Cops, robbers and cameras

Hialeah deploys license-tag-reading cameras in its fight on crime

The Hialeah Police Department is installing cameras at eight key intersections and equipping an undercover patrol with four high-definition cameras to snap photos of the license plates of thousands of vehicles a day — not to catch red-light runners but in a controversial attempt to stem the wave of robberies that has hit the city.

The automatic cameras send immediate alerts to police when tags of stolen cars are detected or when a car’s owner has an arrest warrant or suspended driver’s license.

“These are not cameras to fine the drivers,” said Lt. Joe De Jesús, a New Yorker with 36 years of police experience in Hialeah, who has specialized in processing information with the new system. “These cameras have become a powerful tool to fight crime.”

The city has experienced a wave of robberies in commercial areas or close to police and city facilities during the past year, and community activists are worried.

Police cite the case of a Farm Stores shop — popularly known in Hialeah as La Vaquita (The Little Cow) — only five blocks from a police substation that was robbed twice earlier this month by a man who threatened its female employees with a screwdriver.

Last Thursday, a Radio Shack store was robbed for the second time in less than a year. A masked man crashed his truck into the door of the store in west Hialeah and, in a matter of seconds, made off with all the merchandise he could.

“This series of robberies is affecting business in our city,” said Modesto Pérez, president of the Miami-Dade Association of Businesses and Neighbors, based in Hialeah. “The police do what they can, but they have to do more.”

Not everyone is pleased with the new system. Carolina González, a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said that if Hialeah plans to keep a database with information on which cars enter and exit the city, “they should show clear regulations about who will have access to it, what would be its use and how long the information is going to be stored. . . .

“This is not clear,” González said. “It is insulting to place cameras that have no benefit whatsoever nor reduce crime, making Hialeah residents believe that they do work. They are simply giving the impression that they are doing something about it.”

During the first two weeks of the camera’s operation, which was established with $200,000 in federal funds, the system has photographed the license plates of more than 156,000 vehicles, of which 14,790 belonged to drivers with suspended licenses.

De Jesús said the photographs allow the creation of a strategic database for different police units to carry out investigations — from the search of a car driven by an elderly person with Alzheimer’s to a vehicle involved in a crime.

In the case of the La Vaquita shop that was robbed twice, the vehicle used by the thief was discovered thanks to the new camera system. The store at 510 Hialeah Dr. was held up at 11:50 p.m. Feb. 8, with the robber getting $160. At 7:15 a.m. the next day, shortly after the store opened, the same person came back and stole the remaining $50 in the cash register.

In September, the same man had robbed the store of $200, and also hit the Dairy Queen ice cream shop across the street, where he stole another $200 after threatening a female employee with a weapon.

During the Feb. 9 robbery, a witness identified three of the six letters and numbers on the license plate of the brown Scion driven by the thief.

De Jesús entered that partial information in the system and discovered that the Scion belonged to the mother of Raúl Irán Barrios, 40, a man with a criminal record for armed robbery, whose image had been captured by La Vaquita’s surveillance cameras.

Barrios was arrested Feb. 11, Hialeah police spokesman Carl Zogby said.

“We only had partial information about this individual,” Zogby said, “but thanks to the new camera system we were able to have full identification and proceed to arrest him.”

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Empire State of decline

Bob McManus

Did Gov. Cuomo’s $2 billion millionaires’ tax hike of 15 months ago pinch off the public purse as a cash source for election-year spending sprees?

So it would seem. Certainly nobody’s talking direct tax increases as New York’s two-year municipal/state election cycle proceeds.

But that leaves the indirect route, a well-traveled path in a state with an insatiable appetite for free stuff — and a political class dedicated body and soul to supplying it.

And all the better when the tab can be handed to the private sector, which has scant say in the process and no option when it’s over but to pay up or move on.

Gabriella Bass

Fighting — but not for you: Mayoral wannabe Bill de Blasio joining striking bus drivers to demand the city preserve their expensive privileges.

Think plucked duck, neck in a knot and hanging from a hook in a Chinatown window.

Two major de facto tax hikes are moving through the pipeline right now: A mandatory paid sick-leave bill in New York City and an inflation-indexed minimum-wage statute in Albany.

And a variation on the theme can be found in the promise by Democratic mayoral candidates to revive an effort to transform some 8,000 private-sector school-bus drivers into all-but-in-name-only municipal employees.

First, the bus drivers, who are expected to end a five-week strike today — unqualified good news for 152,000 kids affected by the shutdown, and their parents.

But it’s not so good for the drivers, who were holding out for city job-security and wage guarantees that would’ve effectively made them municipal employees.

They lost. But all the Democrats mounting credible campaigns to succeed Bloomberg have vowed to revisit that outcome as soon as possible.

It’s a stunningly irresponsible promise: The city lays out some $1.1 billion a year for bus services — or about $7,000 per child served. In contrast, Los Angeles — the next most expensive city — spends about $3,100 per child.

Thus New York pays a 125-percent premium for school busing, even though the cost of living in New York is just 20 percent higher than in LA.

The difference is more than an extravagance: It’s a wholly unnecessary, recurring tax hit totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for the benefit of just 8,000 individuals — and their union bosses, of course.

No, the arrangement isn’t identical to the mechanism driving the sick-leave and minimum-wage bills — but the distinctions are minimal.

All three deploy the power of government on behalf of special-interests: In this case, labor.

In fact, the union cat’s-paw Working Families Party is the prime mover of both mandatory sick-pay and the minimum-wage hike.

Kid-glove press coverage — or, more to the point, scant coverage at all — has produced a predictable result: Both measures enjoy considerable public support.

But both also represent lousy public policy.

Each squarely targets employers — that is, job creators. Each promises to impose hefty new costs on small businesses. And each would extract from the economy hundreds of millions that might otherwise go for expansion, growth and future high-wage jobs.

The sick-leave bill — now bottled up (to her credit) by Council Speaker Christine Quinn, but ready to go at a moment’s notice — would cost employers an estimated $800 million a year. And it would require the creation of a stultifying, expensive regulatory system sure to delight City Hall paper-pushers, but also guaranteed to depress the job market.

The minimum-wage hike, now all but certain to become law this year unless Congress passes its own hike first, stands to cost employers at least $1.2 billion in its first year, according to the left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute. More to the point, a study prepared for the New York Partnership says it will erase 22,000 marginal jobs (mostly from small business) and reduce New York’s gross product by some $2.5 billion over the next decade.

Now whether either bill — or municipalizing private-sector bus drivers — represents sound social policy is something else entirely; certainly that bears discussing.

But if the answer is yes, then simple equity dictates that funding come from general revenues — from an honest tax increase, if that’s what is required.

Discriminatory, special-interest-driven levies have been a way of life in New York for decades — and that’s a prime reason why the state is so lopsided economically.

Big-bucks businesses thrive in Manhattan, but small business struggles everywhere; the middle-class has long since abandoned an economically hollowed-out Upstate — even as unions and other special interests grow fat across the board.

Meanwhile, the leading Democratic mayoral candidates promise more of the same for the city — and various Albany factions compete to make matters worse statewide.

Think of it as an Empire State of mind — economically corrosive and morally bankrupt, but business as usual nonetheless.

rmcmanus8@gmail.com

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Best photo apps for Android devices

Whether you want to slap a simple filter on your photo or get granular and change attributes like color levels and saturation, we’ve got a list of the Android apps you’ll want to use.

Snapseed

The good: With its unique gesture-based interface, this offers an incredible level of control over its effects and filters.

The bad: The tools and interface aren’t intuitive, so it could take a while to get familiarized. Also, the lack of a zoom function makes it difficult to see finer adjustments.

The cost: Free

The bottom line: If you’re a serious mobile photographer looking for an app with which to fine-tune your photos, Snapseed is your best choice.

Pixlr Express

The good: Offers more than 600 effects that all work well and are easy to use. Auto Fix and Focal Blur (tilt-shift) are particularly effective.

The bad: The app doesn’t warn you before backing out, which can result in lost work. A Recent Files picker upon launch would be nice.

The cost: Free

The bottom line: One of the most powerful Android apps in its category. Despite its minor flaws, it should be your go-to mobile photo editor.

Instagram

The good: An excellent way to turn mundane images into cool-looking photos you can share with friends. Mapping features mean people can easily browse all your geotagged shots.

The bad: Photo Map features default to showing all your geotagged shots, which could be dangerous under some circumstances.

The cost: Free

The bottom line: If you like taking retro-looking shots and sharing them, Instagram is tough to beat. Mapping features and frequent updates to the app mean your pictures will have a longer browsing life span.

Photo Grid

The good: Offers a huge menu of grid templates and a dead-simple interface for combining photos into framed collages.

The bad: The app unfortunately doesn’t let you customize the thickness of collage borders or the level of curvature on rounded panels.

The cost: Free

The bottom line: Even though it’s missing a couple of nifty customization tools other collage apps have, Photo Grid’s simple interface and outstanding menu of predesigned grids make it the best collage app on the market.

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Inauguration poet Richard Blanco back in Miami for reading

The South Miami engineer who became the youngest poet to read at a presidential inauguration – and the first openly gay, as well as the first Hispanic to do so – is glad to be back home where his historic journey began.

“I really, really missed Miami,” said Richard Blanco, 44, during a phone interview on Monday from his mother’s Miami home. He is visiting from his home in Bethel, Maine. “I couldn’t wait to get down here and do something with the community, which I’m so connected with obviously since I was 4-years-old.”

Blanco, son of Cuban exiles who was born in Spain and brought to South Florida as a small child, will recite his poems at a free event at the Arsht Center in Miami at 7:30 p.m. Friday. The event has been dubbed a “homecoming.”

“Miami’s such a great audience for me because I think they’ll obviously get a lot of my work in ways that other people might not get as deeply,” he said.

At the event, he will also read his inaugural poem, One Today, which he said will be published as a commemorative booklet in a few weeks.

The event is free, but reservations are required. For tickets, visit www.arshtcenter.org or call 305-949-6722.

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Rihanna Unveils Her First Fashion Line

The Rihanna for River Island collection made its catwalk debut in London on Saturday, where the vibe felt more like a fun party than a fashion show.

PICS: Hit or Miss?!

"River Island is London-based and we had to do it here," Rihanna said over the thumping bass of hip-hop music. "It's home to the brand and this is where my opportunity was birthed and my relationship started with River Island right here in London, so it was only appropriate and London Fashion Week is something I have never done. I've never even attended it so my first Fashion Week in London is my show and that's amazing."

The styles of her new line ranged from simple monochrome looks to elegant, semi-sheer dresses.

"The girl that would wear [River Island] is full of personality, full of sass but loves fashion most of all," said Rihanna. "They just love fashion and they want to express themselves with what they wear. That's what I like to do."

Rihanna's River Island collection will be released in select River Island stores and online on March 5.

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Newtown massacre gunman wanted to exceed Norway shooter's death toll

The gunman who carried out the Newtown school massacre was inspired by violent video games — and was trying to outdo a Norwegian mass murderer who killed 77 people, it was reported today.

Adam Lanza believed he was in ghoulish competition with Anders Breivik, who carried out a bloodbath at two locations in July 2011, law enforcement sources told CBS News.

Breivik, a paranoid ultra nationalist, fatally shot 69 people at a summer camp after murdering eight others in downtown Oslo.

Lanza wanted to exceed Breivik’s death toll, according to investigators.

He chose the Sandy Hook (Conn.) Elementary School because it was the “easiest target” with the “largest cluster of people,” two officials who have been briefed about the investigation said.

Lanza saw his victims as characters in a shooting video game and the higher the death toll, the better his “score.”

Investigators said they had found evidence that Lanza was obsessed with Breivik, who posted a bizarre extremists manifesto the day of his attacks.

Sources told CBS that investigators have also uncovered a “trove” of video games from Lanza’s basement.

He is believed to have spent much of his free time in a basement play room, with the windows blacked out, engaged in a kind of target practice on video games.

It was not disclosed which games he played. But Breivik boasted that he trained for his rampage by playing a war-simulation game named “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.”

He said he developed “target acquisition” by practised his aim using a “holographic aiming device” on the game, which he believed was being used to train combat soldiers.

Norwegian prosecutors also said Breivik played “World of Warcraft” an astounding average of six hours and 50 minutes a day for four months while he was preparing his attacks.

The fate of the two mass murderers turned out differently.

Lanza, 20, killed himself after slaying 20 children and six adults before police closed in.

But Breivik surrendered to police and is being held in a Norwegian jail on a 21-year sentence, the longest allowed in his country.

In his manifesto and afterward Breivik said he was inspired by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the Knights Templar of the Middle Ages, al Qaeda, “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, and Japanese “banzai” warriors.

He said he was motivated by fear of an Islamic takeover of Europe, a decline in Western values and the growth of Europe’s left-leaning political parties.

No manifesto or written explanation from Lanza of his rampage has been found.

Before his fatal spree he destroyed the hard drive on his computer, which may have kept some of the records of the games he played and who he played with.

But investigators are believed to be making progress in tracing Lanza’s on-line life.

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Open English expands across Latin America

Back in 2008, Open English, a company run from Miami that uses online courses to teach English in Latin America, had just a handful of students in Venezuela and three employees. Today the company has more than 50,000 students in 22 Latin American countries and some 2,000 employees.

To fund this meteoric expansion, the founders of Open English — Venezuelans Andrés Moreno and Wilmer Sarmiento and Moreno’s American wife, Nicolette — began with $700. Over the last six years, the partners have raised more than $55 million, mostly from private investment and venture capital firms.

Their formula for success? The founders rejected traditional English teaching methods in physical classrooms and developed a system that allows students to tune into live classes every hour of the day from their computers at home, in the office or at school, and learn from native English-speaking teachers who may be based anywhere. Courses stress practical conversations online and the company guarantees fluency after a one-year course, offering six additional months free if students fail to become fluent.

“We wanted to change the way people learn English,” said Andrés Moreno, the 30-year-old co-founder and CEO, who halted his training as a mechanical engineer and worked full-time at developing the company with his partners. “And we want students to achieve fluency. Traditionally, students have to drive to an English academy, waste time in traffic, and try to learn from a teacher who is not an native English speaker in a class with 20 students.”

Using the Internet, Open English offers classes usually with two or three students and a teacher, interactive videos, other learning aids and personal attention from coaches who phone students regularly to see how they are progressing.

Courses cost an average of $750 per year and students can opt for monthly payments. This is about one-fifth to one-third of what traditional schools charge for small classes or individual instructors, Andrés noted.

“We work at building confidence with our students and encourage them to practice speaking English as much as possible during classes,” said Nicolette Moreno, co-founder and chief product officer, who met Andrés in Venezuela while she was working there on a service project. “Students are taught to actively participate in conversations like a job interview, traveling and talking on a conference call,” said Nicolette, who previously lived in Los Angles, worked with non-profits to create environmentally friendly products and fight poverty in emerging markets, and was head equity trader at an asset management firm. “Students need to speak English in our classes, even though it is sometimes difficult. They learn through immersion.”

Open English has successfully tapped into an enormous, underserved market. Millions of people in Latin America want to learn English to advance in their jobs, work at multinational companies, travel or work overseas and understand the popular music, movies and TV shows they constantly hear in English. Many of them take English courses at public and private schools and learn little if any useful conversational English. While students at private schools for the upper middle class and wealthy often learn foreign languages extremely well from native English-speaking teachers, most people can’t afford these schools or courses designed for one or two students.

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The builders of the Sen. Marco Rubio brand

WASHINGTON --
Sen. Marco Rubio is on a breathless rise, a testament to his political skill and demographic appeal that last week saw him delivering the Republican State of the Union response and appearing on the cover of Time as “The Republican Savior.”

But behind the scenes is a relentless, methodical effort to build the Rubio brand, aided by a team of strategists and media handlers positioning the 41-year-old Floridian for an expected presidential run.

They include members of Rubio’s Senate staff and presidential campaign veterans who work for the political committee Rubio formed ostensibly to help elect other conservatives.

Instead the Reclaim America PAC has focused on consultants and building a national fundraising network. Last year, his PAC spent more than $1.7 million, with the vast majority going toward staff and fundraising, and about $110,000 going to other candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

“It connotes a machine, someone who is grooming his image for a jump to higher position,” said the center’s executive director Sheila Krumholz.

Rubio’s team plots policy and publicity moves, including his recent foray into the immigration debate. He was among eight senators working on a proposal, but Rubio took them by surprise — and ensured he would be front and center — with a Wall Street Journal piece laying out the framework before the group announced it.

The Rubio machine cultivates the image of a new breed of Republican, youthful, and as at ease talking about Tupac and the Miami Dolphins as talking about budget deficits. At the same time, advisors dole out nuggets to the news media, they aggressively contest even the smallest points in articles.

The political fascination with Rubio has made it easier for his team to build helpful story lines. When he first took office in the U.S. Senate, it was Rubio the humble, political star keeping his head down. That followed with periodic “major” policy rollouts — foreign policy, job creation, the middle class. When Rubio gives a speech, it’s invariably a “major” address. A young assistant is always there to record it on video and take photographs.

“It’s almost like he’s the Backstreet Boy of American politics, a Hollywood creation of what a model political candidate should be,” said Chris Ingram, a Republican communications consultant from Tampa who has been critical of Rubio. “He has to deliver on the hype but from a P.R. perspective, it’s textbook.”

And constant. Last week, Rubio issued 17 press releases. By comparison, former vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, another potential 2016 candidate, released three.

Behind the scenes

Rubio’s political inner circle includes PAC employees Heath Thompson and Terry Sullivan, two operatives who made their names in South Carolina’s bare-knuckled political culture and are close with former Sen. Jim DeMint. The hyper-competitive Thompson is a college football fanatic more comfortable in a baseball cap than suit and tie.

For broad messaging strategy, there is the roguishly charming Todd Harris who knows practically everybody in the political media and is never shy about excoriating reporters.

The Senate staff includes Alberto Martinez, who goes back to Rubio’s days as speaker of the Florida House and can anticipate where critics might attack Rubio, and Alex Burgos, another Rubio campaign alum and true believer who pushes back at any hint of negativity in Rubio coverage.

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Mindy McCready Dies of Apparent Suicide

Sources confirm to ET that country music singer Mindy McCready has died. She was 37 years old.

RELATED: Stars We Lost

According to a police report from the Cleburne County Sheriff's Office in Arkansas, deputies responded to a report of gun shots fired on Sunday afternoon. Upon arriving, officers reportedly found Mindy McCready's body on the front porch and pronounced her dead at the scene from what appeared to be "a single self-inflicted gunshot wound."

McCready's body will undergo an autopsy as the matter is being fully investigated, the report continues.

McCready had attempted suicide before, having been hospitalized in 2008 after she cut her wrists and took several pills. Her passing follows the shooting death of boyfriend David Wilson on January 13.

Wilson, a record producer, was initially rushed to the hospital after suffering a reported self-inflicted gunshot wound that did not immediately kill him. McCready recalled how she discovered him after the shooting in an interview on NBC's Today. "I just started screaming, calling 911. I laid down next to him and just pleaded with him not to die." The singer said Wilson "was responding" after the shooting, but only making sounds, not words. McCready was admitted to an in-patient facility weeks later.

After she was admitted, a rep for the star gave ET this statement: "While taking appropriate, much needed and deserved time to grieve, [McCready's] sons have been placed in foster homes where they are comfortable and cared for. We have no further statement at this time."

McCready had several successful country albums in the '90s, but her career was later overshadowed by domestic abuse issues and drug and DUI arrests.

In 2011, McCready was reported to have gone missing with her oldest child, who was under the custody of McCready's mother at the time. During the episode, McCready posted a Facebook message, writing, "FB Friends I know it has been a long time since you have heard from me... I have been fighting the Florida court system to protect my son, and bring him home. Wink TV has once again reported nothing but lies and they are most likely being supported by the attorney for DCF child services. There is NO AMBER ALERT and my son is not missing! Detectives from the Cape Coral Police department established that this afternoon via Skype. Please do not worry or support anything they continue to lie about!! Thanks Always.... Mindy"

McCready is survived by her two sons: 6-year-old Zander (fathered by ex Billy McKnight) and 9-month-old Zayne (who she had with now-deceased boyfriend David Wilson).

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A Mayor unplugged from reality

Mayor Bloomberg wants to double down on electric vehicles, but it’s a bad bet for New York.

In his State of the City speech last week, Bloomberg said he wants to add 10,000 new electric-vehicle charging stations over the next seven years. To that end, he wants the City Council to amend building codes so that 20 percent of all new parking spaces must be “wired and ready for electric vehicles.”

The city can be as “wired and ready” as Bloomberg likes, but he can’t make consumers buy electric cars. More important, he can’t overcome the basic physics that have prevented battery-powered cars from being anything more than a tiny niche player in the global auto industry.

Getty Images

Still pushing dubious ideas: Mayor Bloomberg last Thursday.

The history of the electric car is a century of failure tailgating failure. The problems haven’t changed in 100 years: All-electric vehicles, or EVs, have little range, take too long to refuel and cost way too much.

Takeshi Uchiyamada, the vice chairman of Toyota Motor Co. — the world’s biggest producer of hybrid cars — underscored these points this month, saying that due to “its shortcomings — driving range, cost and recharging time — the electric vehicle is not a viable replacement for most conventional cars.”

Nissan had high hopes for the electric car. Last year, the automaker — which got a $1.4 billion line of credit from the US Energy Department to help it produce EVs — expected to sell 20,000 copies of its all-electric Leaf. Actual sales totaled just 9,800.

Let’s put those numbers in perspective. Last year, Ford sold 645,316 pickups in the United States. So Ford is selling more pickups in six days than Nissan is selling Leafs in an entire year.

Last year, electric vehicles accounted for just 0.1 percent of total US car sales of 14.5 million. And hybrid sales were roughly 3.3 percent of the market.

Consumers are buying about 31 hybrids for every 1 electric vehicles for a simple reason: value.

Check out Cars.com. You can buy a brand new 2013 Prius for about $22,000; the cheapest Leaf available is $35,000.

The cheapest Chevy Volt — the much ballyhooed plug-in hybrid electric — was also about $35,000, twice the price of the Chevy Cruze, which uses a conventional gasoline engine but is built on the same chassis. And while the Volt has a bit of “gee-whiz” cool, the Cruze still gets about 42 miles per gallon.

In short, EVs aren’t a regular consumer good; they’re a toy for the wealthy. Indeed, a 2010 Deloitte Consulting report found that the most likely buyers of electric cars are people with household incomes “in excess of $200,000.”

By pushing for more electric cars, Mayor Bloomberg is following the same failed strategies of the Obama administration, which has handed out $2.4 billion in grants to the EV sector, as well as nearly $2.6 billion in loans. Despite all that money, the sector has seen nothing but carnage.

Last year, Obama-subsidized EV-battery makers Ener1 and A123 Systems both went bankrupt. Fisker Automotive, the troubled maker of upscale hybrid-electric cars (costing $50,000 to $100,000) is hoping to be bought out by another automaker.

And Tesla Motors, a publicly traded company that makes all-electric vehicles, has lost about $450 million over the past five quarters alone. It’s pinning its future on the Model S, a vehicle with a starting price of $52,400. Want the “performance” version? That’ll cost you $87,400 — nearly as much as a new Mercedes S550 ($95,000).

Those cost figures help explain what a recent Reuters article called the public’s “yawning indifference to green vehicles.”

Bottom line: Bloomberg wants to force the private sector to build charging stations for a fleet of cars that don’t exist and probably won’t exist for years to come, if ever.

New York City has plenty of infrastructure needs. More charging stations for electric cars isn’t one of them.

Robert Bryce, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow, is the author, most recently, of “Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future.”

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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