Hundreds of police officers headed to Brooklyn's criminal court for the arraignment of Dexter Bostic and Robert Ellis, suspected of shooting two Brooklyn police officers who had pulled over their stolen SUV during an early Monday morning traffic stop. Bostic and Ellis, who had been extradited from Pennsylvania on Thursday, were held without bail. Neither man spoke during the arraignment, which formally charged them each with "two counts of attempted murder, two counts of......

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......

The police department has launched a citywide dragnet to find suspects who fired at two police officers during a Brooklyn traffic stop early yesterday morning. 23-year-old police officer Russel Timoshenko was shot twice in the head while 26-year-old police officer Herman Yan was shot in the arm and chest. A surveillance video showed that the cops were shot before they had reached the driver and passengers in the car. The Daily News' Michael Daly......

NY State lawmakers are working on legislation that would guarantee rent subsidies that keep Brooklyn public housing project Starrett City affordable, no matter who owns it in the future. Real estate group Clipper Equities has been rebuffed twice in efforts to buy Starrett City, because it was expected the company would attempt to remove long-time residents and charge higher rents. While the legislation is being crafted in Albany in the State Assembly, U.S. Senator from......

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has blocked the billion dollar sale of Starrett City. A group of investors had bid $1.3 billion for the federally subsidized 46 apartment building complex in Brooklyn, but two weeks ago, NY State Attorney General asked HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson to stop the sale. The lead investor, David Bistricer, has had a "sordid" real estate history in New York City. Secretary Jackson said that the group of......

The country's largest federally subsidized housing development was sold today for $1.3 billion. Berkshire LLC bought Starrett City, and Starrett City Associates say the money would be deposited today. Residents of the complex, which has over 5800 apartments over 140 acres, and community leaders recently had meetings to protest the sale, the fear being the new owners will eliminate the low- and middle-income housing. And even though there's potential for new development (new luxury......

Yesterday was the NY Road Runners Club's 30th Annual Empire State Building Run-up. And, yes, the runners were wearing shorts and T-shirts when they emerged on the skyscraper's roof. Thomas Dold (above, left) of Germany won the men's race in 10 minutes and 25 seconds while Suvy Walsham (above, right) of Singapore (and Australia, apparently) won the women's in 13 minutes 12 seconds. (American Cindy Moll-Harris finished second, at 13:24.) The Empire State Building's......

The Reverend Al Sharpton announced the "shopping for justice" protest march he's been talking about since the shooting of Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman, and Trent Benefield by the police."Many will be shopping for trinkets and toys. We will be shopping for justice and making a moral appeal to this city and this nation. The fact that we are going on probably the most visible street in the world tomorrow, you don't have to talk......

Yesterday, Governor Pataki took a few former governors on a tour of the World Trade Center, because if there's any place that needs more politicians, it's Ground Zero. The ex-governors included Massachusetts' Bill Weld, Tennesse's Don Sundquist, South Carolina's David Beasley and Iowa's Terry Brandstand. Well, that doesn't smell like a "before I leave office, let's invite potential allies in a presidential run" stunt at all! Pataki's spokesman said that the group would be......

Yesterday, hundreds of people gathered for two different marches in Queens to protest the police shooting of Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield and police conduct in the community overall. A chapter of the NAACP organized a march of hundreds of people from Jamaica Avenue and 168th Street to where the shooting took place, at Liverpool and 94th Avenue. The other march was organized by the New Black Panther Party, which started at......

The fiancee of Sean Bell officially changed her surname to "Bell". Nicole Paultre was supposed to marry Bell on November 25, but Bell was killed when police opened fire on him and two friends after his bachelor party. Paultre revealed that a civil court judge signed an order for Paultre to change her name to Nicole Paultre Bell in an exclusive interview with Essence.com. ESSENCE: How does it feel to suddenly become the face......

Yesterday afternoon, Sean Bell was laid to rest in Nassau Knolls Cemetery in Port Washington, Long Island. Bell was killed last weekend in a barrage of police bullets outside a Queens club where he had been celebrating his bachelor party. About 200 mourners were present for the burial; Bell's fiancee and two daughters were present, and his older brother sobbed, "My baby brother!" But in Queens, near the Kalua Lounge in Jamaica, hundreds of......

Ever since the Saturday police shooting outside a Queens club that killed one man and injured two others, there has been talk of a fourth man in the group. Police have claimed that the undercover officers shot at them because they feared the men were armed, but no weapons were found on the men or in their car. The officers on the scene have insisted a fourth man in a beige jacket was near......

Today, the Reverend Al Sharpton and and the Reverend Jesse Jackson spoke to the press, alongside family members and the fiancee of Sean Bell, who was killed during a Saturday morning police shooting. At a memorial near the club where the shooting occurred, Sharpton said, "We come this morning with the family in their hour of grief. We're all family now. Not a black family, not a white family, not a Latino family, a......

Aside from the stations where you must use an elevator to get the trains, it always seems like most of the subway station elevators Gothamist sees are out of order. And the AP had an enlightening article about the sorry state of subway elevators when a reporter accompanied a Disabled Riders Association coordinator underground. When Michael Harris powered his motorized wheelchair off the No. 5 subway train in Brooklyn last week, he encountered a......

On what would have been his wedding day, Sean Bell's friends and family, as well as other activists, politicians, and members of the community, held a vigil/protest/rally for Bell, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield. Bell was killed during a confrontation with the police after his bachelor party at the Queens strip club Kalua Lounge on Saturday morning. Guzman and Benefield were injured and remain in the hospital. The police fired 50 shots in less......

There are more questions than answers today as the police investigate an encounter three men had with the police in Queens early Saturday morning. The police ended up shooting at the men's car, killing a man on the day of his wedding and wounding his two friends. The men were not armed. The three men, Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman, and Trent Benefield, had just left the Kalua Lounge, a strip club, for Bell's bachelor......

With the surprise discovery of human remains in a manhole at Ground Zero on Thursday, the city said they would start a new search for remains of September 11 victims. The contractor who realized that the debris found on Thursday was human remains spoke to the Post:"By the grace of God, I found the bones. I looked at what looked like bones, but it was muddy stuff. It might have been lumber. It turned......

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/story/443517p-373548c.html...

Gothamist is getting reports from all over that the anti-war protest currently going on down Broadway is a shockingly large one. Though it is only supposed to go from Union Square down Broadway to Worth Street, we're hearing reports of protesters backing up all the way to Madison Square! Anybody got any photos? Reports? Etc.? Put 'em in the comments and we'll update this post as more info becomes available (i.e. when the rally......