NEW YORK - On March 4, a retired contractor complained to the city that a construction crane near his apartment was unstable.

The Department of Buildings sent inspector Edward Marquette to check the crane, and he reported that it had passed inspection.

Eleven days later the crane collapsed, killing seven people and raining destruction on a dense Manhattan neighborhood.

On Wednesday, Marquette was arrested and charged with lying about the inspection.

Investigators said that Marquette never inspected the crane on March 4 and that he made a false entry in his route sheet claiming he had.

Marquette, 46, was arrested on charges of falsifying business records and offering a false instrument for filing, authorities said.

“We will not tolerate this kind of behavior at the Department of Buildings,” Commissioner Patricia Lancaster said Thursday. “I do not and will not tolerate any misconduct in my department.”

Marquette, who earns $52,283 a year as an inspector in the department's division of cranes and derricks, was arrested while being questioned Wednesday night.

He was arraigned Thursday in state Supreme Court and was released without bail. If convicted, he faces up to four years in prison. His lawyer, Kate Moguletscu, had no comment.

Besides suspending Marquette, Lancaster ordered an immediate inspection of all cranes checked by Marquette over the last six months.

The Department of Buildings said Marquette conducted about 500 inspections during that time.

The deadly accident occurred March 15 when the crane broke away from an East Side apartment tower under construction and fell all the way from 51st Street to 50th Street, killing six construction workers and a visitor in town for St. Patrick's Day. Two dozen people were injured.

The crane broke in pieces as it fell, pulverizing a four-story brownstone and damaging at least seven other buildings.

The gigantic piece of machinery toppled over when a 6-ton steel collar used to secure the crane to the building came loose, plunging into another collar that acted as an anchor. Without that support, the spindly structure came tumbling down with terrifying force.

Lancaster said it is highly unlikely that a March 4 inspection would have prevented the accident because the parts of the crane that failed on March 15 were not present then. She said the crane was inspected on March 14, the day before the collapse.

Speaking Thursday at the accident scene, Lancaster said the pieces of the broken crane had been secured for forensic analysis.

The collapse followed weeks of complaints by neighborhood residents that the crane didn't appear safe. Bruce Silberblatt, who called in the March 4 complaint to the city's 311 telephone hot line, said he was stunned by the arrest.

“My first reaction was astonishment. My second reaction is anger that a person would have the gall to do this,” said Silberblatt, who is vice president of the Turtle Bay Neighborhood Association. City officials would not discuss why Marquette failed to carry out the inspection.

Investigators first interviewed Marquette on Sunday and obtained a copy of his route sheet. He told the investigators that he had conducted the March 4 inspection and that it revealed no problems with the crane.

Marquette also was listed in city records as having responded to a Jan. 22 complaint by another caller who said there appeared to be insufficient safety measures in place to protect workers assembling the crane. Marquette said in his report, filed Jan. 24, that he examined the crane and decided no violation was warranted.

That inspection report is among those being investigated by the city. Other complaints about the crane's safety were called in by neighborhood residents on Jan. 10 and Feb. 11, city records show.

The contractor, Reliance Construction Group owner Stephen Kaplan, declined to comment on the arrest and referred inquiries to a company spokesman, who did not immediately return a phone message.

A publicist for the site's owner, the East 51st Development Co., said the developers had no comment on the arrest.

Neighborhood residents said they weren't surprised by the arrest.

“It makes me very suspicious of the whole situation. I'd like to feel that it's safe to live in this neighborhood with all the construction going on,” Sandra Graham said. “If he's been arrested, I think he should be made an example of.”