Crane Safety? Just A Formality . . .

It’s a bad time to get arraigned for taking bribes:

The city’s chief crane inspector was arrested on Friday and charged with taking bribes to allow cranes to pass inspection, the authorities said. He was also accused of taking money from a crane company that sought to ensure that its employees would pass the required licensing exam.

The man, James Delayo, 60, the acting chief inspector for the Cranes and Derricks Unit at the city’s Department of Buildings, oversaw the issuing of city licenses for crane operators. The case against him, announced by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the city’s Department of Investigation, was filed just a week after the city’s second fatal crane collapse in less than three months.

Officials said the accusations against Mr. Delayo bore no direct relation to the accident last week at 91st Street and First Avenue, where two workers died, or the crane accident on East 51st Street that left seven dead in March.

But the case was another blemish on a Buildings Department that has been reeling from construction deaths and inspection lapses this year, and for which deadly crane accidents are part of a lingering series of problems.

. . .

Mr. Delayo, whose Legal Aid lawyer said little that could be heard during the arraignment, entered no plea during the proceeding before Judge Abraham Clott of Criminal Court. Mr. Delayo, appearing slightly hunched and wearing a white shirt with thin blue and brown stripes, held his pants up, apparently because he had no belt on. Later, as he left the building housing Mr. Morgenthau’s office, he wore a red bandanna as a makeshift belt.