The NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating allegations that just hours after the not guilty verdict was issued in the Sean Bell shooting trial, a number of crank calls were made to the home of Nicole Paultre Bell's parents by someone connected to a police union. The calls were both hang-ups or someone laughing--"Ha ha ha"--on the other end of the line. Caller ID identified their source as a line at the Sergeants Benevolent Association's......

Photo by Raymond Haddad, at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian struck on Broadway and 231st St. in the Bronx, an aircraft alert at JFK at Queens, and a person fatally struck by a train at 57th St. and 8th Ave. in Manhattan. Entries for the NYC Half-Marathon will start being accepted at 11:59pm on May 29th. Details. And the Design Trust for Public Space is accepting submissions for its Grand Army......

Queens DA Richard Brown announced an off-duty NYPD detective and his girlfriend were charged with promoting the prostitution of a 13-year-old Brooklyn runaway. Brown said, “This case is every parent and every child’s worst nightmare – made even more frightening by the fact that one of the defendants is a police officer who swore to uphold the law and protect the community he serves.” Detective Wayne Taylor and a woman he claims is his wife,......

An ongoing investigation of corruption and illegal practices in the Brooklyn South Narcotics Unit could jeopardize dozens, if not hundreds, of successful prosecutions of drug dealers. The possibility has arisen days after a sergeant and a detective were arrested for paying an informant with drugs and cash that they themselves had robbed from the addict. Another sergeant in the unit was also arrested for using NYPD resources to investigate the vehicle IDs of a drug......

The spicy story of the cop fired after testing positive on a drug test - after unkowingly eating a meatball spiked with pot - returns with a lawsuit! Anthony Chiofalo, a 22-year veteran of the NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force, is suing to be reinstated, claiming his termination was "arbitrary, capricious, unreasonable and unconstitutional." Back in 2005, Chiofalo was shocked when he tested positive for marijuana during a drug test. Then it turned out his......

Note to public servants: Your embarrassing MySpace pages will get the tabloid once-over if you do something totally stupid. Last week, police officers Thomas Eliassen and Michael Danese were arrested after they stranded a 14-year-old boy who had been egging cars at a remote swamp. Now Eliassen's MySpace page, where he proclaims, "LET'S DO LINES OFF A STRIPPERS A--!!!", is getting attention from the boy's lawyer. The boy, Rayshawn Moreno, claimed the officers also made......

Halloween tricks are never a good idea, no matter what side of the law you're on. A 14-year-old boy was throwing eggs at cars in Staten Island when two police officers decided to teach him a lesson. Police sources S.tell the Daily News that Officers Thomas Elliassen and Michael Danese picked up Rayshawn Moreno around 8:30PM, drove him to "a swampy area of the 122nd Precinct" and then "dropped him off wearing only boxer shorts......

The NYPD is investigating six police officers suspected of trying to improperly obtain steroids. According to WNBC, the NYPD and State Health department have been raiding Brooklyn pharmacies - and the NYPD's Internal Affairs has now turned an eye on its own. The NYPD's Paul Browne says that news reports that dozens of officers were being investigated were "wildly distorted and exaggerated." He does not believe the suspects to be arrested; rather they will face......

Yesterday, a police officer testified that her police captain boyfriend viciously beat her. Sharon Gandarilla, who was married to another man at the time of the affair, had filed a sexual-harassment suit earlier this month, alleging that 17-year NYPD veteran Alberto Sanchez had assaulted her multiple times during they three-year affair. She also claimed that Sanchez forced her to have sex at their East Harlem precinct house and at the Police Academy, where he was......

This might be one of the few times bad police behavior is well-timed with the release of a Dreamworks animated film! The Daily News reports that a couple enjoying a first anniversary celebration was spied upon by an NYPD captain who was trying to film the amorous couple with his pants unzipped. It's definitely one of the better stories about how the NYPD deals with catching criminals in their ranks. Henry Arias and his girlfriend......

When the police arrived at a Cambria Heights house 13 minutes after receiving a 911 call from a distressed woman, they found four dead bodies. Twenty-year-old Jimmie Dawkins shot his mother, her boyfriend, and the boyfriend's health care aide before shooting himself. The police say that hospital worker Sonia Taylor called 911 at 11:38AM, fearing for her life when her son arrived. She told the operator, "A terrible thing is going to happen." But Dawkins......

A truly strange story unfolded yesterday after initial reports that a police officer had been shot at Sixth Avenue and Prospect Place in Brooklyn. It turns out that the husband of an NYPD officer shot at an unmarked police SUV carrying four cops. And the wife, police officer Jacqueline Melendez-Rivera, tried to cover up her husband's actions. Yesterday morning around 4AM, Jose Rivera drove his SUV next to the unmarked police SUV, which carried......

It's cop vs. cop in an interesting Brooklyn incident that stems from a robber attempting to steal a car. A sergeant at Brooklyn's 78st Precinct accused three officers of assaulting a man suspected of stealing a car belonging to one of the officers. The Daily News says that Sergeant Greg Abrahams and officers Mark Zajac and Chris Kirch were off-duty when they saw a man trying to steal Abrahams's car, parked in front of 11......

Yesterday, a mortuary technician for the medical examiner's office was charged with using a dead man's ATM card and stealing about $3,000 from the man's account. Philip Bethune of Brooklyn got a hold of the card when he was sent to transport a body from Kensington back to the morgue. But he also rifled through the man's wallet, finding the ATM card with PIN number (! another reason NOT to have your PIN number in......

Police are looking for a man who fondled a 13 year old girl in Queens on Tuesday. And police believe he is the same man who fondled a 15 year old girl in the spring. In Tuesday's incident, he asked the girl, who was walking in Corona at 8AM, for directions. When another car almost hit her, the man told her to get into the car and the man drove a couple blocks and tried......

A police officer in the NYPD's Joint Terrorism Task Force underwent random drug testing - only to find that he tested positive for marijuana. Twenty-two year vet Anthony Chiofalo was automatically suspended without pay but did not understand why he tested positive. And then his wife admitted she "spiked" the meatballs with pot to get him fired. From the Post: During the departmental trial, the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau interviewed Cathy, who confessed to them......

You take some eggs, some rowdy residents, and some undercover cops and you get a crazy riot in Broad Channel. The NY Sun has a very detailed article about the riot between police and residents, where the only part of the story that the police and residents agree on is that a bunch of kids egged an unmarked police car. Which was only in the area to respond to earlier calls about property being......

Talk about Internal Affairs! The Post reports that a police commander in the Bronx was suspended after a secret recording revealed he was trying to set up a rendez-vous with a female officer. The officer, described as a 42 year old single mom, complained to Internal Affairs that Captain Michael DeBellis "wanted to turn their friendship into a romance," and said that he had "'made inappropriate comments' involving seeing her alone for sex." So Internal......

The Suffolk County DA's office believes that the NYPD cadet who plotted to kill his girlfriend may have wanted to prevent her from telling anyone about his "shady past." Kabeer Din, a Long Island resident who is being held on $1.5 million bond/$150,000 cash bail, had just started the city's police academy after some time with Baltimore's police department when the NYPD's Internal Affairs found out that Din was looking for a hit man. When......

Yesterday's the story about the car crash at West Broadway and West Houston got a bit of a twist when it turned out an assistant chief of police was driving the SUV was crashed into another car, then a building, as well as pedestrians. That's why the scene was positively swaming with cops! John McManus is second-in-command in Internal Affairs and was driving a city-owned Jeep Cherokee when he was making a left turn......

A landlord-tenant dispute in Bedford-Stuyvesant that left the tenant dead is further complicated by the fact the the landlord is an Internal Affairs police officer. Some reports say while Lt. Shamik Walton was collecting rent, he and tenant Byron Hearst scuffled and Walton's gun went off, whereas other reports say that Walton shot Hearst as they argued over back rent that Hearst owed. Hearst lived in an apartment at 645 Macon Street with his pregnant......

From the creepy news division: An NYPD officer was arrested for " New York Region > Police Say a Popular Officer Sought Boys in Chat Rooms" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/nyregion/03officer.html">attempting to engage minors in sexual exchanges over the Internet." And what's more, he was a youth officer, working with troubled youngsters in Queens. Officer Michael Costello's Internet activities were discovered when police were doing a routine investigation in Internet criminal activity; then Internal Affairs got involved. Officer Costello......

The best cop movie Gothamist has seen this year, Infernal Affairs, has been chosen as Hong Kong's official selection for Best Foreign Film consideration for the 2003 Academy Awards (meaning, the Academy Awards that will honor films from 2003, but will be broadcast in 2004). The premise is simple and complicated, as the plot description from IMDB indicates: A story between a mole in the police department and an undercover cop. Their objectives are......