In the Media

When Melissa Mark-Viverito was elected as City Council speaker, some feared that her loyalty to Mayor Bill de Blasio would curtail her independence and influence.

After all, it was Mr. de Blasio who helped engineer her victory so that he could have an ally at the helm of the lawmaking body.

While four years of relative comity have followed between the Council and Mr. de Blasio, Ms. Mark-Viverito, who leaves office at the end of the month, converted many of her doubters by standing up to the mayor when it counted.

Over the course of two days in early July of last year, three black men, each of them under 40, were killed by police officers in different parts of the country — Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La.; Philando Castile, outside of St. Paul, and Delrawn Small, in a case that drew far less national attention, in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn.

An off-duty NYPD officer who gunned down a Brooklyn father in what he claims was self-defense during a road rage encounter did not have any visible injuries to his face, according to trial testimony Friday.

Officer Wayne Isaacs told detectives and a 911 operator on July 4, 2016, that he shot Delrawn Small three times after he was punched in the face while at a red light on the corner of Atlantic Ave. and Bradford St. in East New York.

Isaacs, who was driving home about midnight after his shift at the 79th Precinct, had cut off Small’s car.

Jurors in the trial of an NYPD officer accused of fatally shooting an unarmed man during a traffic dispute have now heard the cop’s 911 call — where he neglected to mention he’d just shot someone.

Officer Wayne Isaacs can be heard in the call, placed at 12:05 a.m. on July 4, 2016, telling the dispatcher he’s been attacked — as Delrawn Small bleeds to death on the sidewalk nearby.
“Oh my God!” Small’s girlfriend Zaquanna Albert — who witnessed the shooting — can be heard screaming in the background of the call, as Isaacs tells the dispatcher “it’s an emergency.”