Surveillance video image of Phoenix airport police restraining Carol Gotbaum Six months after Carol Gotbaum died in police custody at Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport, her family has filed an $8 million notice of claim against the city of Phoenix, saying "members of the Phoenix Police Department used excessive and unreasonable force on Carol, as if she was a dangerous criminal, rather than as the sick, intoxicated and vulnerable person she was." Gotbaum, married to......

After a recent study detected minute quantities of pharmaceuticals in the city’s upstate water supply, the City Council has announced an emergency hearing to investigate the reports. The Associated Press study found sedatives in water nationwide; in New York, traces of 15 different drugs (“for aches, infections, seizures and high blood pressure; hormones for menopause; the active ingredient in a popular sedative; and caffeine") turned up. Presumably the drugs entered the water supply via sewage......

Members of the Park Slope Co-op are expected to vote to eliminate the sale of bottled water this spring. The proposal comes as the environmental costs of bottled water are being widely publicized, including a city advertising campaign encouraging people to forgo bottled water and drink from the tap. American consumption of bottled water results in more than 22 billion discarded plastic bottles and enormous energy expenditures associated with shipping the water, which is so......

Police broke up an Upper East Side heroin distribution center this week, located in the rarefied real estate of 75th St. between 2nd and 3rd Aves. Neighbors seemed shocked after police broke down the door of apartment 2B at 242 East 75th, a street unfamiliar with narcotics unit raids. One said, "I was leaving my apartment [and there was a] battering ram and there were cops, so I asked some questions and I found......

A real estate agent who was handling the sale of a foreclosed houes in Jamaica, Queens discovered 100 marijuana plants inside. The subprime meltdown really is hitting all corners of the city. WCBS 2 reports that the discovery was made on Thursday afternoon and police removed all the plants from 170-04 118th Avenue. No further details were available, but we're guessing the previous occupants weren't able to rent a van to remove their goods.......

Some more details surrounding Heath Ledger's death have emerged, even though the autopsy is inconclusive for the actor's cause of death. Though CBS 2 initially reported that a rolled up $20 bill in Ledger's SoHo apartment had narcotic residue on it and that cops had found unidentified drug packets, the NYPD now confirms that lab tests found nothing to indicate the bill had been used to snort drugs and that no illegal drugs were......

Cordell Lochin is a bit of an enigma. The well-connected scenester, subject of an indulgent profile in the Observer last spring, presented himself as a partner in the obnoxiously affected nightspots La Esquina and The Box. Now the other entitled owners are distancing themselves from Lochin and the enigma will soon be wrapped inside a prison cell; Guest of a Guest has news that Lochin’s gotten sent up on a 3-year bid for involvement in......

Two sergeants and a detective were arrested Friday after one was caught on tape providing information on surveillance vehicles to a drug dealer and the other two were caught supplying drugs and cash that they'd stolen from a supposed junkie and then returning it in exchange for information. Sgt. Roosevelt Green was a 12-year-veteran of the NYPD working out of the 62nd Precinct in Brooklyn, who was using a police laptop to run license plate......

Last night, the police announced that plainclothes police officers had shot and killed a man in East New York. The Brooklyn North officerswere conducting a "buy-and-bust" drug sweep at the time. The man apparently pulled out a gun while police were questioning him outside 970 Belmont Avenue. It's unclear whether the man fired at police, but his .38-caliber pistol was recovered from the scene. The man also had a "pocket full of bullets," according to......

The NYPD detectives working the homicide investigation of Carol Simon have identified a suspect in her killing, although they are not publicizing his identity. Simon was shot as she was returning to her car where her son was waiting for her at a gas station. The killing occurred Saturday evening in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, as an argument between two men turned violent and one of the men pulled a gun. Neighbors and......

New Jersey police have arrested a number of members of the Lucchese crime family. In the process of breaking up a multi-billion dollar betting organization, cops discovered that the old school mafia family had also teamed up with the more street-level gang the Bloods. The two groups were working together to smuggle things like iPods, cell phones, and drugs into the East Jersey State Prison. The betting ring was fairly sophisticated, utilizing Internet sites, an......

Andy Pettitte is a cheater. He confirmed this yesterday when he apologized for and admitted to using HGH. In a statement issued yesterday, Pettitte said that he used human growth hormone on two occasions, both to recover from a 2002 elbow injury and not for performance enhancement reasons."In 2002 I was injured. I had heard that human growth hormone could promote faster healing for my elbow. I felt an obligation to get back to my......

Peter Braunstein really loves the New York Post. The fashion industry reporter-turned-prison inmate, after being recently convicted of the kidnapping, sex assault, armed robbery and burglary of a former co-worker on Halloween in 2005, gives his first interview since being locked up this past summer to the tabloid. He gives a number of choice quotes to the Post, who calls him "still-crazy." And how! Not only does he regret not killing his ex-girlfriend Jane......

The morning started with rumors of names mentioned in Senator George Mitchell's report to Major League Baseball, but not until this afternoon were any rumors substantiated. Stating in his report that “there is much about the illegal use of performance enhancing substances in baseball that I did not learn,” Mitchell proceeded to lay waste to the careers of many notable players, perhaps none more so than Roger Clemens. In the report Brian McNamee, Roger Clemens’......

He’s made his list, he’s checked it twice and now we are going to find out who has been naughty and not nice. Former Senator George Mitchell's report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball comes out at 2pm today. And besides providing us with the most complete look at the use of performance-enhancing drugs to date, the Mitchell Report will also name names. While it is just speculation at this point,......

Fans of the neo-Gilded Age New York fantasy show Gossip Girl are so going to love this news: the fictional grilled fontina cheese sandwich with truffle oil ordered by Serena van der Woodsen in the show’s pilot is now a real sandwich! Zagat’s website reports that the item is now permanently part of the bar menu at Gilt – the very location where cameras filmed actress Blake Lively being served the sandwich. Once just a......

The Hershey candy company is under fire for producing a breath mint candy that police say is hard to distinguish from an illegal drug. Philadelphia cops are complaining that a new iteration of Hershey's Ice Breakers product looks a lot like crack cocaine. When we initially read a quote from a local Philadelphia news station––"Even veteran narcotics officers acknowledged that they could not tell the difference between a package of crack cocaine and the breath......

The two women arrested for allegedly robbing a number of open houses on the Upper East and West Sides are being on bail of $30,000 each. Jessica Joyner and Jennifer Jones, charged with petty larceny, grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, will be extradited to New Jersey authorities next week because they allegedly stole $75,000 worth of items during a Saddle River, NJ home's open house. The pair, who both live in Upper......

A state disciplinary board fined Dr. Mark Nesselson $10,000 and ruled that the pediatrician could only work under supervision from now on. Nesselson filled out fake paperwork for parents who did not want their children to receive required immunizations before attending school, which is required by law. The doctor was caught when he moved to Hawaii and handed off patient records indicating that he had never actually immunized some children to another doctor, who reported......

An NYPD detective was arrested in the breaking up of a Bronx drug ring this week. The bust was comprehensive and prosecutors are alleging that officer James Calderon used his inside knowledge of police activities to enable crack and heroin dealers to operate with relative impunity. James Calderon was a 13-year veteran of the force, but is now being accused of acting as an agent for Jorge and Luis Mendoza, Bronx drug dealers who allegedly......

The Maricopa County medical examiner found that the death of a New Yorker in police custody at the Phoenix airport was an accident. Carol Gotbaum, who was flying from NYC to Tucson with a stopover in Phoenix, died of "asphyxia by hanging" on September 28. Gotbaum, stepdaughter-in-law of Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, had been traveling alone to check into alcohol rehabilitation. When she missed her connection to Tucson, she became upset and disruptive, and......

EVENT: Tonight, as part of the recurring Upstairs at the Square event, Nellie McKay plays tunes from her latest, Obligatory Villager and host Katherine Lanpher talks with author and filmmaker Antonio Monda. Monda's new book Do You Believe? Conversations on God and Religion will hit shelves soon -- and tonight he'll relay the discussions he had about religion with folks like Spike Lee and David Lynch. 7pm // Barnes & Noble [33 E 17th St]......

Were the police surveillance photographs of Shawn Kovell's apartment what set her landlord off? Or was it the fact that she and boyfriend Robert Chambers had been arrested by undercover cops for allegedly selling drugs out of the East 57th Street apartment? Apparently it was something more simple. The couple wasn't able to make the rent. Chambers, infamous to New Yorkers as the Preppy Killer after he admitted to the 1986 strangling Jennifer Levin in......

Two movies set in New York are coming out today, and both are getting a lot of press, promo and opined upon. American Gangster is set in 1960-70s New York and stars Russell Crowe as a detective working to take down a real-life heroin kingpin, Frank Lucas (played by Denzel Washington). Lucas claimed to gross $1M a day on 116th Street dealing drugs, which he got to the States by smuggling in the coffins of......

READING: We originally thought this was going down yesterday, but you still have a chance to see it! Not in a million years would we have thought we'd be listing a reading by former Guns n' Roses guitarist, Slash. But it turns out old rockers love to dish on their sordid lives, and this mysterious musician is no different. Tonight he'll read from his book, called Slash, which apparently "redefines sex, drugs, and rock 'n'......

For better or worse, talk of NYPD detective James Zadroga's death continues to linger. For the past two weeks, the family of Zadroga, who worked hours of rescue and recovery at the pit after the September 11 attacks, and the city's medical examiner's office have been disagreeing about Zadroga's cause of death. Now Mayor Bloomberg has stepped into the fray, discrediting Zadroga's hero status. Two medical experts have supported the family's believe that Zadroga's death......

Facing numerous drug charges that could put him away for the rest of his life, convicted murderer Robert Chambers pleaded not guilty during a Thursday court appearance. Chambers, 41, and his companion, 39-year-old Shawn Kovell, are accused of selling drugs from Kovell's rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment on East 57th Street in Manhattan. Earlier this week, the couple were busted by undercover officers. The Manhattan DA's office, no stranger to Chambers after the infamous 1986 murder of......

Police responded to reports of gunfire in an apartment in the Mt. Eden section of the Bronx last night and found three people shot in the head. Two of the victims were dead and one was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where he is in critical condition. The dead victims were 20-year-old Ludmildy Rosado and 34-year-old Daniel Newton. Police were not sure if the two knew each other or not. Neighbors who live in the building......

Last week, it was revealed that the NYC medical examiner Dr. Charles Hirsch did not believe WTC dust ultimately killed NYPD Detective Charles Zadroga. Zadroga, who worked rescue and recovery in the World Trade Center debris after September 11, died after a long, protracted battle of a respiratory disease in 2006. Now it turns out that Hirsch thinks Zadroga's death was caused by prescription drug abuse. Zadroga had been taking a number of pills, and......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an injured firefighter on Myrtle Ave. in Queens, a robbery/mobilization on Broadway in Manhattan, and a suspicious death on Sheffield Ave. in Brooklyn. Five Hoboken police officers filed a federal lawsuit claiming discrimination by the town's police department. Their commander allegedly used the "N" word frequently and said "the white race was destined to rule and dominate others." You know you're screwed when you call your City Council representative......