Photos from MyFOX News Police patrolling the East River near the United Nations as part of increased security linked to Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the General Assembly diverted their attentions momentarily to rescue a beaver who seemed to be in distress. Cops noticed that the animal, which was four feet long and weighed 40 pounds, seemed to be laboring in the strong currents of the East River and was swimming awkwardly. Quick-thinking officers......

Earlier in the week, unconfirmed reports of a knife-wielding assailant had Williamsburg residents on edge; South Williamsburg in particular has been flooded with patrolmen all week, and we’ve heard from readers who say they’ve been written summons for minor offenses like jaywalking. Though the 90th Precinct and the NYPD press liaison are unforthcoming about the dragnet, two officers walking their beat by the future Pies ‘n’ Thighs location on Driggs and South 4th Street told......

It's not unusual for police officers to make side money by moonlighting with second jobs. Christian Torres is a rookie cop, however, who took that practice to a whole new level--allegedly robbing banks when off duty. On Thursday, Torres arrested in Pennsylvania less than a block from the bank he just robbed. Unaware the teller had tripped a silent alarm and that a police officer followed him, he showed his NYPD badge, thinking he was......

A 13-year-old boy was arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter in the Friday night death of a Columbia graduate student. According to a Daily News source, the boy bragged to his 15-year-old friend before chasing Ming-Hui Yu, "Look what I do to this one." The teen and his friends apparently hassled Yu, a 24-year-old Ph.D. student in statistics and a teaching fellow, at the median at Broadway and 122nd Street. The Post reports one "punched......

Police released a sketch of a man who they suspect is not just the man who attacked a woman at a Staten Island bus stop early Thursday morning, but may be a serial attacker who could have attacked another woman earlier this year. The latest attack occurred when a 25-year-old woman got off a bus in the Eltingville section of Staten Island at 2 a.m. Almost immediately, she was thrown to the ground, by a......

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......

Accused assistant to Murray Hill Madame Kristin Davis, Grace O'Toole, turned herself in yesterday, perhaps realizing that escape from both the NYPD and the NY Media was an impossible mission. After her alleged boss was arrested and jailed on $2 million bail for running a prostitution ring linked to former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, O'Toole took off, although she was described very accurately by someone who witnessed her flight as wearing over-sized sunglasses, and carrying......

New York Ranger forward Sean Avery may be on thin ice with any woman he's currently seeing, as his name popped up in the spreadsheets of Murray Hill madame Kristin "Billie" Davis. The distaff pimp was arrested after being linked to former Gov. Eliot Spitzer--one-time state attorney general and longtime whore connoisseur. Avery denies that he knows Davis or ever used a prostitute, laughing off the incident as a practical joke by someone familiar with......

Police arrested a man yesterday as a suspect in the rapes of two women in the Van Dyke Houses complex in Brooklyn. Thomas Boker was charged with rape and robbery after being taken to Kings County Hospital for a psychiatric examination. Police say that 29-year-old Boker was about to be charged when he started to act disoriented and didn't seem to know who he was. Cops linked Boker to the rapes with forensic evidence. The......

Surveillance video shows that two rookie police officers were not patrolling a Brooklyn housing complex where a 30-year-old woman was raped in a stairwell last week. The two officers were disciplined for lying about doing their jobs, when in fact they were not. The victim of the assault was trailed from the subway by a man she recognized from the neighborhood and he followed her into her building's elevator. After producing a knife as she......

According to new NYPD statistics, graffiti complaints in Brooklyn rose 96% last year, with arrests in the borough increasing by 33%. Citywide, complaints almost doubled from 4,886 in 2006 to 8,866 in 2007, and total arrests rose from 2,962 to 3,786. Williamsburg leads the tagging trend with a total of 186 complaints. “It's so expensive here, yet it looks like a dump,” long-time Williamsburg resident Mel Costello, 63, declared to the Daily News. “It's......

Big gas guzzling SUV's aren't completely worthless, especially if you need to withdraw some cash in a hurry. A surveillance camera in Orange County New York shows an intrepid robber ramming the back of his SUV through the front of a convenience store in an effort to steal its ATM--the whole machine. Starting at the top left and going clockwise, you can see 1) the SUV slamming through the front of the store 2)......

A Bronx man was shot in the hand after exhibiting what could charitably be described as foolhardy behavior Friday. Perhaps we are too immersed in stories like Amadou Diallou and Sean Bell, but the story of a driver in the Bronx left us shaking our heads. After the man was pulled over once and then peeled out before police could exit their car, he was pulled over again, and then took off again. A short......

Although Rev. Al Sharpton appeared with officer Christopher Ridley's family after the Mt. Vernon cop's death, advising people not to rush to judgment, questions about the shooting are turning in the direction of race and societal divisions. The Friday night shooting occurred when Ridley, off-duty police officer, tried to stop a fight and Westchester police shot at him. White Plains is less than 20 miles from the South Bronx and about five miles west of......

On Friday night, the Westchester police shot at a Mount Vernon police officer brandishing a gun in front of a county social services building. The policeman killed was Christopher Ridley, who was off-duty at the time; now it turns out he had been trying to break up a brawl. County lawmaker George Oros explained the gunfire erupted after Ridley got up from the ground with something in his hand outdrawn (he was 100 feet away.)......

Imecca Burton, her mother, and civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel held a press conference in front of Police Headquarters yesterday to decry the handcuffing of 10-year-old Imecca, who was handcuffed by police in front of PS 25 where she attends elementary school. Police officers witnessed a fight on her school bus and in the ensuing events Imecca was handcuffed. Witnesses said that Imecca was swearing, kicking, and screaming, which is why the cops cuffed her.......

Miss Heather has a sigh-inducing story of police harassment on her site this week indicating that police still do not understand that taking pictures in public is not against the law. Or maybe they do know it's not against the law, but it'll still earn one detainment and a grilling. Was Miss Heather taking pictures of chemical facilities, rail junctions, bridges, or tunnels? No, she was taking shots of neighborhood Christmas decorations in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.P.O.:......

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......

A judge has decided not to grant murder suspect Natavia Lowery bail. Lowery is accused of killing her boss, broker to the stars Linda Stein, by bludgeoning her to death. Police say that Lowery confessed to snapping after Stein verbally abused her and blew pot smoke in her face. However, her lawyer Ron Kuby had claimed she deserved bail because the videotape confession (which he once referred to as being like a hostage video, since......

New York City is getting safer and safer. Well, at least Manhattan is. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau told reporters yesterday that there have only been 65 murders in the borough this year, down 40% from last year. When Morgenthau took office in 1975, the borough had 648 murders, accounting for almost 40% of the city's total. The 65 homicides this year account for just 14% of the city total. The 88-year-old DA attributed the......

Success made Orlando Taylor greedy - and an jailed man for robbing two Brooklyn banks a total of four times in just three days. He was arrested when spotted outside one of the two banks, apparently casing it out for another robbery. The first robbery occurred on Friday morning at the HSBC bank at 342 Fulton Street, taking $450 dollars. Taylor then robbed a Bank of America branch at 350 Fulton Street on Saturday morning,......

After friends and family became worried that 25-year-old Yolande Beckford and her 6-year-old daughter Monique did not arrive at work or school, the police went to their home and found their bodies yesterday morning. The two were stabbed to death, and there were no signs of forced entry. This morning, WNBC reports that the police have arrested Beckford's boyfriend for the murder, while Newsday reports that a relative confessed to the crime. The Daily News......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a police officer was struck on Richmond and Wilson Aves. on Staten Island, there was a large fight on Franklin Ave. and Empire Blvd. in Brooklyn, and a double homicide on Furman Ave. and East 237th St. in the Bronx. The US Postal Service is expecting to process one billion individual pieces of mail today, three times the daily average. The busiest day of the year is expected to......

The story of Philadelphia anchorwoman Alycia Lane gets stranger and stranger. Her first call upon release from custody after punching a NYPD officer was, according to the Philadelphia Daily News, to Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell. A spokesman for the Pennsylvania governor told the paper, she did it to "make sure he knew her side of the story because he is an opinion-maker and runs around in influential circles." And "I think she knew better than......

Yesterday the NY Post warned non-recyclers that they'd have to don a "scarlet litter" if they didn't clean up their acts. We hoped this "scarlet litter" would be a hat hand-crafted by a Freegan and worn atop the heads of the environmentally-challenged, but instead it's something much more sensible: a clear bag for all of your garbage that leaves little to the imagination. New York, we don't really want to see your trash, so please......

Albany county attorney general P. David Soares is taking another stab at the Troopergate scandal by issuing subpoenas for Gov. Spitzer's e-mails to and from his aides, as well as e-mails between aides. Troopergate centered around accusations that Spitzer and/or his top aides used state police to essentially spy on Spitzer's primary foe in Albany--state senate leader Joseph Bruno. The first Troopergate investigation resulted in the resignation of Spitzer's communications director Darren Dopp. The broad......

Given how cold it is, this story is amazing: A teen who had been skateboarding with friends in Elmhurst last night heard some crying and found a a newborn baby girl wrapped in a blanket, inside a brown paper bag, at the top of a dumpster. The temperature was below freezing. Christopher Moncada said his brother Brian found the baby and when they opened the bag, "The baby was facing down. It looked like it......

The family of Carol Simon is grieving after she was killed while walking on Eastern Parkway near Bedford around 5:30PM on Saturday. Simon, a 35-year-old nurse's assistant, had been on her way to take her son to swimming lessons when an argument between two men became violent and one pulled out a gun. Simon and her son Kieron, 9, had driven to an Exxon to buy some things. Simon realized she forgot her purse, so......

Alycia Lane, the anchorwoman from the CBS owned station KYW in Philadelphia , who was at one time linked to WCBS anchor Chris Wragge, sent bikini photos to a married man, and is frequently mentioned in the Post’s Page Six column got into some more hot water in Chelsea around 2 a..m. Sunday morning. The Long Island native, allegedly punched a female police officer from the 10th Precinct in the face at W. 17th Street......