FERRY SKIPPER AWOL ON DRUG-TEST DAY

Assistant Captain Is Suspended And Thousands Are Delayed

An assistant ferry captain allegedly ducked out of work Wednesday
after learning random drug tests would be conducted that day, ferry
sources said. His absence forced the city to cut back on the boat
schedule, causing delays for thousands of commuters.

Numerous sources said yesterday that the officer, who works on the
Andrew J. Barberi ferryboat, left the St. George terminal after he
arrived for his 1:30 to 9:30 p.m. shift and learned he was going to
be tested that afternoon.

"He jumped back in his car and took off," said a source, who
requested anonymity.

When the assistant captain returned to work around 4 p.m., he told
his supervisors he was tending to a family emergency, sources said.
But ferry officials reportedly didn't buy that and, according to one
high-ranking source, the officer was suspended for an indefinite
amount of time with pay.

The assistant captain is the son of a long-time ferry employee, now
retired, who garnered a great deal of respect among the crews,
sources said. To some he was considered a "mentor," one source said.

Tom Cocola, a spokesman for the city's Department of Transportation
(DOT), which oversees ferry operations, would confirm only that a
boat was pulled from service for personnel reasons.

"We went to the reduced schedule because of absenteeism that
shouldn't have happened," he said. "This matter is now under internal
investigation."

Although captains are ultimately responsible for the operation of the
boats, most crews divide the five-mile cross-harbor trips, with the
captain steering and docking the boat in one direction and the
assistant steering and docking in the other.

Under U.S. Coast Guard regulations, in order for any of the ferries
to run there must be a complete crew on board. For the two
6,000-passenger Barberi-class boats, the crew must number 16 people.

The ferry employs 16 assistant captains and 170 deckhands.

Because another employee could not be summoned to work on such short
notice, one of the understaffed car boats was forced to remain docked
for the evening rush. A three-boat schedule, rather than the normal
four-boat schedule, was instituted.

Ferry service, which normally runs boats every 15 minutes during the
rush, remained on a three-boat, 20-minute schedule until 7 p.m., at
which time it resumed a regular half-hour schedule.

"It caused pandemonium, as people waited for over an hour for [car]
boats," said a source.

Jim LaRiviera, president of the Marine Engineers Beneficial
Association, the union representing captains and mates, said he knew
about the incident but declined to comment on it. He did say all of
his members are required to pass a drug test at least one year prior
to when they are hired.

Random drug testing for ferry employees is done regularly. Even DOT,
which pays an independent medical contractor to perform the tests,
doesn't know when an employee will be tapped, said Ken Concecion,
chief of the deep-raft division of the U.S. Coast Guard, which
oversees inspections for all vessels over 100 tons in New York Harbor.

"They have a name, and they come down and say we want to see X, X and
X," Concecion said. "They might say he's on a run, or this is his day
off, so then they put it off to the next day. But the ferry
management doesn't even know when it's going to happen. When we say
random, we mean random."

Employees can't outrun the tests. If an employee doesn't show up the
day his or her name is drawn, the test will simply be administered
the following day.

"At some point in time, they're going to catch him," Concecion said.

On average, employees are tested about once or twice a month. But
tests can always be requested in the event that a supervisor suspects
a problem with a particular employee.

"That's why the testing is a 24-hour operation," Concecion said.
"We'll have guys coming in on a weekend, even."

Drug testing records are confidential. If employees come up positive,
they are pulled from the job until a Coast Guard-authorized physician
checks them out, he said. Typically, if they're caught a second time,
their licenses are revoked.

"It does depend, though, on the individual's record," Concecion
added. "If it's a first offense, we're not going to take that
person's livelihood away."

The ferry is no stranger to allegations of employee misconduct or error.

On Nov. 17 last year, a rush-hour ferry, manned by an eight-person
crew including a captain, six deckhands and an oilman, crashed into a
slip at Whitehall Terminal. Witnesses said the boat was moving too
fast. Drug tests were conducted on the crew and one urine sample
showed traces of nitrate, a substance sometimes used to throw off
drug test results. The deckhand in question was suspended.

Last Jan. 6, eight ferry workers were rounded up aboard the American
Legion and suspended for allegedly running a floating, high-stakes
card game in the vessel's locker room.

On Dec. 17, 1999, Saul Jones, 50, of St. George, died after going
into cardiac arrest on the Lehman as it left the dock at St. George.
Deckhands could not find a CPR mask and the boat took far too long to
return to the St. George slip, witnesses said. A similar incident in
October 1997 saw Satya Vohra, a 47-year old Queens woman, left
unattended on board the Lehman for 10 minutes after going into
cardiac arrest. Deckhands reportedly couldn't find a CPR mask and
some didn't know plastic resuscitation masks were available. The
woman died.