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 U.S. Attorney's office will be asking a grand jury to indict former police commissioner Bernard Kerik on tax evasion, corruption, and conspiracy charges. Kerik has reportedly made arrangements to surrender tomorrow, instead of being arrested by U.S. marshals. Kerik's dealings have also been questioned, even back when his friend Rudy Giuliani was mayor, but his past became a big story when President Bush nominated him for Secretary of Homeland Security in 2004, only for......

Yesterday morning's hostage standoff in the Bronx turned out to stem from an apparent love-triangle killing. Police had wanted to speak to Marlon Sanders, about a Monday night shooting in Queens. Jamal Leavy was fatally shot in South Jamaica, and police soon discovered that he and Sanders were both dating Shante Dalton, a city corrections officer. When police arrived at Dalton's Bronxdale apartment in their search for Sanders, she refused to let them in, prompting......

WABC 7 reports that someone has been holding hostages in a Bronx home since 4AM. The suspect is holding an uncertain number of hostages (WABC says there may be multiple hostages; Fox 5 says one) at 2445 Williamsbridge Road in the the Bronxdale section. One of the hostages may also be an off-duty corrections officer (the apartment is rented by a corrections officer). The suspect's relationship to the hostage and demands are unknown, but police......

A fire that erupted in a two-family Rosedale home yesterday morning claimed the lives of a Corrections Department captain and her two sons. The Corrections Dept. union said that the victims were Captain Renee Chong and her two young sons. The three-alarm fire broke out before 5AM. Neighbors tried to bang on Chongs' door, but the fire spread too quickly. One described the smoke as "toxic". Colleagues report that Chong was nearing 20 years of......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a water main break on Pacific St. in Brooklyn, an armed robbery on Jamaica Ave. in Queens, and a burn victim on West 165th St. in the Bronx. Spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy reportedly accomplished many feats during his life, but still died at his home in Queens, NY. A fight among members of a group of men, who were turned away from a Chelsea nightclub because they didn't meet......

Former police commissioner Bernard Kerik's misdeeds continue to plague Rudy Giuliani's Presidential ambitions, with news that the former Mayor knew that his one-time right hand man vouched for a mobbed-up construction company before appointing him police commissioner. Before Kerik was appointed commissioner, one of Giuliani's top aides was made aware of the fact that Kerik––while commissioner of the Corrections Dept.––met with mayoral aides in a Tribeca bar and defended Interstate Industrial Corp. of criminal wrongdoing,......

A recently settled lawsuit will likely result in fewer strip searches of prisoners at Rikers Island. The suit was filed on behalf of tens of thousands of New Yorkers jailed on misdemeanor charges. The Corrections Office settled a suit yesterday after being sued on behalf of thousands of inmates who were strip-searched at Rikers. The prisoners could collect $3,000 to $4,000 a piece as a result of the agreement. The suit was filed in reaction......

EVENTS: Both Open House NY and The New Yorker Festival are upon us. You can check out more of OHNY's event here, and The New Yorker Festival here. Some picks: The New Yorker Festival hosts a conversation with Errol Morris tonight. He'll be talking with staff writer Philip Gourevitch about Abu Ghraib, with clips shown from Standard Operating Procedure -- his new film is a study of the prison-abuse scandal. Friday // 8pm // Directors......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a gas leak on 70th Rd. and Austin St. in Queens, an aircraft emergency at JFK Airport in Queens, and a pedestrian struck on East 85th St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan. The New York State Music Fund awarded WFUV a grant of $500,000 to establish a second full-time radio station dedicated to airing more independent musicians and aimed primarily at music fans in their 20s and 30s. The......

Twenty-three-year-old police officer Russel Timoshenko died yesterday at King County Hospital, five days after being shot twice in the face during a Monday traffic stop in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Doctors took him off life support after finding he had no brain activity yesterday afternoon. KCH director of trauma service and surgical critical care, Dr. Robert Kurtz, was visibly upset as he reported Timoshenko's death. From Newsday:Kurtz, who choked up, said the case "affected us emotionally......

Police arrested one man but are still looking for two others involved with Monday's violent traffic stop in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. When police officers Russel Timoshenko and Herman Yan approached over a BMW SUV with stolen license plates, shots rang out from the car, injuring both officers. Twenty-nine-year-old Lee Woods was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault on a police officer and criminal possession of a weapon. The two other men being sought have......

Two separate initiatives were highlighted yesterday: one to crack down on New York slumlords and another to cut property taxes paid by New York property owners. The City Council passed a bill called the Safe Housing Act that targets landlords with multiple building code violations. It requires the Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development to target 200 buildings annually with repeated code violations and in need of emergency repairs and force their owners to make......

So do armed guards, barred doors, and locked cells. That's what the City is hoping anyway, as it floats plans to have developers build condos contiguous to an expanded Brooklyn House of Detention. Testing the limits of desirability of New York real estate, the Dept. of Corrections has been considering building retail space and restaurants on the first floor of the jail for the last year (Prison Tower Records? Lever Big House?). But with rents......

Jack Rhodes, who was arrested last week for allegedly beating up two elderly women in March, has been transfered to Rikers Island where corrections officials are trying to keep him safe. Rhodes is left in his own cell for 23 hours, except for an hour of exercise while a guard "shadows" him. According to the Daily News, a police sources says the private cell is because many prisoners "would like to take a pop at......

Unlike new neighbors of the partially decommissioned Brooklyn House of Detention, who seemed to have been caught flat-flooted at the prospect of the jail's re-opening and expansion, the residents of Hunts Point in the Bronx were organized in voicing their displeasure with the proposal to build a jail in their neighborhood. Demonstrators gathered in Hunts Point Friday, again protesting a proposed jail set to be built on an industrial site in the Bronx neighborhood. The......

Police officer Jacqueline Melendez Rivera was indicted on two charges related to the February 10 shooting of fellow cop Andrew Suarez. The shooter was Melendez Rivera's husband, Jose Rivera, who shot at Suarez and other undercover officers in an unmarked car while driving in Park Slope. (Suarez was shot in the arm.) Hours later, Melendez Rivera was found by police investigating the shooting, parking Rivera's SUV over a mile away from her Prospect Heights home.......

After the Brooklyn DA's office officially dropped charges against him, Francis Evelyn is speaking out. A 58-year-old janitor at P.S. 91 with no criminal history, Francis had been arrested on Monday after an 8-year-old accused him of molesting her in the school basement. He was arraigned and held on $150,000 bail, so Evelyn went to Rikers. But the next day, prosecutors asked for Francis to be released on his own recognizance because the girl's story......

The Port Authority has officially agreed to fund $1 billion of the Freedom Tower's construction Dr. Denton Sayer Cox, whose patients have included Andy Warhol and John Steinbeck, told police he was beaten and burned with a chemical at York and East 73rd Street but police believe he was the "victim of a gay pickup gone wrong" in his Upper East Side apartment. Either way, he's fighting for his life. A corrections officer gets......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an amputation on the Van Wyck, a jumper down in Coney Island, and an off-duty Corrections officer shot in Bed-Stuy. The Lakers may be in town, but Kobe can't play! Bryant is suspended for hitting Manu Ginobili on Sunday, but we think the Knicks will choke. For the first time in 12 years, the city is going to be giving out new Section-8 housing vouchers to non-emergency applicants. The......

The intersection of 94th Street and Ditmars Boulevard in Queens became the scene of a violent confrontation last night. An off-duty corrections officer shot another man during a struggle that stemmed from road rage. Officer Emilio Maldonado, who works at a correctional facility in Bedford Hills, honked his car's horn when the SUV in front of him didn't move during the green light. The SUV's driver and passenger, brothers Chris and Leroy Kenner, got out......

Sometimes Gothamist comes across a news story that makes our head hurt. Such is the story of the excess security doors the city bought six years ago, which were never installed, and now have been given to the State Department. The doors were purchased by the Corrections Department, under then-commissioner Bernie Kerik, in 2000 to prevent visitors from sneaking contraband and weapons into the city's jails. However, the inmate population began decreasing in the late-90s,......

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......

- Bloomberg is worried because the State has promised better pension plans than the City can deliver. - That's nice of him: The former nurse who admitted to killing 29 of his patients has given a kidney to the brother of a former girlfriend. - After four more cyclists are killed in the past ten days bike-owners are feeling deflated. - An off-duty corrections officer busted selling crack to to an undercover cop. Crack?......

- A 13-year-old boy drowned in Jamaica Bay yesterday on a day camp field trip. - Lakeside apartments available in Hell's Kitchen! Act now! - Oh, to be Young, Latino and Goth in the Bronx. Or to just be in the Bronx. - A 1974 cold-case murder looks like it has a suspect. The step-dad, natch. - An NYPD sergeant facing disciplinary action shot himself in Queens yesterday. - A 19-year-old cover girl died......

After former police commissioner Bernard Kerik's guilty plea in a corruption probe, the city has removed his name from the "Tombs" - the downtown Manhattan correction facilitated renamed after him in 2001. The Daily News had an editorial asking the Mayor to take down the sign for the "Bernard B. Kerik Complex" on Saturday, and at 1AM yesterday, maintenance workers did just that. The Daily News was credited with making officials aware of Kerik's questionable......

Mayor Bloomberg's momentary visit with President Bush yesterday at JFK Airport is being analyzed backwards and forwards. The Daily News says Bloomberg "blinked" in not chastising the President enough over the lack of Homeland Security funding for the city. The Mayor recounted his conversation for reporters:"I welcomed him to New York, took credit for the great weather... I did thank him for his efforts to make all homeland security moneys ... distributed based on......

MOVIES: Don't forget, the Bryant Park movies start tonight! The movie won't begin until sunset - which is about the same time the rain and thunder are scheduled to begin. Tonights features in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller, The Birds. Be an early bird (heh) and get there at 5 for a good spot on the lawn! 5pm // Bryant Park // Free ART: Like Sculpture? Like to hear people talk about it? Then attend MoMA's On......

- Stephen Colbert hosted the White House Correspondent Dinner last night. And ouch! Read about it here. Watch it here. - Wear a "Barbie is a lesbian" t-shirt to school, get sent home from said school, make a fuss, sue the city and two years later you too could get $30,000 bucks. - The Bronx Times names names of graf artists young and old. Even the names of kids who might not be. Needless......

Just when we were starting to forget about Peter 'the fake firefighter rapist' Braunstein, the New York Post brings him back. Er, well, talks to his 62-year-old former Bellevue roommate, a guy named William Allman. Honestly there isn't a shred of new verifiable information in the entire article, but we have to admit that we found ourselves unable to stop reading about how "Braunstein 'hounds' others into giving up their food so he can......