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A Quaint French Bookstore, a Vicious Dog and a Dead Toy Poodle

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A Quaint French Bookstore, a Vicious Dog and a Dead Toy Poodle

The quaint little shop on the Upper East Side is New York City’s only store dedicated to French children’s books. But lately, the shop, La Librairie des Enfants, has earned a more sinister distinction: It has been the sometime home of Syko, a 98-pound white German shepherd with a penchant for eviscerating smaller dogs.

On Friday, Akiba Tripp was walking her seven-pound toy poodle, Baby, past the store when the owner opened the door and Syko lurched out, sank his teeth into Baby and broke her spine, Ms. Tripp said. Baby was euthanized that evening.

The attack followed two others in May in which Syko and his siblings injured three other dogs, their owners said. In recent months, the proprietor’s German shepherds — five of them, including Syko’s parents — had spent time in the basement and the main area of the store.

They terrorized people and dogs alike, according to several victims along with online reviews of the shop, which has an adjoining cafe.

Syko’s reign of terror has now apparently ended. His owner, Lynda Hudson, said that on Saturday, Syko and her other four German shepherds moved permanently to her new house in Westchester County and would no longer come to the store.

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The news comes too late for Ms. Tripp, Baby’s heartbroken owner, a personal trainer who makes house calls to clients in the affluent neighborhood.

“My dog is dead,” she said. “Those dogs should have been away a long time before.”

Ms. Tripp said that when she went to the local precinct, the police told her they could not do anything about dog-on-dog violence, but she plans to file a civil suit against Ms. Hudson.

Ms. Hudson, 58, acknowledged that she was at her wit’s end with Syko. “I tried everything with this dog, sir,” she said. “I tried behaviorists, and training. He’s great with people but he does not like other dogs.”

Recent Yelp reviews capture some of the dissonance of a cute neighborhood fixture that was guarded by snarling menaces.

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“Such a great little café,” reads one left on May 17.

Ten days later, another reviewer posted, “I was walking my 10 lbs Yorki and as we were passing by this shop, few German shepherds started barking, slamming to the glass windows covered in black plastic garbage bags. Then I see this nasty woman shouting in French, waving her hands to take my dog elsewhere!”

The first confirmed attack by one of Ms. Hudson’s dogs was on May 3. Julia Schafer, a psychologist who lives next to the bookstore, said that her husband walked out of the building with their collie mix, Tarsila, who was set upon by Syko and two other dogs — Syko’s siblings, Ms. Hudson said.

“The white one bit her and held onto her,” Ms. Schafer said. Tarsila required surgery. Ms. Schafer said Ms. Hudson reimbursed her $850 for the vet bills.

Four days later, a 22-pound Cavachon named Chloe and her Maltipoo friend Muppet were walking by when Ms. Hudson’s dogs struck again.

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“Next thing I know this big white dog had my dog in her mouth,” said Chloe’s owner, Laurie Davis. “I’m screaming at the top of my lungs.”

Customers at the Third Avenue Ale House ran over and tried to break it up. One of the other dogs tore into Muppet’s face. Chloe needed surgery, too.

Ms. Hudson said she would pay the vet bills, which for Chloe came to over $6,000. But she balked at paying for Chloe’s day care during her recovery.

“I thought she is trying to milk me,” said Ms. Hudson, who was born in France and opened the bookstore in 2016. “I told her I am not a cow.”

Ms. Davis has sued Ms. Hudson in small claims court.

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Ms. Davis said the police referred her to the city health department’s animal bite unit. She said she was later told by someone at the unit that they had interviewed Ms. Hudson, who told them the dogs had never attacked before and were moving out of the city in a few days, so they took no action.

The laws about aggressive dogs are complicated. According to a guide published by the New York State Bar Association, anyone can report a dog to the police or an animal control officer. A judge can then order the dog to be evaluated and muzzled, or removed, or euthanized.

Ms. Hudson said she sometimes kept her dogs in the basement of the store because a dog day care provider refused to accept them.

On Friday evening, Ms. Tripp and Baby, who was 2 years old, were walking to the 96th Street subway station. Baby went to the bathroom, and Ms. Tripp high-fived her as she always did. They walked by the Third Avenue Ale House. “She’s so cute!” diners called out.

As they walked by the bookstore, Ms. Tripp said, “all of a sudden the door opens, a woman walks out, and two large dogs just bum-rushed us.” Neither was muzzled. The white dog, Syko, “had my dog literally within his mouth.”

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People ran over and tried to drag the dogs away. “Finally my dog was able to break free, but she couldn’t move — there was blood everywhere,” Ms. Tripp said.

Ms. Hudson walked Ms. Tripp and Baby to the vet. Ms. Tripp said the vet told her Baby would not walk again and would be in great pain and recommended euthanizing her. Ms. Hudson says she offered to adopt and rehabilitate Baby and that Ms. Tripp turned her down. Ms. Tripp said no such offer was made.

Ms. Tripp had Baby put to sleep, and Ms. Hudson paid the bill.

Ms. Hudson said her business was already facing difficulties before her dog troubles. Last month, a supporter started a GoFundMe campaign to help the store pay rent and rehire laid-off employees.

Ms. Tripp’s birthday is next week. It will be two years since she received Baby as a gift.

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Syko will turn 2 on Tuesday. Ms. Hudson said Monday she was considering putting him to sleep.

“There is really something wrong with Syko,” she said through tears, “and I don’t know what to do.”

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New York

We Counted 22,252 Cars to See How Much Congestion Pricing Might Have Made This Morning

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We Counted 22,252 Cars to See How Much Congestion Pricing Might Have Made This Morning

Today would have been the first Monday of New York City’s congestion pricing plan. Before it was halted by Gov. Kathy Hochul, the plan was designed to rein in some of the nation’s worst traffic while raising a billion dollars for the subway every year, one toll at a time.

A year’s worth of tolls is hard to picture. But what about a day’s worth? What about an hour’s?

To understand how the plan could have worked, we went to the edges of the tolling zone during the first rush hour that the fees would have kicked in.

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Here’s what we saw:

Video by Noah Throop/The New York Times; animation by Ruru Kuo/The New York Times

You probably wouldn’t have seen every one of those cars if the program had been allowed to proceed. That’s because officials said the fees would have discouraged some drivers from crossing into the tolled zone, leading to an estimated 17 percent reduction in traffic. (It’s also Monday on a holiday week.)

The above video was just at one crossing point, on Lexington Avenue. We sent 27 people to count vehicles manually at four bridges, four tunnels and nine streets where cars entered the business district. In total, we counted 22,252 cars, trucks, motorcycles and buses between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. on Monday.

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We wanted to see how the dense flow of traffic into the central business district would have generated money in real time.

Though we can’t know that dollar amount precisely, we can hazard a guess. Congestion pricing was commonly referred to as a $15-per-car toll, but it wasn’t so simple. There were going to be smaller fees for taxi trips, credits for the tunnels, heftier charges for trucks and buses, and a number of exemptions.

To try to account for all that fee variance, we used estimates from the firm Replica, which models traffic data, on who enters the business district, as well as records from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and city agencies. We also made a few assumptions where data wasn’t available. We then came up with a ballpark figure for how much the city might have generated in an hour at those toll points.

The total? About $200,000 in tolls for that hour.

Note: The Trinity Place exit from the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which would have been tolled, is closed at this hour.

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It’s far from a perfect guess. Our vehicle total is definitely an undercount: We counted only the major entrances — bridges, tunnels and 60th Street — which means we missed all the cars that entered the zone by exiting the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive or the West Side Highway.

And our translation into a dollar number is rough. Among many other choices we had to make, we assumed all drivers had E-ZPass — saving them a big surcharge — and we couldn’t distinguish between transit buses and charter buses, so we gave all buses an exemption.

But it does give you a rough sense of scale: It’s a lot of cars, and a lot of money. Over the course of a typical day, hundreds of thousands of vehicles stream into the Manhattan central business district through various crossings.

Trips into tolling district, per Replica estimates

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Queens-Midtown Tunnel 50,600
Lincoln Tunnel 49,200
Williamsburg Bridge 27,900
Manhattan Bridge 24,000
Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel 23,100
Queensboro Bridge 21,700
Brooklyn Bridge 17,100
Holland Tunnel 15,400
All other entrances 118,000
Total 347,000

Note: Data counts estimated entrances on a weekday in spring 2023. Source: Replica.

The tolling infrastructure that was installed for the program cost roughly half a billion dollars.

The M.T.A. had planned to use the congestion pricing revenue estimates to secure $15 billion in financing for subway upgrades. Many of those improvement plans have now been suspended.

Methodology

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We stationed as many as five counters at some bridges and tunnels to ensure that we counted only cars that directly entered the tolling zone, not those that would have continued onto non-tolled routes.

Our count also excluded certain exempt vehicles like emergency vehicles.

We used estimates of the traffic into the district to make a best guess at how many of each kind of vehicle entered the zone. Most of our estimates came from the traffic data firm Replica, which uses a variety of data sources, including phone location, credit card and census data, to model transportation patterns. Replica estimated that around 58 percent of trips into the central business district on a weekday in spring 2023 were made by private vehicles, 35 percent by taxis or other for-hire vehicles (Uber and Lyft) and the remainder by commercial vehicles.

We also used data on trucks, buses, for-hire vehicles and motorcycles from the M.T.A., the Taxi and Limousine Commission and the Department of Transportation.

For simplicity, we assumed all vehicles would be equally likely to enter the zone from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. as they would be in any other hour. We could not account for the other trips that a for-hire vehicle might make once within the tolled zone, only the initial crossing. And we did not include the discount to drivers who make under $50,000, because it would kick in only after 10 trips in a calendar month.

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Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 30, 2024

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Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 30, 2024

-
Jury Deliberation Re-charge
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
COUNTY OF NEW YORK CRIMINAL TERM
-
-
PART: 59
Χ
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK,
-against-
DONALD J. TRUMP,
DEFENDANT.
BEFORE:
Indict. No.
71543-2023
CHARGE
4909
FALSIFYING BUSINESS
RECORDS 1ST DEGREE
JURY TRIAL
100 Centre Street
New York, New York 10013
May 30, 2024
HONORABLE JUAN M. MERCHAN
JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT
APPEARANCES:
FOR THE PEOPLE:
ALVIN BRAGG, JR., ESQ.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY, NEW YORK COUNTY
One Hogan Place
New York, New York 10013
BY:
JOSHUA STEINGLASS, ESQ.
MATTHEW COLANGELO,
ESQ.
SUSAN HOFFINGER, ESQ.
CHRISTOPHER CONROY, ESQ.
BECKY MANGOLD, ESQ.
KATHERINE ELLIS, ESQ.
Assistant District Attorneys
BLANCHE LAW
BY:
TODD BLANCHE, ESQ.
EMIL BOVE, ESQ.
KENDRA WHARTON, ESQ.
NECHELES LAW, LLP
BY: SUSAN NECHELES, ESQ.
GEDALIA STERN, ESQ.
Attorneys for the Defendant
SUSAN PEARCE-BATES, RPR, CSR, RSA
Principal Court Reporter
LAURIE EISENBERG, RPR, CSR
LISA KRAMSKY
THERESA MAGNICCARI
Senior Court Reporters
Susan Pearce-Bates, RPR, CCR, RSA
Principal Court Reporter

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Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 29, 2024

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Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 29, 2024

SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
COUNTY OF NEW YORK CRIMINAL TERM
-
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK,
PART: 59
Indict. No.
71543-2023
CHARGE
-against-
DONALD J. TRUMP,
DEFENDANT.
BEFORE:
4815
FALSIFYING BUSINESS
RECORDS 1ST DEGREE
JURY TRIAL
X
100 Centre Street
New York, New York 10013
May 29, 2024
HONORABLE JUAN M. MERCHAN
JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT
APPEARANCES:
FOR THE
PEOPLE:
ALVIN BRAGG, JR.,
ESQ.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY, NEW YORK COUNTY
One Hogan Place
New York, New York 10013
BY:
JOSHUA STEINGLASS, ESQ.
MATTHEW COLANGELO,
ESQ.
SUSAN HOFFINGER, ESQ.
CHRISTOPHER CONROY, ESQ.
BECKY MANGOLD, ESQ.
KATHERINE ELLIS, ESQ.
Assistant District Attorneys
BLANCHE LAW
BY:
TODD BLANCHE, ESQ.
EMIL BOVE, ESQ.
KENDRA WHARTON, ESQ.
NECHELES LAW, LLP
BY: SUSAN NECHELES, ESQ.
Attorneys for the Defendant
SUSAN PEARCE-BATES, RPR, CSR, RSA
Principal Court Reporter
LAURIE EISENBERG, RPR, CSR
LISA KRAMSKY
THERESA MAGNICCARI
Senior Court Reporters
Susan Pearce-Bates,
RPR, CCR, RSA
Principal Court Reporter

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