Federal drug enforcement agents have arrested eight members of a Queens-based gang suspected of kidnapping and torturing more than 100 people. The men impersonated the police, by way of fake sirens and lights on cars and handcuffs, and managed, per the Post, to "steal $4 million in cash and cocaine with a street value of $20 million." An assistant U.S. Attorney explained their M.O., "Once the crew finished gathering intelligence on an intended victim, the......

A man was killed by a "bullet from his own gun" on the roof of a Midtown building at 30 East 40th Street. The police say the man, who was found with "rope, a hacksaw and three Dell laptops in the intruder's backpack," may be a man with a number of burglary and stolen property arrests. A building employee called the police after discovering a break-in. Superintendent Joe Aguasviva told the Daily News he had......

Two incidents of people trying to stop others from harassing or beating people have had some violent consequences. Yesterday, at West 4th and Jones Street, a 23-year-old Andrew Mindnich saw a woman being bothered by two men around 12:30 a.m. When he intervened by saying, "What's going on?" the Post reports the two men punched, kicked, and stomped Mindnich in the head and chest. Mindnich was treated for his injuries, while the police managed to......

A police officer's son was found stabbed multiple times in the hallway of a building on Gates Avenue in Brooklyn. Renato Scantlebury, 18, was pronounced dead the hospital. A tenant told the Daily News Scantlebury "had gotten into a fistfight with two men outside the building after he made a snide comment about their T-shirts" an earlier. The tenant said, "He died over that?" Another witness told NY1, "He was trying to get away. The......

The NYPD released these photos of two men suspected of robbing a townhouse on West 87th Street in Manhattan. Last Friday, the suspects allegedly asked a 10-year-old girl who was playing outside the house if an adult was home. The girl was the daughter of the homeowner's housekeeper, and the owner Mark Appel told the Daily News the men "forced her into the house." They made the girl and her mother stay in a bedroom--Appel......

A strange event unfolded at WABC 7's studios on Columbus Avenue near Lincoln Center. A man wanted for attempting to kill his girlfriend in Virginia decided to turn himself in to WABC 7. Terry Lavern Leathers called the assignment desk, saying he was "wanted for a crime I did not commit." Leathers, 59, apparently hitchhiked to NYC because he was worried authorities in Virginia would "take a shot and kill me. My life was on......

Errol Morris in a conversation with Anthony Swofford after the screening of Standard Operating Procedure at the Tribeca Film Festival. Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris was on hand last night for a Tribeca Film Festival screening of his new documentary Standard Operating Procedure, a nuanced exploration of the detainee abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those familiar with Morris’s innovative oeuvre won’t be surprised to hear that, far from a tendentious indictment of......

The police are looking for two men suspected of robbing an elderly woman at gunpoint on Tuesday afternoon. As the woman entered her apartment on Neptune Avenue, police say two men "forced their way into the apartment, where the tied up the 73-year-old woman at gunpoint before taking her ATM card, pin number and assorted jewelry." Seventy-three-year-old Shirley Rosenstock managed to break free and call the police. The police found that her ATM card......

Bike thieves in New York have been known to use everything from electric saws to Bic pen tops in order to separate bikes from pesky locks, but no method is more effective than convincing a cyclist to just hand over their ride. This is what happened to BikeBlogger Michael Green yesterday when, outside the eco-friendly Birdbath Bakery, he let a smooth-talking grifter talk him out of his beloved KHS (pictured): A Hispanic male about 5'8,......

Police believe two members of the Crips killed an off-duty corrections officer yesterday morning in order to steal his motorcycle. Kenneth Duncan, who had worked for the city's correction department for 17 years, was found shot in the head outside his Remsen Village home. According to a police source, the men approached Duncan and a friend in Duncan's garage as they were installing new exhaust pipes to his Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14 motorcycle. Duncan is described......

The owner of a Papa John's in Norwalk, CT uploaded footage of a delivery car being robbed of a GPS system and an iPod to Youtube, hoping the community would be able to help identify the thief. Co-owner John Koch explained that after he told customers and employees about the robbery--which took place in the parking lot (a man seems to case the parking lot and then grab the items from an unlocked Toyota......

Holy nunchuks! The Staten Island Advance reports "the NYPD has quietly closed the book on Staten Island's so-called Ninja Burglar case, after authorities started deportation proceedings against at least one Albanian man they believe to be connected to the string of break-ins." Before you wonder, "Hmm, should this have been called the 'Vampire Burglar' case?", please bear in mind that the Staten Island thief who was linked to nineteen separate burglaries typically wore a black......

Photo by Jake Dobkin. New stats from the NYPD show an 81.5% rise in graffiti-related complaints from 2006 to 2007 (pre-Splasher!), a year that graffiti arrests also went up 28%. Queens council member Peter Vallone, Jr. notes that, "we did an excellent job turning the tide against graffiti in the '90s and the beginning part of this century. Unfortunately, because of the lack of police officers, the fact that they have to do double duty......

A man who concealed a video camera in a shopping bag to film women as they got onto an escalator at the Grand Central subway station was arested for unlawful surveillance. The NY Sun reports that 21-year-old Jamarl Chambers would follow women up an escalator from the Lexington Avenue line. "The officers noticed Mr. Chambers ride up and down the escalator twice behind the women, each time placing the bag between their legs, before police......

A 40-year-old described as an off-duty corrections officer was shot to death in East Flatbush. The shooting occurred around 3:15 a.m. at East 87th Street and Avenue A. According to the AP, the police had "responded to a 911 call" and found the victim "lying in a side yard...shot once in the face." The victim, believed to have been gunned down inside the garage, died at Brookdale Hospital. Police suspect the shooting was related to......

A man who apparently fired at police after a traffic stop in Queens was charged with criminal possession of a weapon. Darnell Routier, a passenger in a livery cab with another person stopped by the NYPD's anti-gang unit at Foch Boulevard and 169th Street in Jamaica on Saturday night, had fled the car and initiated fire. Police returned fire, hitting him in the leg and arm. Routier is in stable condition at Mary Immaculate Hospital,......

Parents of the woman accused of killing real estate broker to the stars Linda Stein have been championing her innocence to news stations. Natavia Lowery's mother Lottie Lowery-Walsh and her stepfather Daniel Walsh spoke to WCBS 2 and WABC 7 about the 26-year-old's inability to have committed a crime. Lowery, who is being held without bail at Rikers, is accused of bludgeoning Stern to death in her Fifth Avenue apartment. Police claim that Lowery confessed......

Earlier in the week, unconfirmed reports of a knife-wielding assailant had Williamsburg residents on edge; South Williamsburg in particular has been flooded with patrolmen all week, and we’ve heard from readers who say they’ve been written summons for minor offenses like jaywalking. Though the 90th Precinct and the NYPD press liaison are unforthcoming about the dragnet, two officers walking their beat by the future Pies ‘n’ Thighs location on Driggs and South 4th Street told......

The Queens DA's office has charged a man with possessing and promoting child pornography after a tip from Illinois police that he had a how-to video on molesting children. Dominick Guerra, who lives in Ozone Park and works as a wedding/party DJ, was arraigned yesterday and could face up to six years in jail. According to the Queens DA's office, the Wheaton, IL police found two videos on the file-sharing site Limewire. One video depicted......

Police officials said that murder suspect Carlos Cruz told them was upset his on-off girlfriend was seeing other people, setting into motion a plan to kill her on a deserted Bronx street. Cruz allegedly said of Chelsea Frazier, "She was lying about what she was doing and she betrayed me." Cruz, who grew up in the Bronx, enlisted the help of his cousin Devon Miller to shoot Frazier on Sunday afternoon and stage it as......

Families of a murder victim and her ex-fiance are reeling from the revelation the ex-fiance and his cousin were behind the killing. Carlos Cruz, 36, admitted to paying his cousin $1,000 to kill his 18-year-old girlfriend, Chelsea Frazier, on a deserted Bronx street and stage it to look like a robbery, all in front of their 1-year-old son. Cruz, Frazier, and their son had traveled from Massachusetts to the Bronz, to visit Cruz's family and......

While an 11-year-old boy remain in critical condition after being shot in the face, Suffolk Country police believe his father was the real target. Newsday reports that Jeffrey Langhorn's father had apparently "fought with" a group of men "before one of them fired three shots." Suffolk Detective Edward Reilly said the father, also named Jeffrey Langhorne, had a machete and "began tussling with one or two of the men." The boy, who was sick and......

Police are looking for a man who tried to rape a woman entering her Sullivan Street apartment on Sunday morning. According to WABC 7, after the woman "opened the door to her apartment...the suspect forced his way in, pushed her onto the bed and began to choke her." He allegedly said he would rape her, but a neighbor who heard her cries rushed in and the suspect escaped. The suspect's image was captured on a......

Last we heard, rapper Foxy Brown, who has been on Rikers for about 8 months now, was trying to get an early release because of her "hearing problems". Deaf or not, something worked, and this week she'll be a free woman once again. After violating probation last year by attacking a couple of manicurists, she was sent to the slammer -- and even spent 40-days in solitary confinement for a confrontation with officers there. Now......

The police continue to investigate the Sunday shooting in the Bronx that claimed the life of an 18-year-old woman in front of her fiancé and their 1-year-old son. Chelsea Frazier's fiancé Carlos Cruz, 36, told his police they were fired upon when he struggled with a would-be robber, but Frazier's family question his version of events. Frazier and Cruz were in the Bronx from Massachusetts, to visit Cruz's relatives. They pulled over on a street......

This morning around 6:15 a.m., two people were shot outside the Manhattanville Houses at 1430 Amsterdam Avenue before the gunman shot himself. Now it turns out the shooter was a postal carrier who had gotten into a fight with the men. NY1 reports that 48-year-old Roberto Caballero "had a confrontation with two men," and shot one man three times in the chest and the other once in the head. Then Caballero went to his apartment......

What could the increased number of NYPD on foot in the South Williamsburg area mean? One reader tips us off to a new South Side stabber who may have the 90th Precinct working overtime. Ladies, hipsters, et al, even though Matchbox 20 and McLovin were bro-ing down south of the Williamsburg Bridge – the ultimate sign of gentrification – you still need to buddy up on those evening walks. A tipster writes:There is a man......

An 11-year-old boy is in serious condition after a gunman shot him in the face. The boy, Jeffrey Langhorne, who was home from school, had been sitting in his North Bellport home's kitchen at 1:30 p.m. when the gunman fired. Suffolk County police detective Daniel Molloy explained, "He was shot from the outside, the bullet went through the wall and struck the child that was in the house." The gunman used a semiautomatic weapon and......

It's not unusual for police officers to make side money by moonlighting with second jobs. Christian Torres is a rookie cop, however, who took that practice to a whole new level--allegedly robbing banks when off duty. On Thursday, Torres arrested in Pennsylvania less than a block from the bank he just robbed. Unaware the teller had tripped a silent alarm and that a police officer followed him, he showed his NYPD badge, thinking he was......

Photograph of the memorial service held for Minghui Yu earlier this week by Daniella Zalcman on Flickr The 14-year-old boy whose actions led to the death of a Columbia graduate student was arraigned in Family Court yesterday. An NYPD detective told the judge that Sheldon (whose last name is withheld due to his age) admitted to repeatedly punching 24-year-old Minghui Yu in the head "a couple times." But, according to Detective John Garvey, the......