The Bronx Breakdown, brought to you commercial-free every Friday, spent the week compiling all of the latest and most compelling Bronx stories and packaged them here for your reading consumption. Enjoy. And please, tune in again next week.

Unarmed Bronx Teen Shot by Police Officer

It’s never a good thing when police and citizens are trading body blows. This week, we’ve seen victims on both sides of the law. So far, the tally includes three dead (and one badly-beaten up) citizens and one cop fighting for his life after taking a bullet to his head. The latest altercation played out to its fatal end yesterday afternoon in the Wakefield-area of the Bronx, near the corner of East 229th street and White Plains Road.

Ramarley Graham, 18, was pronounced dead at Montefiore Medical Center after being chased by a group of plainclothes narcotics officers into his home at 749 East 229th Street and fatally shot.

According to police reports, plainclothes officers spotted Graham on White Plains Road in the Wakefield section at around 3 p.m. Thursday. They saw him adjusting his belt and thought he had a gun, so they chased him into his home on East 229th Street. In the bathroom, a struggle ensued and Graham was shot in the torso, while his 6-year-old little brother and grandmother watched.

The NYPD’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne said, “there was no evidence that he (Graham) was armed” when the officer, a member of a narcotics unit, shot him once in the upper left chest, according to the NY Times.

Today, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly addressed the shooting with reporters. He said the officers involved saw a gun sticking out of Graham’s waistband and that he fled when they approached him. After Graham went into the apartment he lived in with his grandmother, one of the two officers pursuing him became entangled. The struggling officer’s partner said he heard his colleague yell, “Gun! Gun!” before the fatal gunshot rang out out. Kelly did not say that Graham was actually carrying a gun, although police say they did recover a small amount of marijuana at the apartment.

Graham’s friends and family say the punishment didn’t fit the crime.

“The police kill him…for what? Him no have a gun, not a weapon, not nothing. He smoke weed, that’s about it,” said Graham’s brother, Delmar Scott, according to NY1.

His sister-in-law said the officers deserved the death penalty for killing Graham.

Constance Malcolm, Graham’s mother, said her son wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t a menace to society either. He was “just like any other kid,” she told NY1. “You know you have kids who get in trouble, simple other stuff. But he wasn’t that bad, he wasn’t a bad kid. Not the kind of kid who carries guns around and slings no guns, he’s not that type of kid.”

Jessica Rodriguez, 34, told the NY Times, that Graham seemed to be a nice guy who had offered to pick up coffee for her every morning. “When I bring my kids to school, he’s getting a peppermint tea,” she said.

Local elected officials condemned last night’s shooting, saying it’s not the first time an unarmed man has been shot by police and that the incident reflected the need for better training.

“The death of Ramarley Graham leaves a family and a community grieving, and seeking answers,” said Assemblyman Carl Heastie, who represents the area where the shooting took place. “Once again, a police shooting of an unarmed man calls into question police training and their overall preparedness to deal with the issues they face in our community.”

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. said: “Our police officers must be better trained to deal with the communities they work in, to better respect the lives of those they are charged with protecting and serving. We can no longer tolerate our young men and women falling victim to excessive violence at the hands of our police, or worse yet, lose their lives unjustly.”

He added: “This is especially disturbing given that we are approaching the anniversary of Amadou Diallo. A great deal of work has been done since that time, and tragic incidents like this have the potential to undo years of good work.”

An investigation into the shooting has been initiated by the Bureau of Internal Affairs.

Absent Banks in the South Bronx
Upending years of popular wisdom, some community groups in the Morrisania section of the South Bronx have given up on urging low-income residents to open bank accounts. There is just one bank branch in Bronx Community Board 3, which encompasses Morrisania, Claremont and Melrose, bounded by the Cross Bronx Expressway to the north and East 161st Street to the south. It’s a Citibank on Southern Boulevard. In contrast, Community Board 1 next door has half a dozen bank branches, all clustered along a retail strip on East 149th Street near Courtlandt Avenue.

Turned off by high bank fees and controversies over unfair business practices, such as the alleged overcharging of minorities for loans, some people insist that credit unions — nonprofit financial cooperatives owned by members — are better suited to the needs of residents. But they do have limitations, offering fewer services and products than commercial banks,and tend to have limited hours.

Carjacked Tot
A 3-year-old boy trapped in the back of his mom’s stolen minivan was rescued in the Bronx on Saturday after he answered her cell phone and cried out for help. Moments after Saaveda parked and stepped out of her car in front of her business – Lucy’s Flower Shop, a bandit swooped in and lifted it with her precious cargo inside.

As cops canvassed the area, her employees and relatives repeatedly dialed the phone. “I’m scared! I’m scared,” little Maximus Ramirez shrieked to his panicked sister after picking up the phone left beside him. The tot spent more than an hour trapped inside the van before cops found the abandoned vehicle on Davidson Avenue in Kingsbridge Heights at about 2:10 p.m., a block from where it was stolen, police said. Later, Maximus was back at the flower shop with relatives, showing no sign of his terrifying ordeal. “I feel fine, I miss my mom,” the sweet-faced boy said.

Illegal Cellar Fire
A fire broke out in an illegal cellar apartment early in the week, killing a beloved 60-year-old Bronx handyman, and leaving his daughter, and three firefighters, slightly injured. The smoky blaze nearly trapped eight others, including an autistic boy, one of five children on the top floor of the three-story structure, but their mom helped pass them from their balcony to the adjoining one to save them. It took firefighters about 90 minutes to bring the blaze under control.

The building’s owner, identified in city records as Armando Avila and Avila Almando, had been issued violations in 2004 for illegal conversions to the basement apartment where Allen died. “Our inspectors have determined that the cellar was illegally divided into three bedrooms,” said spokesman Tony Sclafani. “We are in the process of issuing violations to the property owner, and a vacate order has been issued.”

Bronx Rapper Arrested
Rapper Peter Cory Pankey, aka Cory Gunz, was nabbed for possession of a loaded weapon on Sunday afternoon, which his father confirmed. Gunz, arrested on the corner of Boynton and Westchester avenues on Saturday, Jan. 28, was apprehended with a loaded, unlicensed, 9mm semiautomatic Taurus handgun after police received a call about two men fighting. He was booked on suspicion of criminal possession of a weapon, according to MTV.

Embezzlement at the Archdiocese
A 67-year-old Bronx resident, Anita Collins, was accused of stealing $1 million dollars from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, according to CBS News. When she was hired in the summer of 2003, the archdiocese did not regularly conduct criminal background checks on all of its employees, and her past convictions were not noticed, said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese.

St. Augustine’s Last Good-bye
After 117 years, St. Augustine’s in Morrisania had its last mass, served its final communion, and parishioners sang their last hymns. But while one door closed, another opened up. “The church has been there for so long and now you know we have to give it up. But thank God, thank the Lord, that we have another door open to us in Our Lady of Victory,” said another. The newly combined parish has been renamed Saint Augustine Our Lady of Victory Church.

Big Lawsuit for 7XL Felon
A local 400-pound felon — who claims he spent eight months in jail in one set of street clothes because the city wouldn’t find him fashion that fit — is hoping to tip the scales of justice with a $1 million federal lawsuit, according to the NY Post.

Elias A. Diaz, from East 204th Street and Hull Avenue in Norwood, says the Correction Department should pay up for forcing him to do his time in the T-shirt and sweats in which he was arrested. He further claims he was humiliated by the improper jailhouse attire and will need “expensive” therapy to come to grips with the fashion faux pas.

Diaz wants $1 million in damages, which includes $500,000 to help him pay for psychiatric care he says he now needs. The Correction Department declined to comment on the lawsuit but said Diaz filed a complaint about a housing issue during his jail term and could have done the same about clothing issues.

Six-Year-Old Toddler Tragedy
Police in the Bronx are charging Raquel Deleon, of the Bronx, with criminally negligent homicide in the death of her six-year old son, Carlos Rios Jr., after they say she gave him a lethal mix of Methadone and Nyquil. CBS reporter Pablo Guzman spoke to another grandmother who was angry at her daughter and angry at the child welfare agency, Administration for Children’s Services. The family said it went to ACS at least twice for help.