This morning, I headed down to Zuccotti Park, formerly known as Liberty Plaza to witness what I assumed would be a massive celebration of Occupy Wall Street’s two year anniversary. Only about 120 people showed up — at least 30% of them were journalists — and protesters who carried large bags or held signs on […]
After 11 years of waiting, the moment is finally approaching: Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s three-term reign comes to a close January 1, 2014. To celebrate, we’ve created HowLongUntilBloombergLeaves.com, a single-serving site that counts down the time–to the second–until El Bloombito says adios. Come through, watch as Bloomberg’s time in office drains out of a 17-oz soda […]
Last night, a crazy guy was running in the street near Port Authority and trying to get hit by cars, so he was confronted by NYPD officers at the corner of 8th Avenue and 42nd Street. He reportedly reached into his pocket, and pulled out his MetroCard and mimicked shooting police with it. Two officers […]
Last Friday, a woman was hit by a car riding her bike in Brooklyn, scraping her chin on the pavement. A friend posted about the incident in a post on Tumblr, describing the following altercation between the five feet tall bike rider and the driver. The driver rolled down his window and called her a, “Stupid […]
Michael Bloomberg’s epic quest to stave off any limits to the NYPD’s power continues. Yesterday, the mayor sued City Council over a recently-passed law that will make it easier for New Yorkers to file a lawsuit against the police department if they feel they were profiled or discriminated against. The bill is one half of […]
Elena Sava Adams, a 57-year-old Romanian-American woman living in Battery Park City, wanted to kill her husband. He wasn’t giving her enough money “to make ends meet,” apparently, and she wanted to collect on a little life insurance money, according to the NYPD. So she went to Brooklyn (less surveillance cameras there, she thought) and […]
Allen Moye, a 54-year-old, legally blind black man has filed the first stop-and-frisk-related lawsuit since the federal court decision that ruled the tactic unconstitutional. Moye alleges he was wrongly stopped while waiting for a friend in Harlem in 2010. “It was racial profiling, what they did,” he said. “It’s a different Jim Crow. They try […]
My Grandfather, a Roma who spoke four or five languages when he snuck into this country, once dove out the bathroom window to escape immigration officers who’d come to his door. He drove what he would later call an “embarrassing” amount of food up to General MaCarthur’s place when he was stationed in the Phillipines […]
Last year, New York Times photographer Robert Stolarik was arrested and beaten by NYPD officer Michael Ackermann after Stolarik took photos of a teenage girl being arrested in the Bronx. At the time, Ackermann claimed that Stolarik was obstructing his arrest by repeatedly setting off his camera’s flash, and that he had repeatedly and lawfully instructed the […]
Great news: the City Council voted today to override Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vetoes on two bills known collectively as the Community Safety Act. The bills will create an independent Inspector General’s office to oversee the NYPD, make it illegal for cops profile citizens, based on a slew of factors including sexual orientation and housing status, […]
