The 144,160 parking placards registered in the city inventory have been reduced by over 25,000, Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler announced yesterday. The cutbacks are targeted at what many frustrated drivers see as an abuse of a system that lets police, teachers and civil servants park for free at meters and many off-limits areas. Initial cuts have focused on the 80,770 placards issued to 68 city agencies, exempting the 63,390 placards used by the Education Department.......

Turns out the number parking placards sloshing around New York is over 142,000, twice the number guesstimated by Mayor Bloomberg’s office when he announced a 20% cutback on the placards, which allow police, teachers and civil servants to park for free at meters and many off-limits areas. The new total does not take into consideration the number of counterfeit and expired placards, and the city is still not done counting, so this preliminary total is......

At the 1968 Democratic Convention, anti-war activists were denied permits to demonstrate by the city and spent most of the week getting their skulls cracked courtesy of the Chicago Police Department, witnessed by a television audience of over 50 million. A year later, eight of the most high profile radicals – guys like Abbie Hoffman and the Black Panthers' Bobby Seale – were tried on charges of conspiracy and inciting riots. The courtroom was......

The League of American Bicyclists has awarded New York City a bronze medal for bicycle friendliness. League representatives met with Mayor Bloomberg and DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, who sometimes cycles to work, at City Hall yesterday to present the award. Though bronze is the lowest rung on the friendliness ladder, New York City is the only community in the region to be designated a Bike Friendly Community (BFC). While the total number of cycling fatalities......

Photograph of Mayor Bloomberg speaking at the State of the City address by Mary Altaffer/AP Mayor Bloomberg sounded some broad themes in his seventh State of the City address. Held at the new ice skating rink at Flushing-Meadows Corona Park in Queens, his speech outlined initiatives the city and various city agencies will undertake (digital 911 so you can send the NYPD photos from cell phones by this summer! reforming the Board of Elections!......

Mayor Bloomberg has announced that the city will crackdown on the abuse of parking permits issued to civil servants, reducing the overall number by 20%. The change comes after the Post revealed in November that “149 separate government entities had qualified for the coveted placards last year, ranging from the state lottery to the US Navy recruiting office, which was allocated an astonishing 110 permits.” In fact, so many agencies produce and distribute the parking......

Tim Russert has invited all the presidential candidates to appear on Meet the Press, and yesterday former Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared. We imagine many New Yorkers watching the program gnashed their teeth and/or swore at the TV (we happened to do both), as Giuliani tried to answer questions ranging from the straightforward (Giuliani's Iowa poll numbers, Russert asked, "Fifth place, is that a problem?") to the interesting (Russert on Giuliani's consulting business: "A Las......

We take this to be definitive proof that the video of a group of teen girls beating a man on an A train was not staged: The victim has emerged. Rafael Cruz, a 27-year-old Brooklyn resident who is a manager at a Midtown H&M;, told the Post, "I'm trying to get over it. It happened a month ago." Cruz isn't sure if he will press charges, noting, "Teenagers are allowed to make mistakes, but......

And by "you," we mean New York's Finest. Reader Graham tipped us off to a empty storefront at Grand and Crosby that has been wrapped in this Albuquerque Police Department recruiting ad; he sent the picture and said, "It pretty much speaks for itself." Sure does - it tells us there was no empty ad space right across from 1 Police Plaza. The Patrolman's Benevolent Association has been complaining about low police pay (new......

The New York Times examines the practice of handcuffing prisoners who have been shot by the police, just a few days after the death of Khiel Coppin. The mentally disturbed Brooklyn 18-year-old was handcuffed by cops after they shot him ten times, thinking he was armed with a gun. It turns out, Coppin was armed only with a hairbrush. According to the Times, the practice of handcuffing someone who is already prone and wounded is......

Hoboken disbanded its SWAT team this week after another scandal rocked the police department of the tiny New Jersey town across the river. A number of minority officers recently filed a lawsuit accusing a high-ranking co-worker of behaving like a white supremacist, regularly deriding minorities. Now the SWAT team has been disbanded days after photos became public showing the unit's commander and other cops cavorting with waitresses at a Hooters restaurant in Alabama. The Mile......

Hallelujah! Yesterday the judge presiding over the Reverend Billy case dropped the charges that claimed he harassed public officials. The Rev was arrested in June while reciting the First Amendment in Union Square during a Critical Mass ride which coincided with the protest of the proposed MOFTB rules. Turns out the prosecutors didn't meet their deadline to file papers explaining the arrest and its justification. The Reverend's (whose real name is Bill Talen) lawyer, Earl......

First, some fire fighters' unions spoke out against presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. Now a police officers' union is totally anti-Rudy. The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch issued a statement blaming the former mayor for not giving cops raises ("zeroes for heroes" contract) and essentially creating the recruiting/retainment problems the NYPD has. And then there's what the PBA thinks about Giuliani's 9/11 record: Giuliani has wrapped himself firmly in the cloak of 9/11 for his......

What can you say about the Vernon NJ Police Department except that they like Hanna-Barbera? Because they created a "WANTED" poster with Yogi Bear's likeness, after discovering a black bear had stolen a minivan. Well, maybe "stolen" is overreaching, but Patrolman David Dehardt noticed that a Mazda minivan was parked in an odd spot, and when he approached the car, it had the classic signs of bear presence: "mashed window, paw prints, smudge marks on......

Halloween tricks are never a good idea, no matter what side of the law you're on. A 14-year-old boy was throwing eggs at cars in Staten Island when two police officers decided to teach him a lesson. Police sources S.tell the Daily News that Officers Thomas Elliassen and Michael Danese picked up Rayshawn Moreno around 8:30PM, drove him to "a swampy area of the 122nd Precinct" and then "dropped him off wearing only boxer shorts......

Witnesses told police that Carol Gotbaum was "teary" during her flight from New York to Phoenix, according to new documents released by the Phoenix Police Department. Another witness says the mother of three, who was traveling to Tucson for alcohol rehabilitation, may have also ordered an alcoholic drink during the flight. Carol Gotbaum became upset when she missed her connection to Tucson, yelling and throwing things, and the Phoenix police took her into custody. She......

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......

The police are investigating a hate crime at Columbia University's Teachers College after a noose was found on the door of a black professor. Teachers College president Susan Fuhrman issued a statement:The police were here this morning because a hangman's noose was discovered on the office door of one of our African American faculty members. The incident has been reported to the New York City Police Department (Detectives Bureau of Manhattan) and is under active......

The family of Carol Ann Gotbaum wants answers about the 45-year-old Manhattan resident's death while in police custody at Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport last Friday. Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, who was Gotbaum's stepmother-in-law, said, "We are not jumping to any conclusions, but the circumstances surrounding Carol's death appear to be unusual enough to raise serious questions and warrant a thorough investigation." The mother of three was scheduled for a connection to Tucson, where she was......

We received an email alert from the Sylvia Rivera Law Project about a clash between the SRLP and police officers last night in the East Village. Here is an excerpt of the SRLP's account:On the night of Wednesday, September 26, officers from the 9th Precinct of the New York Police Department attacked without provocation members of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and of its community. Two of our community members were violently arrested, and others......

It's been six years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and Chinatown residents are getting frustrated that a security measure to protect New York City's police headquarters has tied traffic in their neighborhood in knots. One Police Plaza is located on Park Row in Chinatown, a street that links the financial district with one of the oldest ethnic neighborhoods in the city. Park Row has historically been a major four-lane artery linking the financial district to......

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market......

What are the chances? Matt Murphy, a Queens-native and Mets fan, was on his way to Australia when he bought a ticket to last night's Giants-Nationals game at AT&T; Park in San Francisco for a chance to watch history. He didn't just watch history, he happened to catch it. Or grab it, at least. Murphy, wearing a Mets jersey and t-shirt, and a buddy (wearing Yankees gear) bought a pair of tickets from a......

If you think 911 is a joke, things may improve by 2009 if everything goes as planned. The Bloomberg Administration has unveiled a $1.5 billion plan to improve the emergency call system with a backup center and consolidation of 911 operators and dispatchers in two call centers. The city has previously attempted to overhaul the 911 system but delays and budget problems scuttled the plans. The current system has had its problems, shutting down four......

Yesterday afternoon, 1,097 police cadets graduated from the Police Academy in a ceremony at Madison Square Garden. The Mayor said, "Just a few weeks ago, the FBI reported that violent crime went up in the rest of the nation during 2006, but here in New York violent crime decreased. The NYPD has continued to drive violent crime and property crime down to historic lows this year - and year after year. Today we welcome 1,097......

The New York Times has an interesting piece today on the mass arrest of a group of teenagers, who were rounded up as they were heading to their friend's funeral, in an effort to quell gang violence. A collection of young men and women, the youngest thirteen, were on their way from Bushwick to Coney Island in Brooklyn, dressed up (or down) in t-shirts bearing the name of their slain friend Donnell McFarland, who......

The police made middle schoolers cry! The NY Times has a great article about the mother lode of electronic gadgets that the cellphone police seized during a visit to Middle School 54 on the Upper West Side. While the police were probably more interested in weapons, since public schools prohibits cellphones and other electronic devices, the NYPD came up big. The Police Department was there to carry out a random sweep for prohibited items,......

The NYPD decided not to appeal a judge's decision that the NYPD should declassify its surveillance documents from the 2004 RNC, so it has set up a special NYPD RNC Documents website with the documents. Of course, you have to scroll down to the very bottom for a zip file of the 600 pages of documents. And what's above the documents is the NYPD's rather thorough explanation/ defense justifying why it did such extensive......

The new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee says the NYPD thinks it's the NPD - the National Police Department. The Daily News reports that Democratic Mississippi representative Bennie Thompson is critical of the NYPD's tactics that stretch into other jurisdictions. He told the News, "While I understand that chasing down leads in other locales might help keep the city safe, I emphasized that the NYPD is not the FBI, that it does......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on Amboy Rd. on Staten Island, a shooting on Lexington Ave. in Brooklyn, and a water rescue in the area of the George Washington Bridge, near Manhattan's 176th St. The Italian boyfriend of actress Anne Hathaway is being sued by a business partner for misusing $1.3 million of a joint venture fund, spending it on things like private jet trips with his girlfriend and subsidizing a......