They can’t nail this hammer!
The Brooklyn district attorney’s office plans to drop its case against Community Board 6’s highest-paid staffer who took a several-month leave of absence after cops cuffed him twice for stalking-related incidents earlier this year, according to the civic honcho’s lawyer.
“The prosecutor is not going to be pursuing the case,” said Joyce David.
Police arrested Craig Hammerman — an employee of the advisory panel since 1990 who rakes in an annual salary of $112,000 in his current role of district manager — on April 2 for allegedly using his ex-girlfriend’s Uber account to track her to a Bedford-Stuyvesant hotel, and cuffed him again less than a week later, on April 7, for supposedly violating a court order of protection when he approached his old flame inside a Park Slope watering hole.
But due to Hammerman’s right to a speedy trial, prosecutors must file a notice of readiness with the court before a hearing on the case scheduled for Nov. 1. And his attorney claimed that Anne Greenberg, a lawyer in the district attorney’s office, told her the legal eagles plan to let the clock run out without taking further action, thereby dropping the case.
“[Greenberg] called me and said that they’re not going to pursue it, but they’ll wait the time out,” David said.
Hammerman’s lawyer claimed her client’s ex-girlfriend has been a less-than-model plaintiff for prosecutors, and that her behavior following his arrest, including contacting him after courts forbade it, damaged her integrity.
“The complaining witness has serious credibility issues,” David said.
Following his arrests, prosecutors presented Hammerman with a cushy plea deal that offered him no jail time and a clean record, but he turned it down, forcing the district attorney’s office to either take him to court or drop its case.
The district manager’s legal troubles may be winding down, but he still faces work-related fallout resulting from the bitter domestic squabble.
Community Board 6’s chairman told panel members at a meeting earlier this month that the group’s Finance, Personnel, and Law Committee will give Hammerman a performance review upon the conclusion of his five-month-plus leave, which ended when he returned to work on Sept. 28.
The group’s head honcho refused to discuss the district manager’s job status when this newspaper contacted him about the district attorney’s plans to drop its case against Hammerman.
“This remains an internal personnel matter and public comment at present would be inappropriate,” said Sayar Lonial.
A spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office declined to comment on a pending case. And Hammerman refused to comment, directing questions to his attorney.
