Guards sue inmate for attack in court
WHENEVER THE owner of the infamous Bronx strip club Sin City Cabaret has trouble in his joint, he has a secret weapon — a retired NYPD inspector on the payroll, according to three former club employees.
Konstantine (Gus) Drakopoulos, a convicted felon, has paid former Inspector James Alles to act as a go-between with the local precinct commanders since May 2012, the former employees told the Daily News.
On July 14, nine of the club’s strippers and bouncers were arrested on drug trafficking charges dating back to December 2014. Alles was working for the club during that entire period, although there are no allegations he was involved in the drug trafficking.
The investigation began two years ago as a wide-ranging probe into illegal activities in a club that has repeatedly been a lightning rod for controversy, a law enforcement source said.
Alles was a good choice for the strip club owner because before he retired in November 2009, he had worked as commander of the 45th and 52nd Precincts in the Bronx.
The strip club is located in the 40th Precinct, and Alles regularly interacted with its precinct commander, Christopher McCormick, sources said.
“Alles advised the club how to handle the police,” said former manager Mike Diaz. “If the cops needed an explanation on something, he would give them an explanation.”
When there was a fight or someone was arrested at the club, Alles would try to smooth things over with the local commanders, sources said.
He has also lobbied precinct commanders to downplay incidents or reduce the seriousness of the charges, the sources said.
He even got commanders to dispatch two cops and a patrol car to sit outside the club on busy nights — a sort of personal security service at taxpayers’ expense — according to the former manager.
“He would try to get special treatment for the club,” he said. “If there was a felony arrest, he would go to the precinct and try to fight it down to a misdemeanor.”
“There would be big fights there that never made the papers,” Diaz recalled. “There were a couple of shootings that never made the papers. It was just people firing their guns in the air.”
NYPD officials did not respond to requests for comment.
On June 24, as cops were inspecting the club, Alles demanded to know what was happening. He tried to intervene when investigators sought to speak with Drakopoulos, sources said. “He kept saying, don’t worry about him,” a source familiar with the investigation said. “He kept saying, ‘Talk to me. I’m a retired inspector.’ ”
Alles, who has a pension of $102,274 a year, did not return repeated phone messages. He also declined to speak to a reporter at his home Sunday. Asked to describe what type of work Alles does for him, Drakopoulos refused to comment. THE ANNUAL late-night Brooklyn Caribbean festival where a stray bullet killed a gubernatorial aide last year has received its first city permit in an attempt to make the event safer, officials said Tuesday.
J’Ouvert City International received the permit as police promised to add extra uniformed and plainclothes officers at the celebration, which precedes the annual Labor Day West Indian Day Parade.
A wild shootout between two gangs erupted at last year’s J’Ouvert celebration, killing Carey Gabay, a Harvard-educated attorney who became first deputy counsel to Gov. Cuomo’s Empire State Development Corp. So far, three gangbangers have been arrested in Gabay’s Sept. 7 murder outside the Ebbets Field Houses on Bedford Ave.
NYPD Chief of Department James O’Neill said the department would double the amount of police vans along the parade route — from 25 to 50. The NYPD will also increase the number of light towers to illuminate J’Ouvert activities, from 40 to 200.
“Last year was an absolute tragedy,” O’Neill said. “No one ever wants to ever see anything like that happen again.” A TRIO OF city correction officers Tuesday took the unusual step of suing an inmate who allegedly injured them during an attack inside a Bronx court holding pen.
The officers — listed in the suit by their initials to maintain their privacy — filed the personal-injury suit with their union lawyer against inmate Malik Ellis, 28, in Bronx Supreme Court.
They are seeking an unspecified amount of “compensatory and punitive damages,” the suit says. Ellis refused to get onto a gurney inside a holding pen in the Bronx courthouse on Nov. 16, 2015, the court papers say.
As Correction Department probe team was called to assist, and Ellis bit the right middle and ring fingers of one officer, according to the suit. The officer “has 30% loss of use of his right hand, with a 5% loss for each respective finger,” the lawsuit says. Two other officers were injured in the incident.
Ellis was in jail on charges of robbing a person at knifepoint for his iPhone and wallet.