Emmy Award-winning Fox 5 reporter Charles Leaf is being held on $250,000 in the Bergen County Jail on charges of aggravated sexual assault of a minor. Cliffview Pilot reports that the Bergen County Prosecutor's office "formally accused [him] of digitally penetrating a minor and masturbating in front of the youngster several times in recent weeks." more ›

Graffiti artist Cope2, whose given name is Fernando Carlo, was arrested earlier this week for tagging a train at the 207th Street NYC Transit yard in the Bronx . According to the Daily News, "Police said Carlo, 41, spray-painted a train Sept. 11, 2009, using black, blue, purple and pink. Cops said he wasn't busted until this week, because they were waiting for him to return from abroad." more ›

A day after the season 2 premiere of Jersey Shore, the show's very own Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi has been arrested in Seaside Heights, New Jersey! Law enforcement sources have told TMZ that the Seaside Heights PD busted Snooki about an hour ago for disorderly conduct, but at the moment there are no further details. Earlier in the day she was spotted funneling sodas at the beach, and sources say she's been doing body shots at the local bar—but that's all pretty standard boardwalk hijinks, no? She's currently in police custody, and we'll keep a watchful eye on her Twitter (which she last updated two hours ago). Total coverage! more ›

Since the man who allegedly stabbed two men to death on the No. 2 train last week reportedly wielded a kitchen knife, it appears that the NYPD may be stepping up enforcement on anything with a sharp edge. Nate Appleman, the chef at Keith McNally's trendy new Bowery pizza resturant Pulino's, was arrested Wednesday afternoon in the East Village and charged with weapons possession. Cops approached Appleman because they spotted a chain running from his belt into a pocket. What they found inside may not shock you. more ›

An off-duty court officer was arrested around 10 p.m. on St. Patrick's Day after pulling a Don Knotts routine outside FBI headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza. A civilian Federal Plaza guard, Rashed Bakth, says Michael Armstrong, 42, fired off his Glock 9mm semi while shooting the breeze with a friend. Bakth tells the Post, "I told him to stop; he ignored me, and kept talking to his friend, saying, 'Sorry I misfired.' I told him... to stop. He kept being arrogant and repeating the same line. I approached him and put his gun in my possession." Why can't everyone keep it safe and just drink Shamrock Shakes on St. Patty's Day? (Oh, right.) more ›

Police have arrested a 20-year-old found with a ceremonial chalice from St. Helen’s church in Queens. Theodore Kurplewski was picked up at his home, just a few blocks from the holy house, and charged with burglary, possession of stolen property, and criminal mischief, reports the Post. A month ago two chalices—together worth $11,000—went missing from the church. One, worth $10,000 has now been recovered. Rev. Robert Keighron noted that the thief was unlikely to get much for the gold cup since his name was carved in the bottom of it. “The value to [the robbers], I don’t understand,” he told the Queens Courier. “It would seem very hard to sell.” more ›

Ladies, pay no attention to this unflattering mugshot. (The lighting makes his neck look fat!) 57-year-old Solomon Nasser is quite the catch: He is a multi-millionaire with a private jet, he graduated with a PhD from MIT at age 22, he was a former CIA agent and advisor to President Bush, as well as a Navy admiral and an inventor with 80 patents. And look at that lush head of hair! Some lucky young lady's going to snatch him up any second unless you act now and help him out of his messy divorce. He just needs $125,000 or so. Any takers? more ›

Poster Boy, real name Henry Matyjewicz, is up to his old tricks again. According to the NY Post, while he has been making good on his community service after pleading guilty to defacing subway ads—he's started up at his old tricks again! more ›

A Rockaway Park mom was so furious that her 3-year-old had soiled himself that she held him in scalding water for several minutes, burning the child so badly his skin began falling off his body, Queens DA Richard Brown alleges. Regina Cooper, 30, "got upset" when she came home yesterday and was told that her son, Barkim Owens, had soiled his pull-ups. According to the DA, she "cursed at her son, stripped him of his clothing and placed him in the bathtub without testing the temperature of the water. She allegedly held him submerged in the water for several minutes while the child screamed, cried and pleaded with his mother to take him out." more ›

A disabled Vietnam veteran who defied the city Parks Department by setting up a hot dog stand on prime real estate outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art was carted off in handcuffs yesterday. Dan Rossi, 69, was charged with obstructing traffic and disorderly conduct after he refused to relocate his stand during an enforcement sweep. The area outside the Met has been a lucrative location for the Parks Department, which leased the space to one vendor for $642,000 a year. more ›

Richie Notar, the co-owner of acclaimed sushi chain Nobu, took a pill and drank a glass of wine before his Monday night red-eye flight from LA to New York. Then he was "out for the count"—at least, from his point of view. But before the flight was over, he'd be trying to bite his way through a pair of flex cuffs. One witness from the flight gave this account:

more ›

The son of a Harlem landlord is accused scamming potential buyers by trying to sell a building he did not own. The commercial property, located on a triangular lot just north of Central Park at 21-41 Lenox Avenue, was entirely owned by another man. But alleged grifter Henry Vargas told buyers the man, Manuel Duran Jr., was just an elderly farmer from the Dominican Republic whose share was only 10 percent. more ›

The second man accused of beating an openly gay man in Queens Friday morning was been returned to NYC last night, after being arrested in Norfolk, Virginia, late Tuesday. But the sister of suspect Daniel Rodriguez, 21, insists her brother did not commit a hate crime—because he has gay relatives and even once had a homosexual roommate. Christina Rodriguez tells the Daily News, "This wasn't a hate crime. If he's guilty of anything, he'll man up to it." Rodriguez's brother Eddie also vouched for him. more ›

The NYPD cop facing up to 15 years in prison for allegedly flashing his gun at rowdy Rangers fans on the LIRR is no longer talking to the press, after saying way too much to a local news crew. But the Nassau district attorney's office is talking, and tells Newsday, "The allegation is that he was not acting in any legal law enforcement capacity, and he allegedly used his weapon to menace the passengers, so it doesn't matter that he's licensed or a trained professional." But surely the jury will take into account that Officer David Hendrick's alleged targets were Rangers fans from Long Island? more ›

An off-duty NYPD officer was arrested Sunday night after waving his gun at a group of rowdy, belligerent Rangers fans. For some reason, that's a crime, and Officer David Hendrick, a 16-year veteran assigned to the Manhattan Task Force, faces a felony charge of criminal possession of a weapon and a lesser charge of menacing. MTA cops stopped the Ronkonkoma-bound train in Mineola after several frightened passengers called 911 to report that a man had brandished a gun. more ›

After a two year investigation, the Manhattan DA has indicted 29 people accused of connections with the Lucchese crime family, and six of them worked as inspectors for the city Department of Buildings. Asked how the mobsters were able to rise to the level of supervisory positions in the department, DA Robert Morgenthau told reporters, "I’ll leave that for you to figure out...They had developed a small beachfront into this agency... This two-year joint investigation reminds us that the threat of traditional organized crime is not a thing of the past." more ›

Yesterday police arrested a special education teacher for the Bronx School Of Science Inquiry and Investigation at M.S. 331, charging him with rape and sexual misconduct. Teacher Bill Agosto, 26, is charged with third degree rape and sexual misconduct for allegedly carrying on a year-long sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl, who was not a student at M.S. 331. Police sources tell the Daily News the relationship was consensual, and resulted in the girl getting pregnant. The affair allegedly began when he worked at a different school as a track coach. more ›

Threatening to kill people like President Obama and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly isn't what made Crank Yankers a hit. On Sunday afternoon, police arrested 18-year-old Bronx teen Jonathan Avalos for calling 911 five times that morning and making the threats. Police sources tell the Daily News he's undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, because standing outside an Obama event with a gun is one thing, but crank calls will not be tolerated.
more ›

Oh no, man! According to witnesses, this morning the NYPD detained several volunteers working with the Yes Men to distribute the hoax edition of the New York Post. Photographer Jason Nicholas was at the scene outside News Corp., the Post headquarters, when he observed cops detaining three volunteers who had been handing out copies. more ›

In an indictment unsealed yesterday, Bronx cop Marc Rios, a 12-year-veteran, is accused of assaulting a man outside a Kingsbridge nightclub around 4:20 a.m. on March 30th. Assistant DA James Cudden says the "unprovoked incident" happened after Rios's squad car almost hit clubgoer John Roperto, who had just exited the El Aguila nightclub. Roperto angrily hit the hood of the car, and Rios got out and cracked Roperto in the face with his nightstick—breaking the man's cheekbone and the baton. Rios then drove off, but when his Sergeant informed him about a 911 call to the location, he allegedly quipped, "That must be my bag of shit." Rios faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted; his lawyer tells the Post he acted in self-defense because Roperto, who was "quite likely... highly intoxicated," disobeyed an order to stop and approached Rios with his hands hidden beneath a jacket. Rios's lawyer also points out that Roperto got off easy, because "perhaps an inexperienced officer might've pulled out his gun and shot him." more ›

The man whom cops allegedly sodomized in a Brooklyn subway station last October says police are still on his tail. 24-year-old Michael Mineo claims he was innocently relaxing on a bench in a Canarsie playground Monday night when two squad cars arrived and arrested him. "I wasn't doing nothing," Mineo tells the Daily News. "I was just sitting on the park bench talking to a friend. They knew who I was. Of course they did." Mineo is suing the city for $220 million over the alleged sodomy, and three officers are under indictment. But the cops who arrested Mineo Monday are from a different precinct, and police spokesman Paul Brown insists that they only arrested Mineo after he refused to leave and they discovered a warrant for his arrest. Mineo's lawyer Stephen Jackson says the warrant popped because Mineo mixed up the dates on a court appearance last week and failed to certify completion of community service for a prior assault arrest. Jackson agrees that cops are targeting Mineo, telling the News, "Of course they knew who he was. I think two squad cars shows premeditation." more ›

The future used to be in plastics, but now it's cardboard. While you were in some office hustling to make an honest buck, a team of freewheeling thieves were raking in $1,000 a night intercepting cardboard left out for recycling... and recycling it themselves. Apparently, there's big money in those brown boxes, and now we're really kicking ourselves for not hoarding more. Yesterday Queens District Attorney Richard Brown announced the arrest of eight men involved in the recycling ring; according to Brown they worked in two-man teams, stealing 1-ton bales of cardboard that companies had left out for private carters. That's unlawful, and the city has been trying to crack down on perpetrators for years. Speaking to reporters, Brown revealed that "for the price of renting a box van, each team could net close to $1,000 a night by bringing the stolen cardboard to a recyclable transfer station," Brown said. The value of recyclables is soaring these days, and cardboard's risen as high as $75 per ton! In June, an East Side grocery store manager was held-up at knife point for his cardboard, and cops later busted the thieves in a truck loaded with 37 bundles worth $5,550 when sold to recycling centers. more ›

A 15-year-old Brooklyn boy was arrested yesterday after accidentally shooting himself in the penis. The Post's stupid headline is, "So much for packing a, um, rod," and there are going to be plenty of bad jokes about going off half-cocked in the comments, but we can't help but pity the kid. Khamir Grant told cops he was walking home from Amersfort Park in East Flatbush around 1:30 a.m. Sunday with a gun in his waistband when the piece began to slip into his pants. When Grant grabbed for it, he accidentally pulled the trigger, firing a bullet "right through his penis," in the Post's words. Grant staggered home, told his mother what happened, and they took a livery car to Kings County Hospital, where Grant was released after treatment and then arrested. He's charged with reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon—the same charges levied against Plaxico Burress, who last year shot himself in a nightclub under similar circumstances, albeit with less catastrophic results. more ›

On the evening of August 5th, Long Island resident Lara Tepper was riding the train from Hicksville to Manhattan to meet friends for dinner. But her plans were seriously derailed after an LIRR conductor accused her of using a counterfeit ticket. Tepper says she purchased the 10-trip ticket for $66 in July, and had already used it four times, but when the conductor came to punch her ticket, "She looked at it, felt it for a couple of minutes, and said it's fake." That's because the ticket was missing the MTA logo hologram "Watch the gap" warning. more ›

Earlier this morning a 50-year-old Staten Island woman sideswiped four parked cars on her way home from the Dugout Pub on Staten Island. According to the Staten Island Advance, the driver, Dorothy Scrimenti, made it about a half-mile from the bar in her Mercury Mountaineer before crashing to a halt around 2 a.m. Police say she had almost four times the legal amount of booze in her system when she was arrested—that would be .292 percent , more than three-and-a-half times the .08 percent legal limit. Scrimenti also had bloodshot, watery eyes; a "belligerent attitude"; and a hope that the arresting officers were complete morons, because she told them she had only consumed one Maui Wowie. The Maui Wowie cocktail is a mixture of coconut rum, melon liqueur and, often, other liqueurs, as well as pineapple juice and orange juice. It's also, apparently, a particularly potent strain of cannabis which has been immortalized in song by recording artist Kid Cudi. ("Make ya feel great, you forget you in the states, might relocate/So you can smoke all the Maui Wowie you can take.") So maybe that's what Scrimenti actually "consumed" at the bar? We're on our way to the Dugout Pub to investigate. more ›

A Mister Softee ice cream truck driver on Long Island was arrested Saturday after undercover narcotics officers saw him park his truck outside a drug dealer's house they had under surveillance. Police say Kenneth Leiton, 22, rolled up to the home around 4 p.m. and entered the house to conduct a drug deal. He then returned to the truck, turned the music back on, and continued along his route. According to the Post, the cops soon "stopped him cold" and found several small bags of coke and a bag of pot hidden in the sprinkles. He's charged with numerous counts of possession of a controlled substance and with endangering the welfare of a child. Also arrested was Randall Surmanek, 23, who was riding in the truck with Leiton, and two individuals at the drug house. Police tell Newsday Leiton was not the truck owner, but it's still another black eye for Mister Softee—earlier this summer a Softee franchisee was accused of threatening to beat a Kool Man driver for invading "his" turf in Queens. And don't even get us started on the jingle wars. more ›

Remember Joshua Walter, the teen fashion model from Queens who made headlines last fall after his 37-year-old lover, a former teacher, sued the city for firing her over their affair? He's back in the news, and if you recall the way he dealt with tabloid reporters outside his house in November— "You want to see assault? Turn that thing off!"—you won't be too surprised by the latest turn of events. Walter, now 20 and a dad, was arrested late Wednesday night with three others and charged with robbing 15 gas stations and delis in Queens and Greenpoint. According to the Post, they all confessed. The spree began June 14th and ended on Sunday at a Dunkin' Donuts on Horace Harding Expressway, where Walter allegedly pistol-whipped one of the victims. Police spotted the crew around 1:30 a.m. Thursday in a maroon Chevy Astro van matching the description of the getaway car; after being pulled over the young men ran but were quickly apprehended, and a .380-caliber automatic handgun was found in the van. Approached by the Daily News outside her Queens home, Walter's poor mother shouted, "I got something to say: Leave my family alone!" more ›

Undercover cops have nabbed another would-be pedophile who thought he was meeting a minor for a sexual rendezvous. This time the alleged perv is an executive for the Gristedes supermarket chain, 59-year-old Michael Seltzer. Investigators say Seltzer, the chain's treasurer, had been exchanging salacious online messages with the "teen" for about a year and was finally supposed to meet her for the first time on Tuesday for a sexual encounter in Douglaston. But the 14-year-old girl didn't actually exist, and Seltzer, using the irresistible screen name LOVE775419, had been communicating with undercover cops the entire time. He was arrested when he approached an undercover female officer, and police have seized computers at his home and at Gristedes' Manhattan headquarters. Seltzer is being charged with attempted rape and could face up to four years in prison, the Daily News reports. And back in 1999, Seltzer was arrested for attempting to bribe a tax warrant investigator in return for eliminating nearly $200,000 in outstanding City and State taxes owed by the supermarket chain. more ›

Looks like they're going to need a cell with Kryptonite bars. After arresting a Bronx man dressed as Superman in Times Square last week, the very same Man of Steel was back on the streets last night, and cops quickly collared him in Columbus Circle. And once again, it's not exactly clear what Maksim Katsnelson did to initiate the arrest (police say he was playing in traffic) but after watching him squirm and shriek like a stuck pig in the videos below, you can see why he was charged with resisting arrest. A freelance photographer who snapped a great shot of Superman leaving court today with his mother and father tells City Room that during his court appearance, Katsnelson "was generally presenting himself as a civil rights-minded humanist, and he does these things to protest authoritarianism." more ›

At long last, Gotham's police force has taken action to save the city from two reckless vigilante "superheroes" who have been terrorizing citizens with their lawless brand of street justice. Yesterday a group of doughty NYPD officers—fed up with the costly destruction unleashed upon our fair city by those masked outlaws "Batman" and "Superman"—spotted the two renegade freaks in Times Square and attempted to bring them to justice. According to The New York Post, officers tried booking the super-zeros on a charge of "performing in costume in public" without a license—but the only thing these two clowns were performing was civil disobedience. more ›