Cigarette wars, blotter, etc...

Not to toot our own petard, but since the first appearance of bootleg cigarette dealers on the streets of Manhattan last spring, furtively selling cut-rate cartons of Winstons out of their black plastic bags, Page Two has been predicting that Bootleg Smoke Wars were on the horizon.

When those wars got under way this summer?after the ban took effect and new taxes drove the price of a pack up beyond $7?we've been reporting it as it happened. When you drive a product underground the way the city has, this is what you get. Violence was almost inevitable. There was too much money to be made, with territorial and supply issues to be worked out. We felt it was our responsibility to report all this, to call it what it was, as no one else seemed to be paying attention.

Until last Wednesday, that is, eight months after the first rub-out. Both the Daily News and the Post finally put two and two together and ran features on what they were suddenly calling the "Bootleg Smoke Wars."

The Post cites everyone from the Russian and Chinese mobs to Hezbollah as being behind the operations, but most of the victims seem to be independent contractors: guys who found they could make a pile of money simply by taking a trip to a reservation and buying in bulk. Guys who then ended up working on the wrong corner or dealing with the wrong people.

The first confirmed hit was on May 17, when 34-year-old Desmond Jordan was gunned down in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn by 45-year-old William Giddens. Both men, it is believed, were looking to control the neighborhood business.

On August 16, 17-year-old Angel Aponte made the mistake of robbing a bootleg smoke dealer in Bed-Stuy. He was found shot to death a few days later.

A few weeks after that, an unnamed man in the Bronx was shot and wounded in what was described as another territorial dispute.

In mid-November, 23-year-old Sherwin Henry, who was just trying to make a little money on the side, was found shot in the head on the roof of an East New York housing project. It's believed that one of his customers killed him for money and smokes.

Just a few days prior to that, 19-year-old Cody Knox was stabbed to death after being chased through the lunchtime crowds at the Fulton Mall. He had apparently tried to sell his smokes on a corner that had already been claimed.

Those are just the cases that police have been able to link directly to the bootleg smoke trade. Who knows how many others there have been? All of this, mind you, over a product that is by all accounts still legal.

Given the money involved, you'd think the city would want to get in on some of this action. They are, after all, the ones who handed the business over to the bootleggers last summer. Instead, the NYPD has formed Cigarette Indiction Group. (That's the best acronym they could whip up?) To date, CIG's efforts have resulted in more than 150 arrests. They've also seized a quarter-million in cash and thousands of cartons of cigarettes.

But the dealers are still out there; more are coming; they're making a ton of money; and as the business grows, more people are going to get killed. The mayor might want to either re-read his Santayana, or take another look at what happened in Canada in the mid-90s.

While he does that, we'll keep reporting on the turf wars.

Who You Gotta BLOW Around Here?

Last week, Jim Romenesko quoted Page Six's Ian Spiegelman as describing the gossip page to which he contributes Paris Hilton sightings as "the main kind of attack arm of the New York Post." New York Press readers may remember Spiegelman as the Best Media Whore Over the Age of 25 from this year's Best of Manhattan issue. They may also remember him as the media whore who called us "faggots" for having the gall to turn the tables on him.

Our latest problem with Page Six is an item that appeared on Saturday:

By day, lovely Elizabeth Carter?22, works in the p.r. department of Cartier. But by night, the fledgling actress puts the finishing touches on her script, "Sunday Brunch." It will soon be made into a movie in which she will star, and the enterprising Carter is also thinking of making the script into a two-act play. Word is Carter won't be agent-less for long?she has already been called to the West Coast several times for interviews.

Page Two has learned that there's a fledgling model waitressing at Coffee Shop, a fledgling novelist writing captions at Better Homes and Gardens and a fledgling painter at Kinko's and? Oh, about a million other unknowns carrying their dreams around in their backpacks. Is this how the Post engages its "attack arm"? We're more inclined to consider Page Six the New York Post's courtesan, sent out to service the daughters and girlfriends of the higher-ups.

Match the Man to the Quote

A. "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world. It is the opium of the people."

B. "The potential of the Iraqis will be as great as Allah wishes, and this, the inspectors cannot assess. Can anyone know the great potential that Allah would want for a people who rely on Him and believe in Him?"

C. "Aww, man! You smell like pee!"

Answers, p. 105.

Crime Blotter Missing the Boat

We all heard the stories last week about 17-year-old Vincent Deperalta. He's the kid who took the plunge from the 31st floor of the Marriot Marquis after leaving enough evidence behind to ensure he would be remembered for at least two or three days afterward.

That story, sadly, overshadowed the tale of another desperate soul who went about his business in a much more subtle and anonymous fashion, and remains an enigma today.

At 10:15 a.m. on Dec. 7, after all that snow had finally moved north, a unidentified man stood on the banks of the East River, announced "The boat's here!" to anyone who was listening, then leapt into the turgid water.

Well, either he was mistaken about that boat, or it was invisible and he missed it. Scuba units had no luck in finding him, but an unidentified body?maybe his, maybe not?washed up on a Staten Island beach on Dec. 11.

That snow sure put the whammy on some people.

On Sat., Dec. 6, 25-year-old Omar Carino was trying to get to the Liberty Food Market in Bushwick before the snow kicked in again. As he tried to enter the store, he ran into another guy who was on his way out. Well, one thing led to another and another, with both men agreeing it would be best to step out on the sidewalk to duke it out. Apparently sensing that it would be best to wrap things up as quickly as possible, the other man produced a gun and shot Carino in the head.

A Dec. 8 confrontation in Bed-Stuy was as heated, but less deadly. A 51-year-old man was attempting, with some difficulty, to change a fuse. The fuse box was on the outside of his apartment building, behind a locked window gate.

From what we're able to determine, the story then goes something like this: The man, Mario Sinclair, was growing more frustrated in his attempts to work around the bars of the gate. His landlady, sensing his increasing distress, knocked on a nearby window from the inside, perhaps to offer a few helpful words of advice. When Sinclair ignored her, she opened the window and suggested that he unlock the gate to make things easier.

Sinclair instead stepped over to his landlady's window, produced a gun and told her, "I'll blow your head off if you don't stop bothering me."

He then unlocked the gate, and she changed the fuse. She later called the cops.

Since his gun turned out to be a toy, Sinclair is only being charged with menacing, harassment and being unable to think outside the box.

An equally bright 13-year-old at a Mott Haven school was showing off a movie prop pistol to some buddies in the boy's room on Dec. 10. This scared the bejeezus out of folks but hurt no one. The lad was arrested and charged with "criminal possession of a weapon."