Governor Cuomo's State of the State speech was chock-full of curious incursions into New Yorker's privacy. And we aren't just talking about the whole fingerprinting folks who want food stamps debate. Oh, no. Slipped in there amidst all that gambling talk was also a plan to make New York the first state in the country to collect DNA from anyone convicted of a crime here. And that includes misdemeanors like jumping turnstiles. more ›

Corey Holmes, the 39-year-old man who died after a strange scuffle with an NYPD officer on the College of Staten Island campus yesterday, had been working at the CUNY school's cafeteria for ten years. The city medical examiner will be performing an autopsy on Holmes today, which will hopefully help answer how a possibly-pot related dispute led to the death of a man. more ›

A College of Staten Island Auxiliary Services man died today in a very strange episode at the school. Details of the incident, which involved a struggle between the man and a police officer outside a toilet by the school's athletic facility, are still very murky but—despite "a massive police response that rattled the college community"—the school remained open after the incident. more ›

Last night CBS announced that they were bringing Ted Danson on board to star in their crime drama C.S.I., taking over Laurence Fishburne's job of chief investigator of the Las Vegas Crime Scene Investigation team. CBS is also moving the show to Wednesdays for the fall, trying to keep it alive after their ratings took a dive last season, its 11th on the air. Executive producer Don McGill is optimistic, and told People, "From the moment we all started talking about the role, it was clear he couldn't be more perfect. Intelligence, wit, warmth, depth of character and emotion, he brings it all. And now he'll have to bring latex gloves, too." more ›

Last week, we joked that with the NFL in lockdown mode, we were surprised that Rex Ryan hadn't dropped a vanity CD with some makin' whoopee jams. And while he still hasn't done that, he has been keeping himself occupied with side projects: this Tuesday, Ryan is releasing a book, "Play Like You Mean It." It's a quixotic coming-of-age tale about a bookish whippersnapper at a university filled with phonies about football. But it does have oodles of that unique Ryan wit: "I really don't know Tom Brady, but who wouldn't hate him? Look at his life. Actually, look at his wife [supermodel Gisele Bundchen]. Every man in America hates Tom Brady, and he should be proud of that." more ›

The NYPD is starting to catch up with CSI: they announced yesterday that they have started incorporating a new facial recognition unit into the department, which will use digital technology to match video images of people at crime scenes to mug shots on file. It promises to be their biggest technological advancement since they discovered the Segway. more ›

Evidence of where culture is taking us— from the Post: "One homeless man stabbed another outside a Fifth Avenue church last night, but kids in the passing Christmas crowd of tourists and hardened New Yorkers were hardly traumatized, one mom said. 'Their mommy watches a lot of murder shows and 'CSI,' so they're used to it,' Dania Concos said of her children, who were with her when the argument escalated in front of St. Thomas Episcopal Church at 54th Street at 6:45 p.m." Though the victim was stabbed in the chest, arm and face, his injuries are not considered life-threatening. more ›

The NYPD is combing through evidence from the apartment of one of their own in hopes of finding her killer. The body of NYPD investigator Michelle Lee, 24, was discovered by her roommate in the Sunnyside, Queens apartment. The Daily News reports that one hypothesis is that she "was knocked unconscious with the iron, bound to her bed with the cord of a cell phone charger and then stabbed in the throat with a kitchen knife." The Post adds, "Investigators found very little blood for someone who had been stabbed...[they think] the killer tied her up and burned her to make it look as if she had been tortured or was the victim of a sex crime," stabbing her as she was dying. The apartment had no signs of forced entry and police are going through her computer and cell phone records and examining her ex-boyfriends, "including one to whom she had been giving money but had recently cut off." Lee's co-workers at the crime lab are the ones who had to comb the apartment and run tests; NYPD spokesman Paul Browne told the Post that they feel it's "important that the killer be found." more ›

According to NYPD statistics, overall subway crime dropped by 3% in 2008, with murders down to two from four in 2007. There were an average 6.3 major felonies a day last year, compared with 7.4 in 2006 (there was an average of 17 in 1997). But robberies are on the rise: 823 occurred last year, up from 796 in '07. And there were three rapes reported last year, as opposed to just one in '07. Still, the NYPD's John Hall tells the Post crime is "so low that it's getting more and more difficult to keep it there," and attributes the stats to a crackdown on people walking between moving cars, which criminals do when trolling for victims. more ›