Another New York City cop is under arrest for accosting a woman at gunpoint on Friday morning and raping her in a backyard near her apartment. The 25 year old teacher was on her way to work. The plainclothes cop stopped her to “ask directions,” then showed his gun, put his arm around her and said, “You’re coming with me.” Jesus Christ, when are we going to disarm this band of bloodthirsty thugs roaming our city streets and preying on us?
Read the whole story here.
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Jana Leo, My Neighbor, 2002 – 2011
Artist’s statement:
She used to live across the hallway and was the first person I related to when I moved to Chinatown in 2002. She came into my apartment when assembling furniture She pushed the door, smile and look around talking in Chinese and sit in a chair while I was cleaning; for years she knock at my door and gave me “food stamps canned food”: salmon, green beans, carrots and evaporated milk. I used to storage the goods in a closet, took pictures of the labels, and open a can once in while, when I was too busy to get any other food. She lived by herself and spend most her day in and out from the apartment to the park in front of the building. Years passed like that; she smiled when sees me happy and recognized it was because of the person I have around, who took this picture.In 2008, I expend the whole winter in Spain and when I come back I realized she wasn’t going to the park anymore and that she have caretakers all day long. I asked what happened, (she spoke to me in Chinese and I in Spanish) I realized by the amount of pills and diapers that something serious have happened. She walked along the hallways during the day but never go anymore to the park. I start walking holding her in the hallway. I looked at her feet wearing just sleepers. She looked so frail to me. I imagine carrying her in my back but then asked myself what if she falls. I called social services to find out about the care takers and if they can take her down through complains so I wouldn’t have to do it. A few times, I tried to make her going down the stairs; but she would stop right before the first step. We spent the summer walking in the hallway.I have a ticket to go back to Spain with no return for a long while. I signed myself a date for crossing the limit; the limit between the hallway and the staircase; the limit between her apartment and the door; the limits between the building door and the park with a street in the middle. I practiced the walk mentally. A Saturday in late August 2009, I knocked at her door and take it to the hallway walk, one step down, she hesitated, I hold her tight, letting her know we were going to make it. She stopped. I indicated that we were going to make it, I don’t know how but was clear to her. I hold her very tied, and her weigh went to the first step and then the other and the other, her fragile body, the feet on sleepers… I put one of her hand on the stair rail and hold her body, one and two and three and four and five and six, and seven…. And one and two and three and four and five and six, and seven and one and two and three and four and five and six, and seven eight we were by the door. She stopped again as if she didn’t want to open the door to life anymore. I opened the door and blocked the way back with my body. She stepped out. She laughed at the sun. Her face illuminated and she talked to me. We crossed the street and find a bench in the park and sit. She was in her park. She was alive. I tried to create a pattern for her so she has to ask the caretaker to do when I am not there.The amount of times I pictured in my mind the trip from her apartment into the park sound silly to say because were so many and we only did it once. We were not just going downstairs, I was crossing my own limits with her and she was defeating death.
I didn’t know her name. We never have any reason to like each other but we did.
This picture in the fire stair in between mine and her apartment to honor her and to recognize that I missed her. Also this picture in the fire stair, that has became my gallery is a piece of art. It recognizes that affinities to people are made beyond age, positions, education, language, or origin.
This picture was taken by Simon Lund a Saturday afternoon, sometime in August 2009.Jana Leo
August 5 2011
New York
In January I went to White Columns to see, “Looking Back,” an exhibit surveying artwork shown in New York in 2010, curated by Bob Nickas. The work was a mix of mostly New York-based artists, young and old, living and dead. One piece that caught my attention was by Candy Jernigan:
Candy Jernigan, Found Dope: Part II, 1986 (detail)
Found objects on paper 28 in. x 39 in.
Broken bits of used crack vials are pasted into into grid formation on a large poster, sealed behind glass, like the butterflies of a 19th century natural historian. Beneath each artifact in the grid is small even block handwriting, marking the date, time and location of its collection, e.g. June 11/Second Avenue at Third street/west side/10 AM. At the center of the grid, towards the bottom, is a hand-drawn map of a section of Manhattan’s East Village, running from Houston Street in the south to Eighth Street in the north, and west to east from Broadway to Avenue A. A small dot on the map is marked with the words “We are here.” Is “here” the site of the piece’s original exhibition, or the home of the artist?
Seven months after seeing this piece, it stays with me as an influence in my own work. The simplicity of the idea, the dedication of the artist to the everyday routine of walking around her neighborhood, and the obsessiveness of collecting and labeling that pariah of all New York trash–used drug paraphernalia–all combine into a portrait of a neighborhood at a particular moment in its history; a moment all but unimaginable in today’s East Village, with its moneyed and policed revelers. What sorts of trash might an observant walker find on her morning walk through the same streets, two decades after Jernigan?
Take a good look at the man in the center and the man on the right. They are Kenneth Moreno (43) and Franklin Mata (29) two New York City Police Officers who raped an intoxicated woman in her home, after they were called by a taxi driver to ensure her safe arrival. On a night in December, 2008, Mata stood guard, while Moreno raped his victim. They were acquitted yesterday after trial by jury in a New York City courtroom. This is just another example of botched justice in a history of violent police abuses of the citizenry of this city.
According to CCTV recordings these enforcers of the law entered her home four different times in the same night. According to 911 tapes, they made false calls, impersonating a concerned stranger.
Moreno admits to serenading his victim with Bon Jovi, and “snuggling” with her on the bed.
They used their unchecked power as police officers to rape a woman in her home.
Unfortunately, “home,” or very near it, is where most women get raped. According to philosopher Jana Leo in her insightful and frightening book Rape New York:
The idea that rape is a rare event, occurring beyond familiar places, dissociated from the ordinariness of the everyday is an illusion. In reality rape is not associated with risk, adventure or the unknown. Ninety-four percent of rapes and sexual assaults occur within fifty miles of the victim’s home. It frequently occurs in the home, often committed by those with whom the victim feels comfortable. Police call such offenders ‘known doers.’ Men who live in the victim’s house, relatives, or men with whom the victim has social contact constitute seventy-five percent of rapists. One in four female rape victims are raped in or around their own residence.
These representatives of the law used their “long arms” to restrain and violate a woman who was, ironically, returning home from celebrating a promotion at work. The violence is now extended as these abusers are acquitted of charges of rape. While they are stripped of their authority as police officer for reasons of “misconduct,” one gets the clear message that the problem was not the rape itself, but the fact that they were stupid enough to get caught. After acquittal, Moreno called the woman “mistaken and confused,” saying: “I’m glad it’s over, it’s a lesson and a win.”
A lesson in what exactly? And a win for whom?
Yesterday’s performance of Foolish Journeys went very well. First, participants came in and signed the book, and then they were given pamphlets (made from a single letter-sized sheet folded in half twice), which contained the Foolish Journeys orientation text.
Then they were given a reading, using my deck of cards, laid out on a tablecloth made of cut up pieces of the official MTA New York City subway maps. The tablecloth was pieced together to create an impossible geography of New York,with some segments of the city repeated, mirrored and distorted, as in a dream.
After the reading, participants were asked to choose the card they would most like to focus upon and encounter in their lives. Once this card was chosen, I scattered small folded pieces of the subway map on the table. Participants were then asked to choose a folded piece and open it. The area depicted in this map could become a site of pilgrimage or further research for the participant–the basis of a personal creative exploration, allowing participants to experience their familiar city as somewhat more strange and unpredictable. Most participants immediately experienced an uncanny or synchronous recognition of the parts of the city depicted on the map.
Here are some images of Terrible Karma, the project I did in collaboration with geographer and curator Merle Patchett, on March 25, 2011, as part of the citywide commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, the deadliest industrial disaster in New York history. All photos were taken by Merle Patchett. For more images of the event, visit her site.
