For some unknown reason, many Europeans are smitten with the NYPD. There are more than a few replica NYPD cars over the pond (ranging from quite accurate to comically inaccurate) some available for rental. So it is no surprise to find on flickr a Belgian named Marc who makes incredibly accurate HO scale models of NYPD and FDNY vehicles and photographs them on a miniature version of New York City streets complete with a precinct......

A number of police unions representing different segments of the NYPD filed a joint complaint against the City with the Board of Collective Bargaining, saying that Mayor Bloomberg's effort to cut the number of park-anywhere-you-feel-like placards is an economic hardship and a violation of state labor laws. The suit does acknowledge that there is nothing in union contracts regarding the issuance of placards, however. One of Bloomberg's anti-congestion initiatives has been to reduce the vast......

Photo of vintage NYPD vehicles at last year's event by author This weekend the New York City Police Museum will be holding its eighth annual vintage police car show (Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.). It won’t just be cars from the history of the NYPD on display, but vehicles from police agencies from all over, along with cars you may have seen on television or movies. In past years Car 54,......

Police broke up an alleged dogfighting operation in the Tremont section of the Bronx last night, arresting seven men on charges of gambling and animal cruelty. 17 dogs were also removed from the building on 179th St. and they all showed signs of abuse. The bust comes approximately eight months after an investigation by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) alleged that NYC was practically the dogfighting capital of the world. That report......

Following the release of the Rand Corp. report commissioned by the NYPD, much attention has been given to Tasers, the ballistic electrode-firing weapons meant as a less violent alternative than gunfire when dealing with life-threatening situations. Immediately, there are concerns the police will use Tasers as compliance tools. Just this past week, a Brooklyn man died after being shot with a Taser by a Long Island cop while trying to swallow a bag of cocaine.......

A drug law reform activist was arrested in the West Village on Thursday night for trying to stop police officers from arresting two teens who were smoking pot outside his house. The Post reports that Randy Credico, who heads the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, allegedly yelled, "You guys are really solving murders out here? Why don't you guys get a life! F--- you all! You can't tell me what to do!" The......

Photo courtesy Clinton Hill Blog. It’s a common complaint from cyclists that the NYPD doesn’t seem too interested in ticketing the myriad drivers who use the city’s bike lanes as a double-parking lot. (My Bike Lane is dedicated to the phenomenon.) And it’s not uncommon to see a cop car idling in a bike lane while the officer does a little shopping. But this is getting ridiculous: A Clinton Hill blog reader reports that the......

The war between photographers and police wages on, with the latest battleground being Coney Island. The Village Voice reports that Simon Lund, a Manhattan commercial photographer with a habit of hitting Coney 10 to 20 times each summer for personal photographic expeditions, was busted by the NYPD. The thing is, he didn't do anything illegal. The paper talked to Todd Maisel, vice president of the New York Press Photographers Association and a Daily News photographer,......

Just as the NYPD announced that it would distribute more Tasers as a non-lethal alternative to firearms, a Brooklyn man was killed by a Long Island police officer when he was Tasered. Suffolk County police said that the 26-year-old Tony Bradway died after being shocked twice by an officer's Taser, as the deceased was attempting to swallow a bag of cocaine. According to the police, the Southampton police were at a house for another matter......

The RAND Corporation issued the findings of a report that commissioned by the NYPD in the wake of the Sean Bell shooting. Among the recommendations were that the NYPD should incorporate more realistic scenarios into its firearm training and increase the number of non-lethal weapons carried by personnel on the street. The report, started in January 2007, focuses on preventing incidents similar to the Bell shooting, where police officers fired 50 times. RAND identified what......

The New York Police Department intends to begin arming sergeants with Taser stun guns, which shoot a pair of electrodes at an intended target and disburses a disabling electric charge. The expressed purpose of the move is to try to prevent life-ending incidents where police are forced to shoot non-compliant citizens with bullets. Tasers have been available to NYPD sergeants since 1984, but their bulky design required that the non-lethal weapons be stored in the......

In March, simultaneous installations in two Chelsea galleries – one called The Assassination of Barack Obama, the other The Assassination of Hillary Clinton – were canceled “due to extreme legal pressures,” according to LVHRD. This morning the artist, Yazmany Arboleda, again attempted to hang his work in an empty storefront across from the New York Times building and got as far as putting up the name of the exhibit in the window before the......

The legal fortunes of Darryl Barnes have waxed and waned over the many years since he was shot by a police officer on a Bronx street--a wound that left him paralyzed--but finally ended for good this week. Darryl Barnes was shot in 1988 by NYPD Officer Franz Jerome, who apparently saw Mr. Barnes running down the street carrying a Tec-9 assault pistol. When Jerome ordered Barnes to stop, Barnes shot at the policeman, who returned......

An attempted mugging proved fatal for the attacker late yesterday evening, as a man followed a woman and her three-year-old child into their building shortly before midnight Saturday. The mugger apparently did not know that the pair's husband and father was a NYPD officer who was off-duty at the time. When the man attacked the woman and brandished a gun after they get off the elevator on the 3rd floor, the mother screamed. Her husband......

Last night, the Reverend Al Sharpton participated in the monthly Critical Mass rally and bike ride. In his introduction of Sharpton, civil rights lawyer Wylie Stecklow noted Sharpton's relentless fight for civil rights and against unfair police practices. Stecklow also pointed out the Sharpton-led May 7 civil disobedience event was much more peaceful and was actually civil, compared to what many Critical Mass riders have experienced (the police didn't use orange fences to contain......

A gang of five trailed a pair of off-duty cops in Washington Heights around midnight last night and jumped them in an attempted robbery that did not go well. Things went sideways for the assailants almost immediately when one of them initiated the attack by picking up a wooden folding chair from the trash and hitting one of the officers on the back of the head with it. The approach has been known to work......

Yesterday, police scoured Soho for clues after a 19-year-old was sexually assaulted in her apartment building on Prince Street near Sullivan. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirmed the victim was followed home from the subway station by the attacker: "She was followed by an individual who asked her for a cigarette. She did give him a cigarette. She went into her residence; he followed her upstairs. He then accosted her, dragged her downstairs, and sexually......

An off-duty police killed one of two men who attacked the desk clerk of a luxury building in Chinatown late last night. Detective Martin Carrano, 36, was also stabbed in the neck and back; his injuries, as were the desk clerk's, were non-life-threatening...

The police have increased their presence in Crown Heights after two incidents that have upset the black and Jewish communities and caused unrest between them. And many are recalling the summer of 1991, when the Crown Heights riots shook the city. Last month, a 20-year-old black man, Andrew Charles, the son of a police officer, was attacked by a group of white men believed to be part of the Hasidic anti-crime patrol, Crown Heights Shmira.......

A man suspected of a series of subway platform purse snatchings was arrested and charged yesterday. Mark McIntosh was "led away handcuffed by police near Union Square" and he offered these words to the public--and his six victims, "I'm sorry for what I did. I apologize, deeply." According to police, MacIntoch was targeting women waiting for morning subways to feed his drug habit. He would grab their purses and then run into the subway tunnels......

Though acquitted of criminal charges in a bench trial last month, the three detectives involved in the fatal 2006 shooting of Sean Bell will face police department disciplinary charges. Four other officers involved with the shooting, supervising the undercover operation and working on the crime scene were also charged. Detectives Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora and Marc Cooper are charged with “discharging their firearms outside of department guidelines." Isnora, who was working undercover, is also charged......

The police believe the same man who has robbed four female subway commuters last week stole the purse of another woman yesterday morning. A 24-year-old woman had been waiting on the Rector Street subway platform when, according to WABC 7, "the suspect grabbed her purse just before 10 a.m." She was knocked down and the suspect ran into the subway tracks, threw the purse on the ground after taking the cash, and ran into......

Now that the NYPD got an almost 10% retroactive pay hike, the firefighters are looking for a similar boost. The Uniformed Firefighters Association want to revisit the raises for the years 2004-2006 where their annual raises were 3.15% or less. The UFA wants a "comparable wage increase" and UFA president Steve Cassidy said of the NYPD's pay increase, "We knew that the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association was going to fight and we wished them well. They......

Police explained how they arrested 22-year-old Jamal Winter in the murder of a Windsor Terrace dry cleaner. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters:"Investigators found his fingerprint in the store. They went to question him, he wasn't home. They observed the car, the woman's car, the victim's car, parked in the neighborhood. He had changed the plate. So they waited for him and when he approached the car, they spoke to him, talked to him. He......

After concerns about low recruitment numbers due to low starting pay, the NYPD received a 9.7% salary hike from a state arbitration panel. Rookies, whose starting salaries was cut to $25,100, will now get $35,881. Public Employment Relations Board voted to give all cops "compounded raises totaling 9.73 percent over the two years of an expired contract that ran from Aug. 1, 2004, to July 31, 2006." Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, "While we wish......

Photograph by catelinp on Flick The raccoon seen in a tree at East 88th Street and 1st Avenue ultimately died after the police tried to capture it. The Post reports the cops "bungled" the raccoon rescue operation, firing tranquilizer darts "deep in its body." Animal Control said the animal was euthanized because it would have been "difficult, if not impossible, to remove them." But some residents told the Post the police were joking about......

Yesterday, the Daily News reported that one police officer was stripped of his badge and gun "for ordering the NYPD's highest-ranking uniformed black officer out of his auto while the three-star chief was off-duty and parked in Queens." Naturally, the incident has sparked outrage from both sides. Two plainclothes cops, both white, approached a parked police-issued SUV in Corona and asked the driver to roll down the tinted windows. Chief Douglas Zeigler, who is in......

The NY Times looks at NYPD firearms use between 1996 and 2006, finding that though cops are using their guns less these days, "when they do fire, even at an armed suspect, there is often no one returning fire at the officers. Officers hit their targets roughly 34 percent of the time." The NYPD only recently released the information, which the New York Civil Liberties Union says "raises serious questions about police shooting practices and......

The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit accusing the city and NYPD of racial profiling on behalf of a NY Post reporter who was "stopped, arrested and jailed without justification" last November. Leonardo Blair told his story in the Post late last year. Blair, a Jamaican immigrant who graduated from Columbia Journalism School in May 2007 and was living with his aunt and uncle in the Bronx, had just parked his car......

Photograph of protesters in Harlem on April 26, 2008 by urbanblitz on Flickr Today at 3 p.m., six pray-ins are planned around Manhattan and Brooklyn to protest the Sean Bell shooting verdict. The Reverend Al Sharpton is leading the events and has said he and other participants are willing to be arrested to make a point about the acquittals of the three police detectives who helped fire a total of 50 shots at the......