Mayor Michael Bloomberg has done a decent job of protecting vital city services while looking for places to cut spending in light of an enormous budget deficit. He and the City Council need to be careful that cuts to the Police Department do not result in a respite for those who would disrupt public safety.
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Are the city’s police and crime reporters about to get evicted from 1 Police Plaza?
If Police Commissioner Ray Kelly gets his way, they will.
Mr. Kelly sent out a note to news organizations this week telling them that due to construction, media outlets will have to leave the beloved “Police Shack” at 1 Police Plaza, and Read More
It was only a matter of time before Rudy Giuliani weighed in on Iranaian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad potentially visiting Ground Zero. As mayor, Giuliani, of course, kicked Yasir Arafat out of a Lincoln Center concert in 1995, a move criticized by the White House. Giuliani clearly doesn't approve of the Bloomberg administration's reported Read More
It was an impressive enough funeral that took place at the modest Catholic church in White Plains on Feb. 13 of last year to memorialize the fallen 24-year-old New York Police Department officer Eric Hernandez.
There were police helicopters flying formations overhead, statements from the Mayor and the police commissioner, bagpipers and horns, drummers in Read More
Some members of the City Council were predictably outraged to learn this week—on the front page of The New York Times, no less—that their names had turned up on the list of people who had been monitored by the NYPD in the run-up to the 2004 Republican National Convention. “This is Big Brother time,” Councilman Read More
First you had Critical Mass, the free-for-all "parade" of bicyclists who ride through the streets willy-nilly shouting "We Are Traffic." Then you had Uncivil Servants, a Web site established by advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, that shows pictures of illegally parked cars, often owned by police officers, with parking placards. Now, the two come Read More
On the still-hot topic of the NYPD's undercover surveillance leading up to the Republican National Convention in 2004, I' got a couple of starkly different reactions from members of the City Council. Charles Barron, who was one of three current or former Council members named in the police report, was outraged to have Read More
Charles Barron, one of three lawmakers cited in NYPD intelligence reports leading up to the Republican National Convention, has a suggestion for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. -- Azi Paybarah
In a few minutes, Mike Bloomberg will testify to Congress, from City Hall, about financial issues. On marginally related note -- Bloomberg as national figure? -- here's a guy who was yelling about "Bloomberg for President" at this weekend's St. Patrick's Day parade on Staten Island, and who was kind enough to elaborate on the Read More
Location: What sort of reaction have you gotten from New York brokers about the $10 fee for placing a rental ad, which you instituted more than six months ago now? Newmark: Not too much, which is good. They asked for it. They thought it would clean up the site, eliminate all of the repostings. Since Read More
More bad news for Scores West. Nearly a month after undercover cops arrested four dancers on charges of prostitution, shock jock Howard Stern's favorite strip club lost its liquor license on Wednesday. The State Liquor Authority unanimously voted to suspend the gentlemen's club's license, after determining the embattled venue posed "an immediate Read More
Just as one controversy over alleged racism begins to settle down, the New York Police Department is drifting into trouble all over again. While the killing of Sean Bell has attracted nationwide media coverage and drawn major figures like the Reverend Jesse Jackson to New York, a lawsuit recently filed in a Manhattan federal court Read More
After playing host to two stabbings and one fatal shooting this past week, 11th Avenue basement boozery "Club Hush" was stripped of its liquor license indefinitely on Friday. The bar, which only began slinging suds and shots this past February, was charged by the State Liquor Authority with a slew of regulatory infractions that Read More
Photo via CNN.com The NYPD has confirmed that a small aircraft crashed into the upper stories of the Belaire, an apartment buiding at 524 East 72nd Street. Further details are sketchy and seem to be differing from one source to another. According to a police department spokesperson contacted by The Observer: "We're not confirming anything. Read More
The line between painting and sculpture blurs when the layers of paint pile up, scratching the third dimension, protruding into our world. And there’s a kind of prose impasto, too: Layers of expository brushstroke, heaped with coats of consciousness and memory, cause literary characters to protrude, to extend into the world of the now. Ward Read More
