Questions on Claim That Senator Was Target of Attacks
May 22, 2008
The staff of State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins says that her district office here has been the target of attacks and a break-in recently, but the police have raised questions about some parts of the staff’s account.
A spokeswoman for the senator said on Wednesday that on two recent days, an air-rifle pellet or a bullet from a small-caliber gun pierced the thick windows of the second-floor office.
State Democratic leaders plan a news conference on Thursday morning at the senator’s office to discuss the matter.
The senator’s spokeswoman, Allyson Felix, also said that the office was broken into on April 3, and that an intruder ransacked a desk, rummaged through files and turned on a computer to gain access to the senator’s schedule.
In an interview, Ms. Felix characterized the attacks as “scare tactics,” though she did not identify who she believed may be behind them.
In a terse news release issued Wednesday afternoon, however, the Yonkers Police Department, which is investigating the case, contradicted several elements in Ms. Felix’s description of events.
The police said that the damage to the office’s glass windows “is not consistent with the damage that would be caused by a firearm.”
And though Ms. Felix said that Ms. Stewart-Cousins was a specific target in the attacks, the police said they found similar holes in other windows at the eight-story building, which also houses a bank and a podiatrist’s office, among other businesses.
And while Ms. Felix said the door to the office had been shut and locked when an intruder broke in on April 3, the police officers who investigated found no sign of forced entry, according to the statement.
The police also said investigators found no signs that the office had been ransacked.
There have been no arrests, and the investigation remains active. The police have also offered the senator’s staff suggestions on how to increase security at the office, a city official said.
The office was off limits to reporters on Wednesday, but the holes in the windows, covered with tape, could be seen from the sidewalk below.
The police said that Ms. Stewart-Cousins was not at the office on the days the windows were broken, though Ms. Felix said that the timing of the events did not appear to be coincidental: the senator’s schedule that an intruder may have gained access to showed that Ms. Stewart-Cousins would have been in her district on those days.
Ms. Stewart-Cousins, who won the once-reliably Republican seat in 2006, is a legislator whom state Republicans are working hard to unseat this November in a bid to hold on their slim majority in the State Senate. She narrowly defeated Nicholas A. Spano, the longtime incumbent and scion of a local political family, in 2006.
Last July, the state’s Republican Party aired a commercial in her district, which includes most of Yonkers, Greenburgh and Mount Pleasant, criticizing her legislative record. Ms. Stewart-Cousins was also featured on a Web site that uses a mock game of “Jeopardy!” to lampoon several Democratic senators as part of a campaign to discredit them in advance of the elections.
Ms. Stewart-Cousins has also found herself under fire from anti-abortion campaigners, who rallied outside her office here last month to protest her sponsorship of a measure that would alter the state’s laws regarding abortion.
Jessica Shanahan, president of New Yorkers for Parental Rights, which organized the event, said on Wednesday that participants “would not resort to violent tactics against the senator or any one else whose position we don’t agree with.”
Mr. Spano announced May 8 that he will not run again for the seat, which he held for nearly 20 years. Ms. Stewart-Cousins will most likely run unopposed for the Democratic nomination.
Mary Mahon, a lawyer from Hartsdale who worked as general counsel for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Long Island Rail Road, has announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination.
Source: NY Times
Related Articles
- Westchester Republicans target 2 state Senate Democrats
- Feds to qustion Brooklyn councilman Kendall Stewart about aide’s charities
- Nick Spano says no to a campaign in 2008
- Cash In Key Senate Races
- Cuomo to check if state police were used for politics
Comment on this article
