NEW RULES FOR JA
“Always on Time” rapper will be in Brooklyn performing for the first time since having to cancel his show at the comically ill-fated Fyre Festival, which saw would-be festival-goers left flustered and umamused in the Bahamas in April. Event organizer was arrested and charged with wire fraud after that mess. Ja Rule will be at the Coney Art Walls in Coney Island, where HennyPalooza takes place
Saturday.
Mthe HBO producer sentenced to prison after a Long Island mom died of an overdose after the two spent an early morning partying, is headed for jail this month. But he shouldn’t be, says “The Deuce” and “The Wire” creator
Charging (inset) — who called paramedics and waited with the victim, dermatologist and mother of three Kiersten Rickenbach Cerveny, until they arrived — with a crime was “incredibly shortsighted,” Simon told us at the “Deuce” premiere at the SVA Theater in Chelsea, just blocks from the W. 16th St. building where Cerveny collapsed.
“It’s incredibly destructive to the dynamic that has to exist on the street in a time when overdoses are what they are,” said Simon, who as a reporter spent years covering cops and drug users in heroin-riddled Baltimore.
“The idea that a detective would charge the person who made the call to bring the paramedics, or who waited with the body or with the victim for the paramedics to arrive, is ridiculous, particularly in this time when opiates are causing this incredible epidemic,” he said. “That means more people are going to be rolled up in rugs or abandoned, as the other defendant abandoned this victim.” The “other defendant” is
a cocaine dealer in whose apartment Johnson and Cerveny were partying before she died. Holder and Johnson could be seen on surveillance video carrying Cerveny’s limp body from the apartment; they brought her to the lobby, where Johnson called 911. In court, Johnson — who initially brought Simon the idea for a show set in 1970s Times Square — was blasted for waiting to call paramedics until carrying Cerveny from the apartment and for leaving when they arrived, without giving his name.
Simon acknowledges that “there are things (Johnson) did wrong,” but says “the bottom line” is that he called for help and stayed with Cerveny until it arrived.
Johnson was sentenced to a year and a day; he’s due to surrender Sept. 29.