Photograph of protesters outside the Sean Bell shooting trial in Queens by Gary He/AP; the protesters are holding signs counting down the 50 shots fired Under intense scrutiny from the community and media, the trial of three police officers in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man started today. Detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnora face manslaughter charges while Detective Mark Cooper is charged with reckless endangerment in the 2006 death of Sean Bell,......

You may recall that the original Freedom Tower design had to be scrapped (because the NYPD thought it was too susceptible to attack) and redesigned with a concrete base. Now the Daily News' I-Team takes up concerns law enforcement officials have with "security weaknesses" in the new towers at World Trade Center. The three new towers have too much glass and are "positioned too closely to city streets, increasing their vulnerability to attack." Also,......

The Brooklyn resident whose name caused him $2.1 million of trouble is still being held at Rikers, but a judge lowered his bail from $1 million to $10,000. Benjamin Lovell, a Keyspan Energy salesman with a bank account of $400, was dubious when a Commerce bank teller told him he had a $5 million account. But he withdrew $2.1 million after bank officials insisted the money was his. Of course, what really happened was Commerce......

untitled photo of Williamsburg laundromat, by reverie103 at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: a car vs. building incident at the Nissan car dealership on Hylan Blvd. and Parkinson Ave. on Staten Island, a double shooting on East 91st St. in Brooklyn, and a homicide on 158th Ave. in Queens. Crime-fiction author Patricia Cornwell donated $1 million to the John Jay School of Criminal Justice, and then spent another $250,000 in preemptive explanation newspaper ads......

Entrance and Exit Only, by coifmo66 at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a serious trauma at East 16th St. and Moore Pl. in Brooklyn, a water search at Kosciusko Bridge in Brooklyn, and a bank robbery on Lexington Ave. in Manhattan, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who popularized transcendentalism in the West with the support of The Beatles, died yesterday at an undetermined age. Postmodern reality at its best: Silvercup Studios, where "Gossip Girl," is......

The orange bicycle DKNY.Com Guerilla marketing scheme, by Rollingrck at Flickr. DKNY is usurping a grassroots campaign to memorialize cyclists killed in New York City's traffic, with a guerrilla marketing campaign to push their product. Above is a picture of several orange-painted DKNY bikes, first widely noted at BikeBlog. DKNY, Donna Karan's more mid-priced clothing line, is behind the campaign. Its web site features ridiculously good looking people frolicking about lower Manhattan, sometimes on......

The hits keep coming for the NYPD. Yesterday, federal prosecutors accused a Brooklyn detective of drug trafficking. The indictment (you can read it here) claims Batista would leak law enforcement information to a cocaine ring that also engaged in violence. Another cop, Sergeant Henry Conde in internal affairs (!), was indicted for telling Batista that he was being probed. Batista, who worked out of the 90th Precinct in Brooklyn, pleaded "absolutely not guilty" and his......

A Bay Ridge pharmacist embroiled in a public steroid investigation appears to have killed himself. John Rossi was found last night in the office above the pharmacy, with a fatal gunshot wound to his head and a pistol in his hand. Bottles of Johnnie Walker whiskey, Valium, and Coca-Cola were on the desk in front of his body; another bullet slug was found in the office, causing a police source to tell the Daily News,......

Brooklyn Surrogate Court Judge Diana Johnson is the first African-American to be elected to a Surrogate Court judgeship in New York history. With only weeks on the bench, however, someone spray painted racist graffiti inside two separate elevators at the Downtown Brooklyn courthouse. One message read "Judge Diana Johnson is Dumb," and the other read "Judge Diana Johnson is a Dumb (n-word)." Dozens of lawmakers and judges held a rally to support Johnson in the......

Just a days before the Florida primary, someone gave the New York Times a 1998 NYPD memorandum advising Mayor Giuliani that the department felt locating the city's emergency command center in 7 World Trade Center was not a very good idea. The eight page memo was written by a panel of police experts with help from the Secret Service. Its conclusions were overruled by Giuliani and the command center was destroyed on September 11 as......

With Martin Tankleff's recent release (after 17 years behind bars) and the appointment of none other than New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo as a special prosecutor in the murder investigation, there's more attention paid to who may or may not have been responsible for the murder of Seymour Tankleff and his wife Arlene in 1988. At the time, prosecutors pegged the cold-blooded killing on their 17-year-old son Martin, claiming that the distraught......

One of the NJ prisoners who escaped from a Union County jail by chiseling through cement blocks (hiding their progress by taping posters over the growing hole) three weeks ago was captured last night. Thanks to a tip, police found Jose Espinosa in an apartment just a few blocks away from the jail. Espinosa and Otis Blunt somehow acquired wire and were able to use it to "scrape the mortar around two 8-inch-by-16-inch cinderblocks," which......

Someone must be out to get Anna O'Malley. She was horrified to discover that someone posted a fake ad on Craigslist claiming she was "a real hottie looking to earn extra cash to pay off Christmas debt." And it listed her phone number! The Daily News explains that O'Malley learned about the ad when she was "awakened last week to more than a dozen calls." Ugh, we can unfortunately imagine the calls. One of the......

The Dept. of Homeland Security is funding the installation of a number of anti-missile defense systems on commercial jets flying in and out of JFK Airport. The tests are the third stage of testing of a system that is already used by military aircraft. The defense system consists of equipment affixed to the bottom of the aircraft that electronically jams the heat-seeking component of shoulder filed missiles. The latter are referred to as man......

The city has been crowing about this year's low murder rate since last week, when officials announced it was likely to be under 500 murders. Currently, the murder rate is 492 as of Sunday night (we're not sure if that number includes the three men killed in Brooklyn); this year's murder rate would be the lowest since 1963, the first year with reliable data and a year that saw 548 killings. The NY Times examines......

Rudy Giuliani's good financial fortune derived from the formation of Giuliani Partners is leading to political misfortune, as yet another piece of lucrative business he conducted in the private sector has come back to haunt his candidacy. Recently, his involvement with Purdue Pharma--the producers of the painkiller OxyContin--has come under scrutiny. Giuliani is being accused of using his high profile in the wake of 9/11, his background as a federal prosecutor, and his personal reputation......

The prime suspect in the murder of an FDNY fire marshal – his wife – may have instructed her children to wear earplugs in the hours before the slaying. According to the Daily News, investigators found two earplugs in the bedroom Janet Mercereau shared with her kids (the marriage was on the rocks). If prosecutors prove that Mercereau had given the children earplugs to keep them from waking up during the shooting, it will mean......

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 Columbia grad student, Arun Wiita, and the New York Civil Liberties Union brought a lawsuit against the NYPD last Thursday. Over the summer, Wiita was photographing a subway station entrance and its surroundings at 207th Street and 10th Avenue as part of an ambitious 10-day photography project. He was detained by police, handcuffed and held for 30 minutes; now Wiita is "seeking compensatory damages and reimbursement of legal fees." He believes that his South......

It appears that Judith Nathan, the current Mrs. Giuliani, may have been enjoying taxpayer-funded car service provided by the police while her affair with former Mayor Giuliani was unknown. Giuliani's admitted that he gave his girlfriend a security detail once their relationship became public because of possible threats against her, but it appears that Nathan was enjoying New York's Finest as a taxi service months before anyone even knew the two were involved with each......

Let's go to the audiotape digital recording! A Bronx detective was indicted on perjury charges after claiming in court that he never interrogated a teen shooting suspect - only for the teen to reveal he recorded the interrogation. Back in December 2005, 17-year-old Erik Crespo was accused of shooting a man in a High Bridge apartment building. He was arrested and when Detective Christopher Perino interviewed him, he used an MP3 player to record their......

The south Jersey town of Vineland – or “shithole Vtown” as some locals call it – will host a massive three-day rock festival with camping this August. The Vineland Festival will be presented in a partnership between the company that resurrected Lollapalooza in Chicago and U.K. concert promoter Melvin Benn, who has managed the Reading Festival. No acts have been announced but that hasn’t stopped promoters from setting their price: a three-day pass, which......

A deal with an undercover operative quickly turned deadly yesterday for a man looking to sell a hand grenade in the Bronx. Federal agents and an NYPD detective were monitoring a conversation being held in a car yesterday between the grenade seller and operative. It was not expected the seller would have the grenade on him at the time, so when he produced it, agents rushed the scene in the interest of public safety. The......

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......

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......

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......

Over the weekend we pointed to a death at the Knitting Factory that the cops were deeming "suspicious." Yesterday it was announced that the man was Nicholas Phillips, an East Village resident. The Post reports:An East Village man who died of an apparent drug overdose at a Manhattan rock club has been identified, sources said yesterday. Nicholas Phillips, of East Ninth Street, was found unconscious in the bathroom of the Knitting Factory on Leonard Street......

The personal assistant accused of killing her boss, realtor Linda Stein, claims that the police forced her to confess. Natavia Lowery's father said, "She said [to detectives] she wanted to call her parents and her attorney, and [they] told her they called them already. They lied and coerced her." Lowery has been charged with second-degree murder. The police say that the 26-year-old Brooklyn resident confessed to killing the 62-year-old former punk rock manager on October......

After Brooklyn prosecutors decided to drop murder charges against ex-FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio, after the star witness's testimony was deemed questionable, the judge presiding over the case decided to scold the defendant. DeVecchio had been on trial for allegedly giving mob informant Gregory "The Grim Reaper" Scarpa information to kill other rival informants. Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach's four page ruling included turns of phrase like, What is undeniable was that in the......

We guess that we don't have a Golden Gate Bridge to complain about, but a lot of our out-of-towners are in the Big Apple to off themselves. The Daily News reports that a new study shows "more than one in 10 people who kill themselves in Manhattan are 'suicide tourists'" and they choose NYC landmarks to do so! Men are mostly to blame for seeking out better-known landmarks like bridges or historic landmarks to leap......