Good morning. It's Wednesday. Today we'll find out about a rash of thefts of metal plaques on the Lower East Side and in Greenwich Village. We'll also get details on an audit that said the city failed to stop overspending on hotels where migrants were housed under a big no-bid contract.
The heist took 13 minutes 58 seconds, from the moment the man in the gray T-shirt appeared to the moment when he walked away, having slipped the loot into a backpack he slung over his shoulder. The haul was a 15-inch-wide metal plaque from the iron gate of a cemetery on the Lower East Side. Andrew Berman — the executive director of Village Preservation, an architectural preservation group that focuses on the East Village, Greenwich Village and NoHo — said it was the latest theft of a plaque in the area, apparently because scrap metal is in demand. At least two commemorative plaques placed by Berman's group have disappeared. One celebrated the writer Anaïs Nin. The other, installed with a grant from a foundation started by the Two Boots pizza chain, recognized Fillmore East, the "church of rock 'n' roll" where the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin performed. Yet another plaque, honoring Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from an American medical school, was damaged last month, Berman said. The website evgrieve.com has reported on the disappearance of others. Berman said he felt "outrage and sadness" at the thefts. Commemorative plaques are "a source of community pride," he said. "To see them ripped off in this way is incredibly disheartening." The thefts reflect the ups and downs of commodity prices — specifically, scrap metal. Soaring demand since the pandemic has led to people stealing wiring from streetlights in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where fire hydrants have also been a target: Nearly 300 were taken in the first half of the year. So was a plaque commemorating the boxer Joe Louis, which was taken from a cemetery in Carson, Calif., next to Compton. At the burial ground on the Lower East Side, the New York Marble Cemetery at 41½ Second Avenue, the landscaping contractor reported that the plaque was missing on Friday morning. The president of the cemetery, Caroline DuBois, said that, when she got the news, she assumed it "was some drunken guys walking down the street late at night." But video from a surveillance camera at the funeral home next door showed that the theft happened in the middle of the day on Thursday.
"Broad daylight," DuBois said, though the view of the gate from the street is obscured by scaffolding from the funeral home. The man in the T-shirt "knew exactly what kinds of tools he would need," DuBois said, because he brought them along. The video shows him "very casually putting his stuff on the ground and pulling out a screwdriver," she said. "He takes the plaque and stuffs it in his bag." The police said they had made no arrests. DuBois said she suspected that the man had cased the cemetery, or at least the gate, even though the cemetery is not usually open to the public. It is open for a few hours on one Sunday a month and can be rented for parties, weddings or movie shoots. The plaque, installed some years ago by the cemetery trustees at a cost of $650, said that the cemetery is listed as a city landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It also said that the cemetery was the oldest nonsectarian burial ground in the city, though it did not mention the notables interred there — among them Aaron Clark, the mayor from 1837 to 1839, and Benjamin Wright, the chief engineer for the Erie Canal. DuBois said her great-great-great-great-grandfather had bought one of the 156 marble burial vaults, paying $250 in 1830. The thief did not take everything. DuBois said he left behind the brackets that had held the plaque in place, along with the screws. WEATHER Expect showers and possibly thunderstorms with temperatures in the low 70s. For tonight, there is a chance of showers with temperatures in the high 60s. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Tuesday (Tisha B'Av). The latest New York news
We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. The city overspent on hotels for migrants, an audit says
The city paid for hotel rooms that were never used last year after it began sending asylum seekers to hotels — including $833,340 for hotel rooms in Orangeburg, N.Y., and $569,500 for rooms near Kennedy International Airport in Queens, according to an audit by the city comptroller. The comptroller, Brad Lander, found that the Department of Housing Preservation and Development had allowed a troubled contractor to bill for unnecessary expenses. The audit said that the agency had failed to exercise sufficient oversight after a $432 million no-bid contract was awarded to DocGo, a firm that has come under scrutiny for its handling of migrant services. The investigators who prepared the audit concluded that the housing city agency had allowed DocGo to understaff the hotels, overbill for security and hire subcontractors without arranging for the agency to vet and approve them, as rules require. The audit found that only 20 percent of the invoices from DocGo that were reviewed by investigators should have been paid. City housing officials said that they considered extra rooms "planned insurance" against a sudden and unexpected jump in the demand for emergency housing. The empty rooms at the Orangeburg hotel were booked after a judge issued a temporary restraining order that meant they could not be used by migrants from the city. But DocGo did not release the rooms, and the city paid for them. Of the $182 million paid to the company as of mid-June, Lander is recommending that the city try to retrieve more than $11 million, based on a review of two months of invoices. He said the amount of misspent money could exceed $100 million over the last year if a similar rate of noncompliance is found in invoices his investigators have not yet checked. Mayor Eric Adams defended the way the city had handled finding rooms as more and more migrants arrived in New York. "I'm sure that, you know, if you never had to manage a crisis of that magnitude, then you're going to really just have some second-guessing," the mayor said when he was asked about Lander's audit during a news briefing on Tuesday. Calling the tide of migrants "a crisis that's not going away," Adams added, "We continue to move forward." METROPOLITAN DIARY Sly
Dear Diary: In 1970, I was assigned to Class "A" yeoman's school on Governors Island when I was beginning my time as an enlisted man in the U.S. Coast Guard. It was my first time in New York City. We were able to get free tickets to Broadway and Off Broadway shows. I remember sitting in the front row for one called "Score" that featured nudity. Being a boy from Texas, I was stunned. One of the actors was an unknown named Sylvester Stallone. I don't remember him, but he's listed in the Playbill. — Rod Snyder Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Francis Mateo, Luke Caramanico and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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N.Y. Today: Scrap Metal Thieves Steal Plaques From Historic Cemeteries
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