Federal drug enforcement agents have arrested eight members of a Queens-based gang suspected of kidnapping and torturing more than 100 people. The men impersonated the police, by way of fake sirens and lights on cars and handcuffs, and managed, per the Post, to "steal $4 million in cash and cocaine with a street value of $20 million." An assistant U.S. Attorney explained their M.O., "Once the crew finished gathering intelligence on an intended victim, the......

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......

The early Thursday morning fight in Union Square was apparently set off by a diss. The Post reports that the victims were all affiliated with gangs and the "violence appeared to have stemmed from a show of 'disrespect.'" The police confirmed that a fight did occur at the McDonald's at East 17th Street and Broadway, but it's still unclear if that fight continued on into the park, where a gunman later fired, injuring four people.......

The New York Times's City Section this past Sunday had a special focus on seventeen-year-old New Yorkers. According to the paper, more children were born in 1990 than at any point since the Baby Boom. Now they're on the cusp of adulthood and the Times has a series of oral histories that one can read or listen to online. It's an interesting project; here are a few of the teens:Neil Allicock lives in East New......

After a protest in East Harlem, baseball cap manufacturer New Era has agreed to pull Yankees caps from store shelves. A number of caps seem to refer to the Bloods, Crips and Latin Kings and became a controversy during a back-to-school shopping trip. Jose Rivera liked a Yankees cap with a gold crown on it and wanted to buy it for his son, but his son explained that he could be in danger for......

EVENT: GRBG is helping in the celebration of the “Gangs of New York” Fall ’07 collection. Enjoy a photo exhibit of the fall look book shot in Coney Island, a screening of The Warriors and free Rum! 6 to 9pm // powerHouse Arena [37 Main St, Brooklyn] // Free READING: His book on the nightlife scene hit the stores yesterday, and today Rob the Bouncer will be joining them. He's not even quite sure what......

A brutal crime took the lives of three young people and injured one more in a Newark schoolyard on Saturday night, saddening and angering the community. Twenty-year-old Iofemi Hightower, 20-year-old Dashon Harvey, and 18-year-old Terrance Aerial were "lined them up against a wall and forced...to kneel" before being shot in the head, according to Newark police. Aerial's sister Natasha was also with them, but she was shot first in another area. She survived a......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: The Kill Point (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., Spike TV) The debut of a hostage drama miniseries starring John Leguizamo as a leader of a group of bank robbers who’s plans went wrong and Donnie Wahlberg as the Pittsburgh Police negotiator tasked to deal with them. Saving Grace (Monday, 10:00 p.m., TNT) Another cop show with a twist, this time Holly Hunter stars as an Oklahoma City Police detective......

The Warriors (directed by Walter Hill) Nothing says mid-summer mania like a home screening of the '70s cult classic The Warriors. You can practically feel the racial conflicts, urban disillusionment and summer swelter emanating from the screen. If you've never experienced this must-see for New Yorkers, it's recent transfer to HD-DVD after a director's cut release in 2005, is a good enough excuse as any. The city's gangs have decided to converge for a peaceful......

To anyone attending next year's Puerto Rican Day Parade, we have this suggestion: Don't wear black-and-gold. At a press conference, parade organizers decried arrests of people who were not engaged in any illegal activity during Sunday's event. National Puerto Rican Day Parade president Madelyn Lugo said, "We are very disappointed and alarmed that these violations of civil rights should occur." The organizers, who admitted they warned the NYPD that the Latin Kings might try to......

Early yesterday morning, 12-year-old honors student Kirsys Rodriguez was shot in the lower back when a fight broke out in the Fordham section of the Bronx. The Daily News reports "rival gangs of Dominicans and African-Americans started arguing" during a party, and the fight spilled out to the street. At least 20 men were "facing off over accusations someone had stolen the $200 cell phone." One of the men started firing a gun, and Kirsys......

The New York Times examines the world of fixed-gear cyclists––riders whose bikes don't have multiple gears or often, not even brakes. There are no fenders of course, not on a bike that requires a skid to stop. And there's definitely no coasting, which fixed gears don't allow and seems antithetical to a subculture rooted in bike messengering. The attached audio slide show has some statements that are refreshingly honest by Gina Marie Scardino, a......

It's yet another case of kids behaving badly - and then putting it on the Internet. Someone recorded a Bronx sophomore being beaten by a gang and then put the video on YouTube. The CW News at 11 spoke to students at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx who were there during the March 15 fight (select the video "Follow up to violent gang web video"). The students said that the sophomore was......

The police are still trying to understand what happened during yesterday's morning stabbing of a 16-year-old student. Mark Tyrell, who attends Chelsea Career and Technical high, was stabbed repeatedly on East 14th Street after emerging from the Union Square subway station. Police believe the incident started on the subway platform when Tyrell ran into some people. When Tyrell was chased out, he was attacked outside a pizzeria, where an employee told the NY Times, "One......

It's that time of the year again: When Hollywood honors its moviemaking the way it knows (and not always in equitable ways, given that Alfred Hitchcock nor Robert Altman, to name a few, have never won Directing Oscars) and America gets to watch hours of pre-show hosted by idiots. Giving commentary for Gothamist this year, Karen Wilson, Margaret Harper, and Jen Chung. 7:06PM First thoughts: Gael Garcia Bernal is so cute. Ryan Seacrest is an......

In the crossroads of the "Can't Beat 'Em, So Join 'Em" chronicles and the "____ Diner, R.I.P." annals, there's is the Moondance Diner. The NY Sun reports the SoHo fixture will be razed for - you guessed it - luxury condos. But that's not all: Moondance owner Sunil "Sunny" Sharma was originally going to sell the property, but decided to develop it himself with Extell's Gary Barnett and others. Plans for a 66,743 square......

Just in time for Valentine's Day, The Daily News has created, what they call, a list of NYC's 100 Most Romantic Movies. Movies that capture what it is like to "live and love here". One problem: the list needs to be edited. It appears they have just listed every movie they could think of that took place in New York and somehow involved love (or lust). For example: Coyote Ugly should not be on a......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian was hit by a truck and killed in Chelsea and a bank robbery was foiled in Brooklyn Heights (more pix at Flickr). Most meta-muttonchop shot ever! Can't get enough? Fine, here's one more. A manager at the Park Slope Barnes & Nobles had a great idea for reducing crowding: banning strollers. What could go wrong? Dante's Inferno, Queens edition: "screeching elevated trains serving two lines roar overhead......

When City Councilman Peter Vallone is not complaining about graffiti, it seems like his other pet peeve are pit bulls. Vallone is trying to ban pit bulls from city pet owners (by way of repealing a "state law prohibiting breed-specific legislation"). NYC would join cities like Denver and Miami, and the resolution notes that pit bulls are "often a weapon of choice of drug dealers and gangs seeking to intimidate and terrorize neighborhoods." Vallone tells......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a "boat in distress" at the 79th Street Boat Basin, several shootings in Brooklyn, including one at Brookdale Hospital, and a police officer stabbed at a diner in Queens. The funniest SNL short since Lazy Sunday: "D!ck in a Box". Warning, lyrics are as raunchy as the title. Sometime in the next 30 years, old people will outnumber school children in NYC. "According to police estimates, there are over......

We love this story: A pair of cops went "undercover" as gay men and snuggled in Union Square - and ended up arresting a gay-basher. The incident occured Monday afternoon, which seems odd as there are so many people around, but we suppose the truly stupid are everyone all the time. The Post has the details: The cops, a sergeant and a police officer assigned to the Transit Borough Manhattan Task Force, were perched......

Dear lord, it's only mid-September but already the amount of new releases flooding theaters is getting a bit overwhelming. Brian De Palma's highly anticipated adaptation of James Ellroy's novel, The Black Dahlia hits theaters this Friday. Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart are Los Angeles detectives investigating an extremely grisly Hollywood murder of a young starlet in the late '40s. Hartnett's real life Girl Friday, Scarlett Johansson's also in the cast, as is Oscar winner Hilary......

After last week's huge box office take for X-Men, you know that we're in it: the bang-up summer blockbuster season. However, even with all of this energy of over the top new releases in the air there's still some amazing old movies screening this weekend too. So you better get a watchin'. Not content to sit back and let her ex-husband get all of the real relationship/on screen relationship press, Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn......

So-called "wolf packs" of teenagers have been increasingly mugging people in Prospect Park lately. The Post says many of the robberies' victims are teens, where suddenly "they are surrounded by a larger group of youths" who then take their money and cellphones. However, a mugging last week was on a 53 year old man who was "shoved to the sidewalk, kicked and robbed," which is alarming, if the teens are looking to be more......

- What happens when a 12 year old covers the Tribeca Film Festival (hint: she chats with Tom Cruise and sees Giuliani, whose politics she doesn't agree with!) - That Red Hook drug ring - the one where the gangs would calls parts of the projects "Peyton Place" and names like that - made $50 million a year - The police deny there was any DNA evidence linking killer bouncer Stephen Sakai and one......

The NYPD announced they took down a $12 million-a-year drug ring in the Red Hook Houses. Over the past 18 months, the police have been working on "Operation Off the Hook" and arrested 153 dealers. The gangs avoided conflicts with the police by not fighting with each other under mutual agreement and even gave nicknames to parts of the housing development - "Poor Block, Slytown, Paradise and Peyton Place." Police Commissioner Kelly said their motto......

Brooklyn Industries decided to decorate their shops with some tall bikes (those are specially-made bikes that are, well, taller than regular bikes)-- unfortunately, they did not get the approval of the anti-corporate bikerati gangs. Very quickly, all the windows of their Williamsburg store got defaced with etch. It's sad, because the company was donating $2 from the sale of every messenger bag to the Recycle-a-Bicycle charity. Sometimes you just want to tell people to......

Gothamist has been sucked in to the History Channel's documentaries about the gangs of New York recently. Being history buffs, we want to learn more, but how do we do that without having to watch the Scorsese film again (which omitted a lot of facts)? With the Big Onion Walking Tours! The "Official" Gangs of New York Tour A tour exploring the legends and lore of Five Points and Herbert Asbury’s 1928 classic The Gangs......

On Sundays, Gothamist posts opinion pieces about issues relevant to life in New York City. If you'd like to write one, email us! The opinions expressed below belong only to the author. I was walking down Canal Street yesterday when I noticed this sign, taped to the shuttered gates of a store just off the corner of 6th Avenue. If you have trouble reading fine print, it says the store was shuttered for "the open......

The big budget spectacle, King Kong, will open in two weeks, and while most of the trailers seem to play up a fight with Godzilla and lots of jungle scenes (Naomi Watts - hot and sweaty!), part of the story does more to New York. Now, director Peter Jackson decided not to film in NYC because finding 1933 New York in today's New York is difficult. (Gothamist sorta buys that, but we actually believe......