The head of Long Island Power Authority resigned on Tuesday after a group of customers filed a class-action lawsuit accusing LIPA of being “grossly negligent” in its response to Hurricane Sandy, which left 945,000 of its customers without power. An estimated 45,000 are still without power in the area. LIPA chief Michael Hervey’s resignation comes as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the formation of a commission to investigate how prepared power companies were for the storm.

Via:

The suit, filed Tuesday in State Supreme Court in Mineola, charges LIPA and National Grid "grossly neglected vital maintenance," failed to fortify its substations, delayed replacing its outage management system, provided false information to ratepayers, and ignored a 2006 study that identified problems and could have minimized outages. The suit's named ratepayers, Jeff Mollins of Plainview and Jason Abelove of Oceanside, seek unspecified money damages and a review of LIPA operations to prevent the events from recurring, said their lawyer, Kenneth Mollins of Melville.

LIPA and National Grid declined to comment.

At a briefing Tuesday, Abelove said he spent more than $2,500 on electrical inspections required by LIPA, only to be told they were not good enough for his power to be restored.

"LIPA pulled us off the outage map. They literally wrote us off," said Abelove. His power was restored Tuesday morning after two weeks in the dark, he said.

Attorney Mollins, who is the brother of co-plaintiff Jeff Mollins, said he expects the lawsuit to be one of the "biggest class-actions ever filed," with 600,000 to 1 million possible plaintiffs. It's up to a judge to certify class-action status.

View the class action lawsuit filing below:

20121113101856641

Stop and Frisk from Nina Berman on Vimeo.

Nina Berman is a documentary photographer based in New York City with a particular interest in the American political and social landscape. She is the author of two monographs, "Purple Hearts - Back from Iraq" and "Homeland", both examining war, militarism and its effect on the collective American psyche. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries world wide including the Whitney Museum 2010 Biennial. Nina is a member of the NOOR photo collective. Her work on the Occupy Movement was featured in 2011 on the New York Times lens blog.

Via:

At a rate of every minute every day, the New York Police Department stops a person, questions them, asks for identification, and frisks them, sometimes at gunpoint, sometimes slapped against a wall. The number one reason for the stop, according to NYPD statistics, is that the person made a “furtive” look. The number two reason is “other.” Most of the time that person is black or Latino and most of the time they are living in the city’s poorest communities.

A very small percentage of these “stop and frisks” result in arrest or the seizure of any kind of contraband. Since 2002, the number of stop and frisks has increased from 149, 000 to approaching 700,000 in 2011. The NYPD claims that “stop and frisk” is an effective policing strategy but its own statistics paint a different picture.