City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is seeking the dismissal of a civil suit against her filed by Council Member Charles Barron's former chief of staff Viola Plummer. Quinn gave Plummer the boot when the councilman's aide refused to sign a pledge to compose herself while the City Council was in session. The City Hall drama all began when Queens Councilman Leroy Comrie refused to vote in favor of naming a street after black activist Sonny......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Elliot Ave. in Queens, a pedestrian struck on West 86th St. and Amsterdam Ave. in Manhattan, and a stabbing on Cozine Ave. in Brooklyn. The brother of murdered Councilman James Davis decried the threats of assassination against another councilman from Charles Barron's chief of staff. A man robbed a sunbathing woman in Central Park of her iPod and wallet, then also demanded a kiss before departing.......

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn struck Sonny Carson's name from a list of of New Yorkers to be honored with a street named after them because she thought the political activist was too divisive a figure. Carson was a proponent of black economic empowerment and was distemperate in his views of other New York groups (e.g., whites, Jews, Koreans). Councilman Charles Barron, who shares Carson's past as a radical activist, thought Carson's exclusion from the......

The NY Times City section has a long feature about Law & Order's dramatization of the Adrienne Shelly murder. It was inevitable that the police procedural warhorse would cover one of the more bizarre and tragic murders in recent memory, and a casting notice for someone to play the illegal immigrant laborer who assaults an woman after she complains about construction noise confirmed that L&O would be tackling the story. The article looks at......

CBS 2 showed a video of City Councilman James Davis and his killer, Othniel Askew, right before the July 23, 2003 shooting, and it's really spooky. Here's CBS's description of what happens:The tape shows Davis and assassin Othniel Askew enter the council chambers. Davis joins a group of other members during a presentation as Askew stands along the wall. The tape also shows just how close Askew was standing to plainclothes police officer Richard Burt,......

The shocking shooting death at City Hall of Councilman James E. Davis has raised a number of questions, including those about security procedures at City Hall. Davis was shot by a political opponent, Othniel Askew, who was running for Davis' council seat in Brooklyn. Davis did not need to go through metal detectors as he entered City Hall, and as Askew had accompanied him, Askew bypassed metal detectors as well. MSNBC said: City election records......