Results tagged “deputycommissioner”

Kimora Lee Simmons is often on official business...shopping! The NY Post caught her out and about with a possibly illegal parking permit recently. Their "eagle-eyed lensman" saw Simmons and boyfriend Djimon Hounsou "shopping at the swanky department store Barneys late last week while her driver dutifully stood guard outside Simmons' Cadillac Escalade, which had a New York Correction Department placard on its dashboard."

The city is still taking seriously an unsubstantiated threat of a dirty bomb issued over the Internet that was publicized last night. The New York Times is reporting that Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne stated the threat was noticed by the NYPD after it appeared on Debka.com, a website that reports many threats, some of which are substantiated. The particular threat that caused the alarm last night was one that named New York, Los Angeles, and Miami as possible sites of a truck-bomb radiological attack.

Vehicle checkpoints have been established around the city, concentrating on downtown and from certain jurisdictions. Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne reportedly stressed that the moves were strictly precautionary and that no threat had been verified. So if you notice an increased level of police, military, and air or marine activity around the city tonight, don't become too concerned. It's just standard precautions.

Nineteen-year-old Natasha Aerial, who was the only survivor from Saturday night's shootings in a Newark schoolyard, managed to speak to police yesterday. While her brother and two friends died from being shot in the head, execution-style, Aerial survived a gunshot to the head. She is heavily sedated and under police guard. Still, Newark Police Director (and former NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Operations) Garry McCarthy said, "We're getting the story piecemeal from her. Based upon witness testimony, we believe it was a robbery."

Today, we received a tip about recent attacks on women in Williamsburg.

so Friday night at about 1:30am i got attacked right out front of my apt building as i was trying to get in the door. i fought a good fight but the asshole got everything... id, cc cards, cash, phone, and a couple of kicks to my face. bruises and cuts aside... be careful in your own neighborhoods. he literally came out of nowhere. i live on south 4th between wythe and kent in williamsburg. the cops said that most likely hes a repeat offender, so if anyone hears of ANYTHING in williamsburg, let me know. Because the guy beat me up the cops are going to leave this as an open investigation. There are supposedly security cameras on the outside of my building, so hopefuly they would have caught the whole thing. GIRLS watch out when you are walking alone at night. this sucks. this guy is wanted for robbery and assault and the police are taking this VERY seriously.

there is apparently a guy in williamsburg who is attacking girls from behind and cutting their faces, i did not get cut, but i also hit the guy and fought him off as much as i could. the cases all might be related. still waiting to see if the security tapes come through.

Something is happening with congestion pricing in Albany, but we're not exactly sure what. It's not put-a-fork-in-it dead yet, but it might be close to it. Or not!

To anyone attending next year's Puerto Rican Day Parade, we have this suggestion: Don't wear black-and-gold. At a press conference, parade organizers decried arrests of people who were not engaged in any illegal activity during Sunday's event. National Puerto Rican Day Parade president Madelyn Lugo said, "We are very disappointed and alarmed that these violations of civil rights should occur."

The new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee says the NYPD thinks it's the NPD - the National Police Department. The Daily News reports that Democratic Mississippi representative Bennie Thompson is critical of the NYPD's tactics that stretch into other jurisdictions. He told the News, "While I understand that chasing down leads in other locales might help keep the city safe, I emphasized that the NYPD is not the FBI, that it does not have national jurisdiction."

Showing that the NYPD really hates cowards who punch out and mug elderly women with walkers, the entire police force is on alert to find the man who mugged two Queens seniors. Over 25,000 police officers have seen the video and there are "several dozen detectives assigned to the case," according to Newsday. Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne explained, "Considering the brutality of the attacks, and the fact the women appeared to be targeted because of their age and fragility, the Police Department is paying special attention to the case." He also said, "It's a vicious attack for a small amount of money." Indeed - the total haul was $65.

It's probably good that the NYPD is telling the public that they were able to buys parts to build a 1.3 ton truck bomb two years ago, because then it raises the awareness of how these parts are too accessible. But check out this excerpt from the NY Times:

The detectives, who had no formal training in the use of explosives, used information gathered over the Internet and from easily available books to educate themselves about what to buy, the police said. They traveled to an agricultural supplier in upstate New York and another in Pennsylvania to buy the ammonium nitrate, and they went as far as they could in building the bomb by loading it into a white plastic water tank that they placed in the back of a rented van similar to the vehicle used in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

Continue reading "Operation Kaboom or "Operation NYC: Crap Your Pants""

Weird stuff is happening with the Department of Transportation. First, the head of the bike program, Andrew Vesselovitch, left the DOT last Friday, and his farewell email pointed some serious criticism of the DOT. From Streetsblog:

There is much more that the bicycle program could have done than it was allowed to do. The bicycle program, for example, could have produced plans for 40-50 miles of workable bicycle lanes each year. Instead, DOT installed little more than 15 miles, total, in the last two years. We could have saved the city settlements for lawsuits (and residents injuries) resulting from the puzzling addition of unusually high expansion joint covers on the Williamsburg Bridge. I brought this to bridge's attention in 2003 and was told by Michael Primeggia butt out.

Nice work, NYPD. The Post is reporting that an al Qaeda expert from the FBI the police department hired has quit before he even started! Daniel Coleman, a former FBI agent who CNN called the "al Qaeda hunter", was hired ostensibly to bolster the NYPD's anti-terror efforts. But when Coleman asked the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence David Cohen if he spoke to the detectives on the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force, things when fubar. Here's how the Post explains it:

Continue reading "How to Get Someone to Resign Before He Starts Work"

The testimony for the NYCLU's lawsuit agains the NYPD for the subway bag searches has ended, and after reading the NY Times article, it seems that both sides pull out the stops for crazy quotes. NYPD did admit that the bag searches occur very rarely, but tried to scare Judge Richard M. Berman. Deputy Commissioner for counterterrorism Michael Sheehan said, "There is no doubt in my mind that the introduction of bag searches - even though it's random, even though it's not 100 percent - dramatically improves the security posture of this huge, sprawling subway system, which I believe is a top-tier target of Al Qaeda right now, even as we speak. " Gene Russianoff, whom we know and love for repping the Straphangers, used various subway rider polls as evidence, to show rider skepticism about the worthiness of bag checks. Judge Berman responded, "I have a high regard for democratic input, but do you think that's the way to design a counterterrorism program?" and that does bring up a good point: While the straphangers can point out flaws with subway surveillance, we're probably not that qualified. But this makes Gothamist wonder if possible roles for a Citzen Patrol Person (something we've seriously contemplated if only for a bright orange jacket) would be to work with the NYPD to design New Yorker-friendly martial law tactics. Closing arguments for the lawsuit are on December 2, and Judge Berman may issue a decision before the end of the year, possibly in time for the tourist influx known as New Year's. [Related: The NYCLU's updates on the trial]

It's become an expected refrian: Crime in the city is still dropping, down 6% from last year. The NY Post reports that murders are down 16% versus the same first-five-months-of-the-year period last year, while rape is down 8.8% and bank robberies have declined by almost 50% (except at Commerce Banks, probably). Also: 20% more DWI arrests, leading to 13% less DWI-related accidents and 25% less DWI-related deaths, and crime in "impact zones," the targeted neighborhoods, is down by almost a quarter.

" scenarios, what the the Office of Emergency Management’s Deputy Commissioner of Planning and Preparedness, Edward Gabriel, thinks of is much more crazy and, well, disturbing. In the article, he describes terror drills at Shea Stadium and at the Bowling Green subway station:

"Obviously, we 'kill' a lotta people in these exercises," says Gabriel at his desk in OEM’s bunker near the Brooklyn Bridge. "We have to imagine that any large assembly of people in New York automatically makes our major arenas, baseball stadiums, and convention centers targets. Our job is to make this play as realistic as possible, so at Shea, we had a thousand victims in the stands, we had areas roped off so there was constricted access, we had debris, we had moulage, which is the makeup for the wounds. I even had smoke machines out there. These are not clean scenes, you know."

would have seen it; we know there is bureaucracy, but we are also sometimes terrible optimists.

The NYPD stressed that while subway felonies are up 14% versus one year ago, the subways are still safer than than were in the 1995-2000 period. Still, all of you who got your Playstation Portables at midnight last week and are whiling away subway waits with them: BEWARE.

Ah, to wake up on the first spring Monday morning of 2004 and not only hear about Israel killing the founder of Hamas which then in turn has the Hamas saying the U.S. will pay, but to also read that the NYPD is conducting subway sweeps to try to prevent terror attacks and the FDNY is creating a terror school at Randall's Island. The Martians hiding on the darkest spots of Mars are shaking their heads at us, Gothamist just knows it.