Since Occupy Wall Street protesters were removed from their sidewalk sleeping space across the street from the NYSE, they have relocated themselves to the steps of Federal Hall several feet away. The situation has devolved into a strained tug-of-war between the demonstrators and the NYPD and the U.S. Parks Police, with each side at odds over the right to protest, the residents nearby, and Federal Hall, which sits on federal property. According to a Parks Police officer standing in front of Federal Hall, the barricades now bisecting the steps belong to the NYPD and were placed there with the permission of the Parks Police. more ›

In the wake of this weekend's violent confrontations between protesters and the NYPD, Mayor Bloomberg has a message for Occupy Wall Street: the days of pre-eviction Zuccotti are over. According to the Times, Bloomberg told reporters at a press conference yesterday, "You want to get arrested? We'll accommodate you." He added, “If you have something, really, to say, that would be a great contribution, nobody can hear you when everybody’s yelling and screaming and pushing and shoving." Remember: "this is New York City, you can't be making noise at night." more ›

The Manhattan DA's office has subpoenaed DC-based Occupy Wall Street protester Jeff Rae's Twitter account from September 15 through October 31. "I was a little bit blown away," Rae told Reuters. "It's interesting that in places like Egypt our leaders applaud people for using Twitter and social media for their movements. Here, I'm being subpoenaed for using social media." But Jeff, unlike New York City, Egypt is frozen in a police state bent against demonstrations and civil liberties. more ›

Hours after the AP released a report proving that the NYPD kept files on New Yorkers for no other reason than their religion, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly met with Muslim leaders Friday afternoon at 1 Police Plaza to assure them that no laws were being broken. "They are organizing sham meetings with sham leaders of the community," Fahd Ahmed of the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition told NY1, implying that Kelly is dodging his most severe critics. "The Muslim community feels under siege," Mohammed Nurhussein of the United African Congress said. "And that issue has to be addressed." more ›

The American Islamic Leadership Coalition joined Republican Congressman Peter King today at 1 Police Plaza to voice their support for the NYPD and to address recent controversies involving its counterterrorism policies. Today's press conference came on the heels of a scathing New York Times editorial published this Saturday that addressed some 40 investigative reports from the Associated Press on the NYPD’s monitoring and surveillance of Muslim citizens in and around the tri-state area. more ›

The narrator of the "documentary" The Third Jihad, is scheduled to speak at a rally at 1 Police Plaza to support the department's sweeping surveillance of Muslims. "We feel the NYPD has been taking a lot of unfair hits," Dr. Zuhdi Jasser told the AP. more ›

Occupy Wall Street begins two days of major demonstrations today as a group of wealthy backers announces their plan to pump $1.8 million into the movement. The Movement Resource Group, comprised of the two founders of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Nirvana's former manager Danny Goldberg, among others, is a not-for-profit 501c3 that has raised $300,000 and aims to distribute it to the protesters in a series of grants. "Many of us have been working for progressive social change," Ben Cohen told the Wall Street Journal. "There's been a critical ingredient missing." more ›

Since 2001 the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have pumped $135 million into the NY/NJ region under the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, a portion of which went into the NYPD's controversial surveillance program targeting Muslims in the Northeast. According to the AP, it's unclear how much of that money went towards surveillance "because the program has little oversight," but cars used by the department's plainclothes officers in keeping tabs on Muslim communities were paid for with federal money, as were the computers used to compile the reports for Commissioner Kelly. more ›

Shawn Portuguez wouldn't make it to his 3 p.m. trim at a barbershop in the Lower East Side because he was in handcuffs. "They said I crossed the street three times, so that's why they stopped me," Portuguez said as he stood waiting for the two NYPD officers to check his information on Thursday. "I just left my apartment for the first time today." Police took Portuguez away after he was told he had an outstanding warrant, but a DCPI spokesman says no arrest record exists for the encounter. Asked why they chose to stop Portuguez out of the flow of people milling around Rivington Street, an officer said, "We had a murder around here recently, so we're being extra vigilant." more ›

In yet another revelation of the scope of the NYPD's surveillance of U.S. citizens throughout the Northeast based on their religion, the AP has obtained secret reports on Muslim communities in Newark, New Jersey, and Suffolk and Nassau Counties in New York. The reports contain photographs of mosques and Muslim-owned businesses, and the names and descriptions of those who worked in them. Newark's mayor Corey Booker claims to have had no knowledge of the NYPD's actions, which occurred in 2007. "Wow," Booker said upon learning of the surveillance. "This raises a number of concerns. It's just very, very, sobering." more ›

As the Times reports today, drones aren't just for indiscriminately killing foreign enemies and civilians anymore: real estate agents, feral hog-killers and Hollywood directors are all realizing the potential of unmanned aerial vehicles. Camera-equipped UAVs can cost as little as $300 and be controlled from an iPhone, and we're about to see a lot more of them. On Tuesday President Obama signed a law that forces the FAA to "allow police and first responders to fly drones under 4.4 pounds" at an altitude of under 400 feet. This is "good" news for the NYPD, which first asked the FAA about acquiring their own drones in December of 2010. more ›

Senator Rand Paul, friend to 9/11 Truthers, was detained by the Transportation Security Administration after refusing to submit to a full body pat-down at Nashville's airport. The Kentucky Republican's plight was mentioned by his father, 2012 presidential contender Rep. Ron Paul, who Tweeted, "My son @SenRandPaul being detained by TSA for refusing full body pat-down after anomaly in body scanner in Nashville. More details coming." Senator Paul was on his way to D.C. for the Senate session. more ›

Less than a week before South Carolina's Republican primary, Ron Paul is currently polling third behind Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. He's risen six percentage points in the last seven days according to PPP, and now he has sewn up the crucial "Fiscally Conservative Pimp" vote. Dennis Hof, who owns Nevada's Moonlite Bunny Ranch, tells CNN, "If a client comes into the Bunny Ranch and says 'I'm pimpin for Paul,' they're gonna have a really good time." Presumably this refers to the sense of purpose one feels by being civically-minded shortly after expensive, soul-shattering coitus. more ›

The AP has filed another piece looking at the NYPD's tactics spying on Muslim communities (Muslims who change their names, Muslim college kids), which are questionable from a civil rights perspective. Noting how Rep. Peter King has asked people to stop "smearing" the NYPD, by saying, "To date, under Commissioner Ray Kelly’s leadership, at least 14 attacks by Islamic terrorists have been prevented by the NYPD." But the AP would like to disagree! more ›

City Councilmember Jumaane Williams has introduced a resolution in the City Council that, if passed, would formally condemn Mayor Bloomberg for ordering the eviction of Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park last month. PolitickerNY reports that Williams introduced a resolution yesterday that describes the eviction as "overly aggressive" and "poses a threat to our civil liberties." Williams, you'll recall, went down to Zuccotti Park on the night of the NYPD's surprise eviction; he avoided arrest that night, but his colleague Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez was arrested, along with several reporters. more ›

The NYPD's controversial spying programs don't just include "sending undercover officers into ethnic and Muslim neighborhoods to act like 'a human camera' and 'map the human terrain' in mosques, hookah bars, and Internet cafes." Turns out they also involve flat out spying on college students. And students, faculty and legal experts are, understandably, furious. The multi-year police operation violates U.S. privacy laws and could jeopardize millions of dollars in federal research money and student aid. more ›

A day after the Associated Press published a lengthy article detailing how the NYPD is running a secretive police intelligence team to investigate Muslim communities as part of counter-terrorism efforts—with possibly civil liberties-infringing tactics, like sending informants to mosques where there's no evidence of wrong-doing—Mayor Bloomberg admitted that the NYPD is working with the CIA. But he defended its practices, “If there are threats or leads to follow, then the NYPD’s job is to do it. The law is pretty clear about what’s the requirement and I think they follow the law. We don’t stop to think about the religion. We stop to think about the threats and focus our efforts there." more ›

It must be frustrating working at the CIA sometimes, what with all those stifling rules keeping you from spying on suspicious Americans. Thankfully, there's a solution for spooks with an itch to snoop domestically: Just shuffle on over to the NYPD, which has been working closely with the CIA since 2002, when veteran CIA division head David Cohen came out of retirement to run a secretive police intelligence team. In a thorough 5,000 word article, the AP reports that the division's counterterrorism tactics have gone further than what the FBI allows, and they're probably illegal. more ›

If you're one of the NYPD's lucky stop-and-frisk customers this year (183,326 and counting!) the police is giving you a slightly less opaque reason as to why they roughed you up. New forms that officers fill out following a stop include a "Reason for Force Used" field that gives officers the choice of checking a box that describes the situation leading up to the rough stop. The choices are: "suspect reaching for suspected weapon" (like this innocent teenager), "suspect flight," "defense of self," "defense of other," and "overcome resistance." If those don't quite paint a nuanced picture of what happened, there's always the classic "other" box that allows the officer to jot down why you were worth their time. Presumably this is to save room on the form so they don't have to print both "brown" and "black." more ›

Mayor Bloomberg's Smoke Free Air Act goes into effect on Monday, and shockingly, people physically dependent on a substance that is more addictive than heroin have said that they will probably ignore the law that bans smoking in public parks, beaches, the concretewalk, and the Brooklyn Heights promenade. "It's so unfair because we're paying $12 to $13 a pack for cigarettes and now there's nowhere to smoke them…but I'll take the risk and still smoke in public," one man told the Brooklyn Paper. Another suggested: "Should we outlaw cabs, buses, and everything else that admits exhausts and fills our lungs with crap?" Hey, that's not a bad idea. more ›

A State Supreme Court judge has, at least temporarily, blocked the mandatory flu shots the state was requiring for health care workers. A nurse had sued, saying the State Health Department's requirement for swine and seasonal flu shots was "arbitrary and capricious." more ›

The NYCLU has filed a new lawsuit against the NYPD. This time around, the NYCLU wants information about the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, which involves hundreds (up to thousands) of cameras filming activity downtown. more ›

Leonard Levitt, a veteran journalist who spent 10 years covering the NYPD for Newsday and now writes at his own website, NYPD Confidential, is suing the NYPD over its refusal to grant him a press pass. In this video, Levitt explains how the NYPD's action are "strictly retaliatory," because of his past writing exposing NYPD issues. more ›

The Daily News put together a map detailing the number of stop-and-frisks on the subway - and the racial breakdown of these stop-and-frisks. As the accompanying article makes clear (as well as interviews with people who have been stopped - 1, 2) how cops can stop anyone , though black and Hispanic riders make up about half of the subway riding population, 88% percent of the people stopped are black or Hispanic. The NYPD told the News, "Subway crime is down, in part, because of stops. Officers make stops based on reasonable suspicion, and the numbers reflect the times, places and circumstances where those observations take place." more ›