In a response to City Councilman Dan Halloran's claims that Sanitation workers confessed to intentionally slowing down during last week's blizzard, federal prosecutors have reportedly opened a criminal probe into the allegations. The Brooklyn and Queens DA's offices have also started their own investigations into the claims, but feds would investigate the possibility of statutes being violated by workers receiving overtime pay during an illegal job action.
Halloran claims the workers said they were "told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file." And even Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association head Harry Nespoli hinted at a slowdown as he was denying it, saying of the Bloomberg administration, "When you start doing things like demoting people, it's not the right thing to do." Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty and Mayor Bloomberg both say there is no evidence of a slowdown. Especially now that the video got taped over.
