1) Candy kids
The New York Post  November 14, 2001

Those doe-eyed kids you see at the Virgin Megastore or at ATM machines aren't who they say they are.  In fact, they're scamming you - for thousands. Ch. 11 reporter Polly Kreisman has exposed a candy charity scam in which teens are soliciting donations, claming they're collecting money for "Helping Hands," a so-called "charity" keeping homeless teens off drugs.

 

2)  Schools Lose Computers and Skeletons
The New York Daily News, November 11, 2002

How did more than $12 million worth of school equipment disappear?

 

3)  The $12 Million Circus
The Journal News, Editorial, February 4, 2003

It began in November with a WPIX Channel 11 investigative report that the Yonkers schools were missing $12 million in equipment, including 3,000 computers, 50 pianos, 16 vehicles, 20 video cameras and two human skeletons. 

 

4)  Reporter finds Valet Parking ‘Not’
The New York Post, May 8, 2001

A busy airport valet parking lot is actually leaving cars parked, unguarded and unsecured, on the streets of Queens.

 

5) Dog Fight At Ch. 11
The New York Post, Dec 17, 2001.
In the past month, investigative reporter Polly Kreisman has aired three provocative reports claiming to show that dog meat - considered a delicacy in parts of Asia - can be bought here for the right price.

 

6) Kreisman takes an educated approach
The New York Post, Nov 14, 2001

Ch. 11 investigative reporter Polly Kreisman wants an answer to this question: Why isn't the New York City Board of Education saving big bucks by turning out the lights at night?

 

7) Pet Probe
New York Daily News, February 5, 2001

Many New Jersey families paid up to $250 to find homes for pets they could no longer keep. Soon they learned “Save-a-Pet” may have been something very different. 

 

8) Pot Smoking Lifeguards
New York Daily News, July 18, 2000

Hidden camera report finds lifeguards to be inattentive and smoking pot while on the job at New York City’s Rockaway beach.

 

9) Rapid Rudy's Van Does 75 Mph On Way To Lunch
New York Post, Dec 18, 1998

Mayor Giuliani's van was clocked doing 75 mph on the Van Wyck Expressway - on a lunch run - a TV station reported last night.

 

10- Rudy Still Speedster- Report
New York Daily News, December 18, 1998

A WWOR-TV news investigation that aired last night showed Giuliani's police-driven 1994 GMC Suburban doing 75 mph in a 50-mph zone, running two lights, parking illegally, turning illegally and zooming by a school bus in the rain.

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A Hands’ Scam
New York Post 
by  Michael Starr
November 14, 2001

Those doe-eyed kids you see at the Virgin Megastore or at ATM machines aren't who they say they are.

In fact, they're scamming you - for thousands.

Ch. 11 reporter Polly Kreisman has exposed a candy charity scam in which teens are soliciting donations, claming they're collecting money for "Helping Hands," a so-called "charity" keeping homeless teens off drugs.

A majority of the solicitations occur in front of the Virgin Megastore in Times Square and at ATMs.

"These kids all carry around a little laminated card saying they live in shelters and are collecting for Helping Hands'," says Kreisman. "Over the course of a month we talked to them, using hidden cameras. Every day we asked a different set of kids about where the money was going, and every day we got a different set of answers."

 Kreisman eventually confronted the group's ringleader. "He admitted the whole thing is a scam," she says. Kreisman's report airs tonight at 10

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from The Starr report
New York Daily News
November 11, 2002

WPIX/Ch. 11's Polly Kreisman reports tonight at 10 p.m. on how more than $12 million of equipment is missing from Yonkers public schools since 1997.

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The $12 million circus
The Journal News

Editorial
February 4, 2003

Comedy of errors on missing Yonkers  school equipment isn't funny

It appears that the case of the missing $12 million in Yonkers school equipment may never be completely resolved, but the city's inspector general has done a pretty good job of pointing out why: ineptitude and carelessness.

It began in November with a WPIX Channel 11 investigative report that the Yonkers schools were missing $12 million in equipment, including 3,000 computers, 50 pianos, 16 vehicles, 20 video cameras and two human skeletons that were either lost, stolen, moved, thrown out or given away over a five-year period.

The list came from data supplied by the district when the station filed a Freedom of Information request after not getting answers to its questions for six weeks.

The school district began an investigation. So did, at the Yonkers City Council's request, Inspector General Philip Zisman.

Interim schools Superintendent Angelo Petrone and Board of Education President Robert Ferrito actually held a press conference after the report to display two skeletons they said turned up in a school closet during the district's investigation.

Petrone blamed the consulting company hired to manage the district's inventory for having inaccurate and incomplete information. The district gave the station "inaccurate and misleading" information, ignored its own Freedom of Information Law procedures, told the station it had been given bad information and then supplied a second batch of bad information. The district, Zisman reported, "has been unable to provide any coherent explanation" as to why bad information was given a second time.  The district repeatedly ignored city and state criticism of weaknesses in its inventory-control procedures.

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Polly: New meaning to Queens parking lot
New York Post
By Michael Starr
May 8, 2001

 Think you're parking your car in a safe, long-term parking lot at LaGuardia Airport?

 That might not be the case.

 Ch. 11's Polly Kreisman reports tonight (10 p.m.) that many travelers who pay up to $15 per day to park their cars at a "secure" lot operated by Avistar, Inc. are actually having their cars parked, unguarded and unsecured, on the streets of Queens - including busy Ditmars Boulevard.

 In addition to interviewing Avistar customers and former employees,  Kreisman will show undercover video showing cars being dropped off on the streets of Queens, often for days at a time; cars parked bumper-to-bumper with their tires on the sidewalk; and Avistar employees telling customers their cars will be parked in a secure lot. When confronted by Kreisman, Avistar at first said the cars were parked on the street to accommodate travelers so they wouldn't miss their planes. The company later recanted that explanation when Kreisman showed video of cars parked on the street for days on end. 

Avistar promises it will stop immediately.

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Dog Fight At Ch. 11: Sweeps Reports Of Dog Meat Sales In NYC Has  Korean Leaders Howling
New York Post 
 Dec 17, 2001.

 A series of reports on Ch. 11 news about a supposed black market in New York for edible dog meat has landed a reporter in the dog house with the city's Korean community.

 In the past month, investigative reporter Polly Kreisman has aired three provocative reports claiming to show that dog meat - considered a delicacy in parts of Asia - can be bought here for the right price.

 A fourth installment about legislation New York state is considering to ban dog meat is planned to air this week on the station's 10 p.m. newscast.  The series has struck a highly sensitive nerve among Koreans who   say the stories smear them as pet killers.

 The reports, called "Man Bites Dog," have been the subject of at least 62 anti-Kreisman stories in the Queens Korean-language Korean Daily - and even the subject of a TV report that aired in Asia on a Korean newsmagazine similar to "60 Minutes."

 In the first two parts which aired on Nov. 19 and 20, Kreisman and the Humane Society found a Korean farmer in the Catskill hamlet of Wurtsboro who sold them what he claimed was a frozen dog carcass. The transaction was caught on tape using a hidden camera that showed the farmer burning the hair off the carcass with a blowtorch and then snapping off its paws with a bolt cutter.  The farmer was then shown slipping a New York State game tag on the carcass to make it appear to inspectors that the animal had been killed legally by a hunter.

 Eating dog meat is not illegal in New York although it is against the law in six other states including New Jersey.  In Korea and some parts of Asia such as China and Vietnam dog is a delicacy but has become something of a cultural flashpoint.

 The reports have incensed Korean-Americans who say that, while dog is an acceptable meat in parts of Asia, Korean immigrants are aware of Western sensitivities about canines and no longer eat it - or even want to. "The reports damaged our community's image," Korean American 

 Community Empowerment Council president, John Y. Park told The Post. "Koreans don't eat dogs here. "

(Note: both the television station and I continue to stand behind the facts, captured on videotape, of this story. P. Kreisman)

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Kreisman takes an educated approach
New York Post
By Michael Starr
Nov 14, 2001

Ch. 11 investigative reporter Polly Kreisman wants an answer to this question: Why isn't the New York City Board of Education saving big bucks by turning out the lights at night?

On tonight's 10 p.m. newscast, Kreisman reports that the cash-strapped Board of Ed. ($300 million in budget cuts) could save at least $50,000 annually at its Brooklyn offices (65 Court St.) if they switched off the lights and AC at night. That $50,000 estimate was made by energy consultant Tom Sahagian. Kreisman reports that the Board of Ed. left the lights and AC on all night at its Brooklyn offices nine times between April and August '01, even during a heat wave, when saving power was critical. The Board of Ed. tells Kreisman the lights and AC stayed on late because a new payroll system was being implemented by KPMG personnel - although no such personnel was observed.

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Pet Probe Followup
New York Daily News
February 5, 2001

Tomorrow on Ch. 11's 10 p.m. newscast, reporter Polly Kreisman follows up on animal collector Trish Edmondson of Elmwood Park, N.J., who's suspected of selling family pets for pit-bull fighting rings.

Last November, Kreisman's two-part report uncovered Edmondson's pet-selling ring, in which families paid her up to $250 to find homes for pets they could no longer keep. Edmondson had advertised in local newspapers that she'd take pets to live on farms or in other homes, as an alternative to giving them up to animal shelters.

Instead, families found out that Edmondson had harbored their pets in pens in her garage with blacked-out windows and might even have sold them for use in medical research, according to Kreisman's reports.

On tomorrow's report, Kreisman reveals that New Jersey courts recently have arraigned Edmondson on felony charges of theft of a companion animal and animal cruelty charges. - Donna Petrozzello

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Pot Smoking Lifeguards
New York Daily News
July 18, 2000

Tonight at 10, WPIX/Ch. 11's Polly Kreisman reports on a slew of lifeguard abuses, which include inattentiveness and smoking pot while on the job

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Rapid Rudy's Van Does 75 Mph On Way To Lunch
New York Post
By David Seifman
Dec 18, 1998

Mayor Giuliani's van was clocked doing 75 mph on the Van Wyck Expressway - on a lunch run - a TV station reported last night. WWOR-TV said it had a crew tailing the mayor for 24 hours and caught him speeding to lunch at Cono's restaurant in Sheepshead Bay on Dec. 9 at 12:20 p.m. Reporter Polly Kreisman said her crew also spotted Giuliani's police-driven van dash through a red light, hit 70 mph on the West Side Highway - and double-park outside Da Tomasso's restaurant on Eighth Avenue and 54th Street in Manhattan during another lunch in the 24-hour period. Yesterday, Giuliani suggested Kreisman "report that to the Police Department - and we'll have that adjudicated in court."

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Rudy Still Speedster- Report
New York Daily News
By Bill Hutchinson
December 18, 1998

Mayor Giuliani has been caught speeding again as well as running red lights and breaking other traffic laws he has ordered cops to enforce vigorously, a television station reported yesterday.

A WWOR-TV news investigation that aired last night showed Giuliani's police-driven 1994 GMC Suburban doing 75 mph in a 50-mph zone, running two lights, parking illegally, turning illegally and zooming by a school bus in the rain.

Channel 9 reporter Polly Kreisman followed Giuliani around on his official business for 24 hours beginning at noon Dec. 8. She said she observed the mayor's car in seven traffic violations.

The latest gotcha comes less than 10 months after the Daily News clocked the mayor's four-wheel-drive vehicle going as fast as 72 mph in a 50-mph zone on the Gowanus Expressway.

The News also caught the mayor's car breaking the speed limit at least 11 other times.

Kreisman said her report shows the mayor hasn't changed his ways even though the police have been on the warpath against unruly motorists.

Police records show that in the first 10 months of this year traffic citations have soared 217,000 above the number written in the same period last year.

At a news conference yesterday, Kreisman asked: "We observed your car and the tail car last week commit several moving violations the types of moving violations that you're encouraging other New York City residents not to commit. . . . Why was that?"

Giuliani replied: "Report that to the Police Department, and we'll have it adjudicated in court. Thank you."

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