The city would have been better off with Inspector Clouseau.
The former chief inspector of the Cranes Division of the city Department of Buildings testified yesterday that he never asked his ex-boss, New York Crane owner James Lomma, if city requirements were followed in fixing a broken crane.
Instead, Michael Carbone essentially rubber-stamped the shoddy repair job on the crane’s turntable. It broke two months later, sending the massive crane toppling to the ground on East 91st Street, killing two.
Asked to describe his inspection of the crane in March 2008, Carbone said, “I walked around and looked at it, which was pretty much all I could do,” he said. “It looked like it was ready for service.”
Asked if he’d filled out the required city inspection report on the crane, he answered, “I don’t think I did.”
Asked if there was a reason he hadn’t, he said, “No.”
Asked if he pressed Lomma’s people on why they’d never submitted a repair plan for the turntable, as the agency had asked them to, he said, “No.”
The answers were more than prosecutors expected — they’d been warned he would exercise his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination — but they were far from satisfied with his replies.
Carbone testified he that “didn’t have a relationship with Lomma,” who’s on trial for manslaughter for the crane collapse, after he left his company in 1999.
Prosecutor Deborah Hickey told Justice Daniel Conviser, who’s hearing the case, that Carbone had a relationship with Lomma “before, during and after he was forced to resign from the DOB.”
