James Delayo, acting chief inspector with the Department of Buildings' cranes and derricks division, was released without bail after he was arraigned Friday. He is charged with bribe receiving, tampering with public records, falsifying business records, filing a false instrument and receiving unlawful gratuities. He entered no plea and his lawyer, Lawrence Linzer, declined to comment.
Delayo accepted thousands of dollars in bribes over a period of several years from a crane company, Department of Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn said in a statement.
Delayo's actions apparently had no connection to two crane collapses this year that left nine people dead, Hearn said. Those cranes were both tower cranes, not the mobile cranes at the center of this investigation, although Delayo was also in charge of inspections for tower cranes.
It is troubling that an official responsible for ensuring that cranes are safe in New York City would be "selling out his own integrity in a way that compromised public safety," Hearn said.
City investigators did not identify the company that allegedly bribed Delayo, but said it was based on Long Island.
Prosecutors said Delayo had been taking bribes from the company since 2002, although the Department of Investigation said he had been accepting bribes for eight years. He received bribes of $200 to $500 for signing off on crane inspections he didn't perform, and as much as $3,000 for helping operators cheat on licensing exams, investigators said.
Officials said the city had been investigating the cranes and derricks division for several months, but the arrest stemmed from a tip investigators recently received after the state Inspector General issued a report about the licensing of crane operators by the state Labor Department.
No other city inspectors were charged Friday, but officials said the probe is ongoing.
