The Smoking Gun, via a Freedom of Information Act request, received the last photograph taken of John Gotti, the former Gambino crime family head also known as the Dapper Don or Teflon Don. According to TSG, the photo - a 1"x1" "institution commissary photo" was taken on "October 17, 2001, less than eight months before he died, at age 61" and two years after cancer surgery. Gotti was sentenced to life in prison in 1992,......

The Atlantic Yards Report's Norman Oder weighs in on the financial documents on the Atlantic Yards project. Developer Forest City Ratner only released three pages after Freedom of Information Act requests. Oder sent the docs to an affordable housing expert, David A. Smith, who was unimpressed and said, "They make one hungry for more detail, without which it is impossible to have a properly informed opinion." Oder also notes there are "unexplained gaps" in the......

The NYPD released photographs of four of the five police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell last November. The NY Times says the photos were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request (the photograph of the fifth officer, the one who fired the first shot, was not released, due to his undercover status). This gave Detectives' Endowment Association president Michael J. Palladino opportunity to say, "The photos of......

THEATER: Stephen Belber, whose Tape was made into a riveting film by Richard Linkater, unveils his latest opus, A Small, Melodramatic Story at The Public Theater. Previews start tonight so there are no reviews yet, but the synopsis is intriguing: “In Washington, D.C., a widow struggles to figure out whether life is worth re-engaging with. In her path are the 1968 riots, the first Gulf War, the Freedom of Information Act, and herself. There's also......