The federal authorities are likely to charge the police officer accused of robbing $113,000 from a Sovereign bank in Pennsylvania. Christian Torres, who was arrested on Thursday, is now also suspected of robbing two other banks in Manhattan last year. The 21-year-old transit cop, held at Berks County Jail in Pennsylvania, is on suicide watch. Torres's lawyer told the NY Times, "Paperwork has been filed with the prison, meaning if he tries to make bail......

According to Pennsylvania authorities, a 21-year-old NYPD rookie cop stole $113,000 from a bank in Mulhenberg Township yesterday morning. Christian Torres was charged with robbery and held on $500,000 bail; he was also suspended from the NYPD. The complaint described Torres wearing a black suit and approaching a bank employee who was arriving to work at 8 a.m., asking her about mortgage rates. She told him to wait until the bank opened, but he then......

A man who repeated assaulted women on subway trains was arrested yesterday. The Daily News reports that while Freddie Johnson has a 57-page rap sheet and was only out of jail for 15 days (for prior sexual offenses--he was even wearing his electronic monitoring anklet!), he still decided to molest a Hunter College freshman on the 6 train. Johnson, per the Post, rubbed "his genitals against a horrified woman" during yesterday's morning rush hour. Undercover......

Some gamblers don't need their legs broken by loan sharks if they're paranoid enough. The FDNY discovered four men lying in an alley at 35-12 Farrington St. in Flushing, Queens while responding to a call about a smoke condition at the building. According to WNBC, the building houses a not-that-secret illegal gambling operation. Police surmise that when the poorly poker-faced bettors heard the FDNY trucks' sirens responding to the smoke condition call, they figured the......

The 14-year-old boy held for second-degree manslaughter in the death of a Columbia graduate student appeared in family court yesterday, as lawyers, police officials, and an aunt who cares for him weighed in. A judge assigned the boy, named Sheldon, lawyers and decided he would be tried as a juvenile offender in Family Court. A city Law Department attorney told the court, "This attack was predatory in nature." The boy, named Sheldon, had punched 24-year-old......

Yesterday, the Daily News created map showing how the World Trade Center will turn the prior super-block of open plazas and buildings into a heavily guarded and gated compound, with entrance limited to those who have been screened and or inspected. While little mention is made of what restrictions pedestrian visitors wanting to see the WTC Memorial will be, vehicles getting anywhere near the Freedom Tower or any of the other buildings will have to......

Police say that two teenaged boys led them to the 13- (or 14-) year-old charged with manslaughter in the death of Columbia graduate student Minghui Yu. On Friday night, the teen had punched Yu in the face at a median on Broadway between 122nd and 123rd Streets. After a struggle, Yu managed to escape and ran into the street, only to be fatally hit by a car. The police have not charged the two other......

Seattle's police department is capitalizing on the NYPD's current budget and recruiting woes by giving potential recruits less of a reason to sign up to join the force in New York. Seattle is paying for a huge billboard along the West Side Highway advertising for recruits. The billboard and bus stop ads link to a site that details much higher rookie pay and faster wage increases. Per the Daily News,Seattle pays its police recruits......

In hopes of more leads, the NYPD has re-released the photograph of the bike they believe belongs to the person who bombed the Times Square army recruiting center on March 6. The police also revealed more details about the circa 1980s bike. From the Daily News:"Someone might have sold this recently at a garage sale in the fall, when they were cleaning up," NYPD Lt. Dennis Briordy said of the 10-speed Ross bike. "The......

One of two friends in Sean Bell's car on November 25, 2006 testified in a Queens court room yesterday about the night where undercover police fatally shot Bell. Trent Benefield, who had been celebrating Bell's bachelor party at a Queens strip club, said he wounded, laying on the sidewalk, when he begged a man standing over him, "Please don’t shoot me. I don’t got nothing to do with nothing.’" The man turned out to be......

New Jersey resident Fred Parisi was arrested at his fund-raiser for 9/11 workers last night, after accusations he stole money from another business. Now authorities are concerned Parisi's 9/11 fund-raising is lining his own pockets. Police say Parisi had started a woodworking business with partner Roy Jensen but put company money into accounts Jensen couldn't access. And now police are questioning Parisi's non-profit 9/11 Rescue Workers Foundation--Detective Joe Kratzel told the Star-Ledger that Parisi "took......

Okay, not all the details of East Side madam Kristin Davis's black book are revealed, but quite a few are highlighted in the Daily News today. Davis, busted earlier this week for running a prostitution ring in Manhattan apartments, reportedly has the "largest black book in America." In reality, the black book is actually a computer spread sheet that "logs more than $1.1 million in business" from a variety of men, some of whom gave......

A missing 7-year-old Queens boy arrived back in NYC this week after a successful enterprise that involved the NYPD, FBI, American Embassy, a charity to track kidnapped children, and a tip to his mother's MySpace account. Kobe Lee was kidnapped by his father, Jeffrey Salko, during a joint custody-authorized visit. Salko and Tiffany Rubin separated when their child was just four months old, and Salko was facing a six-month jail sentence for failing to pay......

After outcry over the Justice Department's denial of benefits for the families of two auxiliary cops killed last year, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey will reportedly review the decision. Senator Chuck Schumer, who co-wrote legislation to give benefits to families of first-responders who die in the line of duty, said Mukasey "seemed sympathetic. He said he would review it personally. He's a legal eagle, and the fact that the law is on our side should......

There have been several Free Tibet protests happening around town this month; one of them even featured city council member Tony Avella. While Tibetan protesters are routinely beaten, imprisoned and even killed by police in China, police brutality is something you might be surprised to see in New York City, unless of course you've attended demonstrations over the years and experienced it first hand. During a Free Tibet protest near the UN on March 14th,......

The Justice Department is denying federal benefits to the families of the two auxiliary police officers who were brutally killed by a marauding gunman in the West Village last year. Yevgeniy Marshalik's and Nicholas Pekearo's families each applied for $300,000 in benefits, part of the 2003 “Hometown Heroes” Congressional bill for families of first-responders killed in the line of duty. But the DOJ doesn't think they qualify, because NYC's “auxiliary police are not recognized as......

Detective Michael Oliver, the undercover cop who fired 31 times at Sean Bell in the fatal November 2006 shooting, told a grand jury last year, "I didn't want to die. I reloaded the gun, and I continued to fire." The 14-year NYPD veteran's testimony was entered into evidence in the trial where he and fellow detective Gescard Isnora face manslaughter charges; detective Marc Cooper faces reckless endangerment. Bell, who was to be married hours later,......

Not only is the NYPD having trouble getting potential recruits to sit for the entrance exam to the Police Academy, but one in five who gain entrance wind up dropping out or disqualifying themselves before they graduate. The end result is that for the first time in years, fewer than 1,000 were officers were added to the force from a graduating class and the size of the NYPD has shrunk to its smallest number in......

The NYPD is going to be constructing a secure facility at police headquarters to house and gain access to classified anti-terrorism intelligence previously limited to national organizations like the FBI. The center is known as a Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence Facility (SCIF) and access to the facility will only be granted to NYPD personnel with proper security clearances. The SCIF was requested by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who has NYPD personnel working abroad to combat terrorism......

In the latest livery cab nightmare, a tipster points us to an incident that occurred on March 12th, when a woman used a car service to get home at night.Last night [name redacted] took Metro Car service home. At our house the driver followed her to our door and groped/molested her. She fought him off and he left. I called Metro Line to let them know what happened and try get a name of the......

St. Patrick's Day Parade, by Amauri Aguiar at flickr Tomorrow is the 246th anniversary of the first St. Patrick's Day Parade held in New York (it's the oldest parade in the nation's history). The first parade was held in 1762 to honor St. Patrick and the Archdiocese of New York. Over the years it has become a celebration of almost anything Irish. The parade will march uptown on 5th Ave. in Manhattan from 44th......

The trial of three police detectives for the fatal shooting of Sean Bell has been a magnet for scrutiny. And lately, there are reports Bell's parents and fiancee disagree about how the case is going. On Saturday, a lawyer for Bell's parents, Neville Mitchell, said, "We're somewhat concerned about the prosecution. We don't want to denigrate the prosecution, but we want a little more passion. The family's looking for justice." Which a source translated to......

The police think the 10-speed bicycle, left near the trash on Thursday morning, belongs to the person who bombed the army recruiting center in Times Square. The bike, left on East 38th Street, was found by some workers who heard about the bombing and contacted the police, who learned of the bike at 7 a.m. (the bombing occurred around 3:45 a.m.). Surveillance footage shows the suspected bomber on a bicycle near the recruiting center......

A police detective detailed photographing the aftermath of the Sean Bell shooting as prosecutors entered 80 photographs into evidence. The Post called the photos "horrific" and "grisly," as many showed blood on the car's seats and police-fired bullets riddled in the side of the car. They caused Bell's mother Valerie Bell to look away while Bell's fiancee Nicole Paultrie Bell "showed no emotion, but occasionally shook her head." One of now-retired detective Dave Rivera's photographs......

With his strip club in dire straits amidst allegations of on-site prostitution, Scores West owner Elliot Osher is defending his business with tortured analogies to the Clinton era. Ranting to the Daily News, Osher called the State Liquor Authority's decision to revoke his liquor license "politically motivated and ridiculous,” and went on to point out that President Bill Clinton received oral sex in the Oval Office "and they didn't close the White House." Scores West:......

Photographs of the damaged recruiting center (above) and Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly (below) by Mary Altaffer/AP The FBI said letters sent to many Congressional members with a photograph of a man standing in front of the Times Square recruiting center and an anti-war manifesto were not linked to yesterday's bombing outside the center. A law enforcement source did call the letters an "incredibly unbelievable coincidence," as they arrived in many offices yesterday,......

Some Capitol Hill offices received letters claiming responsibility for this morning's bombing in Times Square. WNBC reports that the letters, which arrived today, included a photo of the Army recruiting center "before it was bombed and...the words 'We did it.'" According to the AP, Senator Dianne Feinstein's office sent this email to other lawmakers:"A few offices on the House side have received a letter today addressed to 'Members of Congress' with a picture of a......

Images from surveillance footage via WNBC The NYPD released surveillance footage of this morning's explosion near the Army recruiting center in Times Square. The footage shows a bicyclist approaching the building and an explosion taking place after he leaves. The bicyclist is of interest because a witness told the police he/she saw a bicyclist acting suspiciously. Earlier today, Police Commissioner Kelly said, "The individual (on the bicycle) was wearing a hood and dark colored......

You'll only be getting babes, not booze, when you go to Scores West: The State Liquor Authority has taken away the strip club's liquor license after police found prostitution at the Chelsea joint (the Upper East Side location is not affected). An SLA administrative judge wrote that prostitution was "open and notorious such that the licensee knew or should have known of its occurrence." Back in 2007, a manager told police they could receive sexual......

Photograph of damaged door by dhfdz on Flickr Around 3:45 a.m., a device exploded outside the military recruiting center in Times Square. No one was injured, but a glass entryway was shattered. The streets around Times Square were shut down (now traffic can pass through) and subway service passed through the Times Square station without stopping (it's back to normal now), as authorities investigated the scene. WNBC reports police were searching for a "suspect......