Robert Swann Sentenced To 25 years In Killing Of Parks JTP Co-Worker Outside Al Oerter Rec. Center

A jury at Queens Criminal Court found Robert Swann, 53, guilty of manslaughter in the killing of Ezra Black, 31, outside the Al Oerter Recreation Center on September 4th, 2012. (Photo by Ellis Kaplan)

Queens

Robert Swann, 53, was sentenced to 25 years for killing his co-worker Ezra Black, 31, outside the Al Oerter Recreation Center on September 4th, 2012.

Swann was found found guilty of manslaughter two weeks ago by a jury in Queens criminal Court. 

Mr. Swann and Mr.  Black were welfare workers employed by the Parks Department when Swann stabbed his co-worker to death in the chest during an altercation outside the recreation center near Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens.

The two welfare recipients were loading garbage that according to Local 983 reps they aren't even supposed to be doing - when they got into an argument over garbage bags according to park sources.  Swann made several threats about killing him prior to the incident sources said. 

They had been bickering for days. 

Swann a grabbed a knife with a wooden handle from a cafeteria and went outside stabbed  him. He calmly left the scene and disappeared into Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

Park employees at the scene did not call 911 to say a suspect was loose or give a description of the assailant according to a source at the scene.  

"They wanted to keep it quiet," the source said.

Instead the Al Oerter Recreation Center manager went looking for police in the park but could not find any. 

He found PEP officers Ralph Baselice and Sgt. Charles St. Louis inside the PEP headquarters in the Passerelle building who jumped into his car and began driving around the park looking for him.

Officer Baseline broadcasted a description of the suspect over a police radio they had because of the U.S. Open detail. 

While driving around the park an observant St. Louis spotted Swann - who had disposed of his parks uniform - not far from the Unisphere walking towards exit of the park.

The stabbing victim Ezra Black was taken to New York Hospital Queens, where he later died.

"I don't understand why this was allowed to get to this point,"  a parks worker familiar with the situation said at the time. 

"The manager should have dealt with it before it came to this. Everyone knew these guys were fighting."

Concerns have once again been raised over the lack of background checks, especially for people with violent criminal histories for parks workers enrolled in the welfare-to-work program. 

Black reportedly has more than two dozen prior arrests that include assault,  menacing and criminal use of a firearm.

A parks spokesperson defended hiring people with criminal histories.

Read More:

Robert Swann, 51, Indicted In Killing Of Parks JTP Co-Worker In Queens
A Walk In The Park - December 14, 2012 

Dangerous Criminals Being Hired At Parks

A Walk In The Park - September 30, 2012 - By Geoffrey Croft

Park Welfair Employee Stabs Co-Worker To Death

A Walk In The Park - September 5, 2012 - By Geoffrey Croft

Parks Department Does Not Fire Convicted Killer After Sexually Abusing Worker In 2009

“It’s horrible. He can do whatever he wants to do and not even [get] a slap on the wrist? He gets to do the same thing? Really?” - Victim


Still on The Job. Despite his 2009 conviction for sexually abusing a Brooklyn woman doing community service in a park,  APSW maintenance worker Michael Palamar is still employed as a supervisor at Tompkins Square Park.   The city is being sued by the victim over the incident. (The woman worked in parks for just ten days) Shockingly,  lawyers defending the city in the lawsuit over that incident could not say in open court whether Palamar was still on the payroll or not, according to the victim’s lawyer.  (Photo: R. Umar Abbasi)

In 1982, a 17-year-old Palamar broke into the Rosedale, Queens, home of his next-door neighbor, 83-year-old Morris Rosenhaft and bludgeoned him to death with a bat during a botched burglary.  He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served 16 years of a 25-year sentence before being paroled in 1999. He was back behind bars in 2001, pleading guilty in Manhattan to petit larceny and possession of stolen property. 

After these convictions Palamar was able to get a job with the Parks Department. During his employment he has had numerous work issues including failing to report accidents in city vehicles he drove, not safeguarding equipment, and lying about finishing an assignment, according to Parks Department records. 

The issue is compounded because for years the City's elected officials have refused to allocate proper resources for the Parks Department so the agency has relied on hiring personnel with questionable backgrounds.   

And what exactly might cause the Parks Department not to hire a perspective employee? An agency spokesperson said last year that as long as the applicant "didn't exhibit anti-social or disruptive behavior during the hiring process we would decline to hire that person.”

Asleep at The Wheel. Incredibly the Parks Department said last week it is still “reviewing” Palamar’s 2009 conviction. 

- Geoffrey Croft

Manhattan

How does this killer get a pass — and a city paycheck?

The city knowingly hired a deadly ex-con to patrol its parks, and again looked the other way when he groped a co-worker four years ago, The Post has learned.

Michael Palamar, 49, continues to collect his taxpayer-funded $56,988 annual salary as a maintenance worker in Tompkins Square Park, where The Post found him last week.

More than a year after The Post exposed the city Parks Department’s penchant for hiring people with unsavory criminal backgrounds, it’s clear the agency hasn’t learned its lesson.

Palamar had a body count before he was old enough to vote. He bludgeoned an elderly neighbor to death with a bat during a botched burglary when he was 17.

Despite his manslaughter conviction, Palamar landed a job in park maintenance in 2006. His bad behavior quickly returned — with him failing to report accidents in city vehicles he drove, not safeguarding equipment, and lying about finishing an assignment, according to Parks Department records obtained by The Post.

And he kept his job even after pleading guilty in March 2009 to sexually abusing a Brooklyn woman doing community service in Cooper Square.

The system is “thoroughly broken,” parks advocate Geoffrey Croft said. “How in God’s creation was this guy hired, and how is he able to keep his job?”

Incredibly, The Parks Department said last week it is still “reviewing” Palamar’s 2009 conviction.

And shockingly, lawyers defending the city in a lawsuit over that incident could not say in open court whether Palamar was still on the payrollor not, according to the victim’s lawyer.

“They did absolutely nothing to him. They did zero,” said the victim’s lawyer, Niall MacGiollabhui. “It’s insult upon injury.”

It’s not the first time the Parks Department has hired criminals only to see them return to their law-breaking ways.

Robert Swann was charged with murder for allegedly stabbing a co-worker at a Queens recreation center in September 2012 after the two argued over a garbage bag. Swann got the job despite previous gun and theft charges.

“As far as we understand, no changes have been made,” parks advocate Geoffrey Croft said of the agency’s hiring process. “Clearly, where they’re getting their employees is cause for concern.”

In 1982, Palamar, broke into the Rosedale, Queens, home of his next-door neighbor, 83-year-old Morris Rosenhaft, who caught the intruder red-handed. He swung a bat at Palamar, who snatched it and smashed the old man.

Charged with murder, Palamar — who had a prior burglary rap — pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He served 16 years of a 25-year sentence before being paroled in 1999. He was back behind bars in 2001, pleading guilty in Manhattan to petit larceny and possession of stolen property.

In 2009, Palamar, a member of DC37’s Local 983, was on the job when Michelle Fecu of Brooklyn was assigned to do 10 days of community service after a shoplifting arrest.

Fecu, now 31, says the 6-foot-3 ex-con chatted her up, following her in his truck at the end of the workday and offering her rides home. When she reluctantly agreed, he put his arm around her and played with her hair, according to court documents.

An uncomfortable Fecu didn’t initially report the creepy behavior because she “didn’t want to complain, didn’t want them to think I didn’t want to do community service,” she said during a deposition in her 2010 Manhattan Supreme Court case.

But Palamar grabbed her rear on her last day while she cleaned garbage in the park. Fed up, Fecu finally told supervisors. Palamar was arrested and ordered to stay away from her.

Fecu is outraged her groper is still patrolling the city’s public spaces.

“It’s horrible,” she said. “He can do whatever he wants to do and not even [get] a slap on the wrist?” she said. “He gets to do the same thing? Really?”

Confronted by The Post in Tompkins Square Park last week while he unloaded bags of leaves, Palamar declined to comment on the sexual-abuse case or his manslaughter conviction.

“Whether I deserve [the job] or not is irrelevant,” he said. “I took the [civil-service] test, and I passed it just like anybody else.”

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Hagen

Read More:

Parks Department continues to keep convicted killer perv on the job
New York Post -  November 24, 2013 - By Kathianne Boniello  

Dangerous Criminals Being Hired At Parks
A Walk In The Park -  September 30, 2012

Robert Swann, 51, Indicted In Killing Of Parks JTP Co-Worker In Queens

Robert Swann, 51, was indicted yesterday on murder charges for the killing of Ezra Black, 31, outside the Al Oerter Recreation Center on September 4th. (Photo: William Miller)

Queens

A city Parks Department JTP employee accused of stabbing a co-worker to death as they argued over a plastic trash bag was indicted yesterday on murder charges.

Robert Swann, 51, was arraigned in Queens Supreme Court.  On September 4th he allegedly picked up a knife and stabbed Ezra Black, 31, from Brooklyn in the stomach and calmly walked away.

PEP officers caught him in Flushing Meadows - Corona Park a short time later heading towards exit  of the park.

Defense attorney Michael Siff entered a not-guilty plea on behalf of his client.

Swann was ordered held without bail.

Police investigators at the scene where a welfare worker employed by the Parks Department allegedly stabbed a co-worker to death yesterday outside the Al Oerter recreation center. (Photo: Anthony Delmundo For New York Daily News  

Alert PEP officers tracked down the suspect in Flushing Meadows Corona Park shortly after.  After the incident concerns were once again raised over the lack of background checks, especially for people with violent criminal histories for parks workers enrolled in the welfare-to-work program.   

Park employees at the scene allegedly did not call 911 to say a suspect was loose or give a description of the assailant.

Read More:

Parks co-worker slay rap

New York Post - December 14, 2012 - By Christina Carrega 

Dangerous Criminals Being Hired At Parks

A Walk In The Park - September 30, 2012 - By Geoffrey Croft

Editorial: Need to Screen JTPs
The Chief - September 10, 2012 - By Richard Steier  

Park Welfair Employee Stabs Co-Worker To Death

A Walk In The Park - September 5, 2012 - By Geoffrey Croft

Dangerous Criminals Being Hired At Parks

Some dangerous criminals have been hired at Parks.  Robert Swann, who was hired despite a lengthy rap sheet which includes arrests for assault and weapons, was charged in the killing of a co-worker at the Al Oerter Recreation Center in Flushing on September 4, 2012.  (Photo: William Miller)

What exactly might cause the Parks Department not to hire a perspective employee? According to the Parks Department spokesperson as long as the applicant "didn't exhibit anti-social or disruptive behavior during the hiring process we would decline to hire that person.”

The issue is compounded because for years the City's elected officials have refused to allocate proper resources for the Parks Department so the agency has relied on hiring personnel with questionable backgrounds.

City-Wide

It’s the Department of Perps and Recreation.

Advocates say the city Parks Department overlooks the sordid results of its background checks on job applicants — and even puts new hires in the field before the criminal screening is complete, according to the New York Post. 

“When you go into your public park, you should know if the person working there is a murderer, sexual predator or bank robber,” said Geoffrey Croft of NYC Park Advocates.

The ex-cons on the payroll included:

* Vernon Gowdy, a Central Park maintenance man who was once busted for groping a female co-worker while exposing himself. Before being hired by the city, Gowdy did a five-year prison stint for armed robbery. He also was arrested in 2001 for the decade-old murder of a Bronx woman, but the DA declined to prosecute despite a DNA match.

The now-suspended Gowdy ironically became a public face of the parks system when he was featured in the 2007 documentary “The Pool,” which chronicled a day at a Lower East Side public pool.

According to the film’s Web site, the story follows “park employee and ex-convict” Gowdy, who “never thought ‘in a thousand million years’ that he would get a job as a city employee.”

A Parternership For Parks coordinator Kaceen Jordan was arrested in July after allegedly exposing himself to a teen at Marcus Garvey Park in Manhattan. Days later he was charged for multiple sex acts involving minors.

* Parks coordinator Kaceen Jordan, who was arrested in Harlem in July for allegedly flashing a 15-year-old boy while off-duty — nearly a decade after a similar incident involving a 12-year-old. Days after the July arrest, Jordan was charged in Brooklyn for a spree of sex acts involving minors from March to June, according to court documents.

* Robert Swann, 51, a Parks staffer who allegedly killed co-worker Ezra Black, 31, with a knife in a fight over picking up a garbage bag. The killing happened in broad daylight at a recreation center in Queens. Swann’s rap sheet before his hiring included gun and theft arrests.

Shockingly, even when the city is aware of an applicant’s violent past, the job seeker is not automatically rejected for work in the parks.

“A criminal record in and of itself does not disqualify an applicant,” agency spokeswoman Vickie Karp said. “If the offenses involve recent behavior, or if an applicant exhibits anti-social or disruptive behavior during the hiring process, we would decline to hire that person.”

Karp said the city collects fingerprints, which are sent to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. The state then checks for convictions through an FBI search.

The background review continues during the term of employment if new details are brought to Parks’ attention, Karp said. She refused to say whether workers are put into the field before background checks are complete — which several Parks employees told The Post was common practice.

“You’re getting people out of the welfare rolls that aren’t screened, and they’re put in jobs that are sensitive,” said Joe Puleo, vice president of the union that represents Parks enforcement officers.

“The question is, what will make them disqualify someone?”

In the fatal stabbing, the cleanup crew came from Job Training Participants, a program of nearly 3,000 welfare recipients who earn $9.21 an hour. The welfare workers make up a third of city Parks employees.

State law prohibits employers from “unfair discrimination” against candidates based on criminal record, unless a job seekers’ offenses are directly linked to the job for which they’re applying. A convicted shoplifter, for example, should not be denied a gig as a tree pruner under the law.

But John Jay College professor Eugene O’Donnell, a former NYPD cop and prosecutor, said the city must disqualify job seekers with violent criminal histories in order to protect the public.

“It shocks the conscience that [some of these people] were hired,” said O’Donnell. “This is an agency where people are out unsupervised and interacting with people. Some unfair judgments should be made to err on the side of caution.”

A former Parks personnel employee told The Post the agency sets a low bar for new hires.

“They hold them to a different standard than other city workers,” she said. “As long as you tell them up front [about a past crime], they’ll let you in. They let murderers in.”

One of her welfare workers was hired 11 years ago despite being convicted of manslaughter.

When the department learned he recently had a physical altercation with his teen son, they fired him and cited his criminal background.

New recruits even brag about their bad raps.

“They’re not shy about it. They like to let everybody know they’re criminals,” said one Parks employee. “Even the last incident [in Queens], the man was letting everybody know he was going to kill this guy.”

Another Parks worker said she’s been threatened by trainees who were never given proper background checks.

When she asked him to help shovel sand off the boardwalk at Rockaway Beach, he went nuts.

One agency supervisor said he had a Parks security officer in the field before his criminal past resurfaced five months later.

The ex-con was required to prove his gun-possession charges had been cleared, but couldn’t get documentation and was fired.

“We’ve had [workers] that were involved in gun possession, prostitution, domestic violence, narcotics, a slew of things,” said the supervisor. “The city says they were cleared, and they find out later on that they had this in their past.”

Additional reporting by Kathianne Boniello and Kirstan Conley

Read More:

Parks Dept. hires workers despite major criminal rap sheets, advocates charge

New York Post - By Kate Briqelet - September 30, 2012

Park Welfair Employee Stabs Co-Worker To Death

A Walk In The Park - September 5, 2012 - By Geoffrey Croft

Park Welfair Employee Stabs Co-Worker To Death

"The Parks Department Opportunity Program does not discriminate against people with prior criminal records." - Vickie Karp Parks  Spokeswoman.

Police investigators at the scene. A welfare worker employed by the Parks Department allegedly stabbed a co-worker to death yesterday outside the Al Oerter recreation center. (Photo: 

Alert PEP officers tracked down the suspect in Flushing Meadows Corona Park shortly after. Park employees at the scene did not call 911 to say a suspect was loose or give a description of the assailant according at the scene.   Concerns have once again been raised over the lack of background checks, especially for people with violent criminal histories for parks workers enrolled in the welfare-to-work program. 

UPDATED

Queens

A welfare worker employed by the Parks Department stabbed a co-worker to death Tuesday outside the recreation center where they worked.

Ezra Black, 31, from Brooklyn, was stabbed in the chest by fellow Job Training     Participant (JTP) Robert Swann, 51, at the Al Oerter Recreation Center near Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens.

The two welfare recipients were loading garbage that according to Local 983 reps they aren't even supposed to be doing - when they got into an argument over garbage bags according to park sources.  Swann made several threats about killing him prior to the incident sources said. 

They had been bickering for days. 

Swann a grabbed a knife with a wooden handle from a cafeteria and went outside stabbed  him. He calmly left the scene and disappeared into Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

Park employees at the scene did not call 911 to say a suspect was loose or give a description of the assailant according to a source at the scene.  

"They wanted to keep it quiet," he said.

Instead the Al Oerter Recreation Center manager went looking for police in the park but could not find any. He found PEP officers Ralph Baselice and Sgt. Charles St. Louis inside the PEP headquarters in the Passerelle building who jumped into his car and began driving around the park looking for him.

Officer Baseline broadcasted a description of the suspect over a police radio they had because of the U.S. Open detail. 

While driving around the park an observant St. Louis spotted Swann - who had disposed of his parks uniform - not far from the Unisphere walking towards exit of the park.

The officers got out of the car and ordered him to stop.

He kept walking.

The officers surrounded the alledged assailant. Officer St. Louis took out his mace and again ordered him to stop. As they approached him a police van filled with officers from the 109 Pct.  pulled up with guns drawn and placed him under arrest.

The stabbing victim Ezra Black was taken to New York Hospital Queens, where he later died.

Mr. Black's brother Daniel Black and has allegedly made threats to park employees seeking revenge. Flyers have been distributed to park employees with a photograph of Daniel.

"I don't understand why this was allowed to get to this point," said a parks worker familiar with the situation.  "The manager should have dealt with it before it came to this. Everyone knew these guys were fighting."

Concerns have once again been raised over the lack of background checks, especially for people with violent criminal histories for parks workers enrolled in the welfare-to-work program. 

Black reportedly has more than two dozen prior arrests that include assault,  menacing and criminal use of a firearm.

A parks spokesperson defended hiring people with criminal histories.

"The Parks Department Opportunity Program does not discriminate against people with prior criminal records, " Vickie Karp Parks  Spokeswoman told the Chief.

Read More:

Fatal encounter between two city Parks Department workers sparked

by dispute over bag of garbage, prosecutors say

New York Daily News - September 6, 2012 - By Lisa Colangelo, Joe Stepansky, Shayna Jacobs

Fatal park stab started with fight over garbage bag: Cops

New York Post - September 5, 2012 - By Christina Carrega and  Doug Auer 

A man in a city job-training program is stabbed to death outside a
recreation center in Queens

New York Daily News - September

By Rocco Parascandola, Lisa Colangelo, Joe Kemp

Parks Department Employee Fatally Stabbed by Co-Worker

WNBC -  Sepember 5, 2012 - By Pei-Sze Cheng 

Parks Dept. Worker Is Killed in Queens

By New York Times - September 4, 2012

Parks Dept. Worker Charged In Fatal Queens Stabbing

NY1 News -  September 5, 2012 

Parks Worker Charged with Murdering Colleague in Queens

DNAinfo - September 5, 2012 - By Mary Johnson

 

Parks employee charged with murdering co-worker: DA 

Times Ledger - September 5, 2012 - By Rich Bockmann