofit Good Shepherd Services’ program Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence, known as B.R.A.G.

The Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler said that Rodriguez could now face 12.5-25 years on conspiracy charges, and up to 24 years for cocaine possession. He was booked at Orange County Jail without bail last Thursday, where he remains.

In a press conference from Middletown, New York on Tuesday, Hoovler and Orange County police officers detailed the nearly two-year investigation — an undercover effort dubbed “Operation Hide in Plain Sight” — that led to Michael Rodriguez’s arrest, as well as 14 others.

The original target was an Orange County resident by the name of Angelica Rodriguez — no relation to Michael Rodriguez — who investigators said was an alleged big-time narcotic supplier in Middletown from the time she was 15 years old. Law enforcement tapped Angelica Rodriguez’s phone, they said, which led them to her many associates — including Michael Rodriguez, the alleged main supplier.

Hoovler said cops seized more than $165,000 in cash, two guns — one with a defaced serial number — and more than 1.5 kilos of cocaine along with other paraphernalia from Michael Rodriguez’s residence in the Getty Square section of Yonkers.

Michael Rodriguez was charged with first-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance (cocaine), second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and second-degree conspiracy, according to the criminal complaint. The conspiracy charges center on his alleged role in supplying narcotics to others, who would sell them.

The DA noted that Michael Rodriguez’s line of work made his arrest a let down all the more.

“The very guy that we have that’s supposed to be stopping gun violence in one jurisdiction, in New York City, is poisoning our jurisdiction up here,” Hoovler said. “It’s kind of ironic that it’s ‘Bronx Rises Against Gun Violence’ — he had two guns.”

At Icahn 7 elementary and middle charter schools in Soundview, teachers and school officials are offering wildly differing accounts of what happened on the last day of classes — when as many as half of all teachers were told not to return in September.

At the elementary school, the staffing dismissals came midway through Friday, June 30. Teachers told the Bronx Times they were not allowed to retrieve belongings from their classrooms or finish out the day with their students — but school officials dispute those accounts and say that the situation was handled “in the best interest of the students.”

Nonetheless, some parents are sticking by the teachers. Rebecca Tavarez, who has had all four of her children enrolled at Icahn 7, told the Bronx Times that she and her husband were appalled at what she heard.

“To be escorted out of the building? I’ve only seen that in movies,” she said.

Although the exact number of teachers affected remains unclear, only a few were left at each building after June 30, according to Icahn 7 middle school Principal Panorea Panagiosoulis, who claims that six to seven teachers were let go from both the elementary and middle schools. The schools began the 2022-2023 year with 24 faculty members, according to an Icahn 7 spokesperson.

The spokesperson told the Bronx Times that the number of teachers remaining on staff was “significantly higher” — off by as much as 50% — and that the amount of dismissals teachers are alleging “ is not accurate.”

The spokesperson said that the school could not confirm the exact number of unfilled vacancies or teachers dismissed, but told the Bronx Times they “are very confident that all the positions will be filled by the beginning of the school year.”

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Abigael Sidi is an editorial intern at the Bronx Times.