The John Jay High School in Park Slope—whose students developed a bit of a bad reputation over the years for mischief and criminal activity in the neighborhood—is facing a big change that has parents worried about "Apartheid education." The Department of Education wants to introduce a new selective high school, Millennium Brooklyn, into the John Jay campus, which is currently home to three schools. DoE officials say the building was "underutilized" last year and has room for another 600 students. But parents worry these new "elite" students will drain resources and attention away from the current students, many of whom come from low-income families outside the neighborhood. more ›

Students arriving for class this afternoon at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice building at 445 West 59th Street were greeted by a worker using a bullhorn to warn them: Stay away! Bed bugs! Classes canceled! Basically, the school's gripped with panic and they're one step away from painting a giant red "B" on the front door. After employees complained of itchy rashes this week, the administrators called in one of those trained dogs, who turned up the pests on the first three floors. more ›

The Daily News put together a map detailing the number of stop-and-frisks on the subway - and the racial breakdown of these stop-and-frisks. As the accompanying article makes clear (as well as interviews with people who have been stopped - 1, 2) how cops can stop anyone , though black and Hispanic riders make up about half of the subway riding population, 88% percent of the people stopped are black or Hispanic. The NYPD told the News, "Subway crime is down, in part, because of stops. Officers make stops based on reasonable suspicion, and the numbers reflect the times, places and circumstances where those observations take place." more ›

The defense for the man on trial for murdering his 7-year-old stepdaughter Nixzmary Brown opened its case by presenting a DNA expert. The Daily News says Dr. Lawrence Koblinsky, who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, "attacked the investigation but seemed to bore jurors." more ›

At West End Avenue and West 59th Street, a water main broke, flooding the Amtrak tracks. The FDNY is pumping out the water and a number of other city agencies, including the Office of Emergency Management and Department of Environmental Protection are on the scene. According to other reports, a new building (an expansion of John Jay Collage) at the intersection is also flooded. more ›

May 29, 2007 was the last time Stepha Henry, a John Jay honors graduate, was seen. The Brooklyn resident had been visiting an aunt in Miami when she went missing and as months went on, her mother quit her job and moved to Florida to search for Stepha while John Jay classmates and faculty held fund-raisers to help the family. Today, Miami-Dade detectives, along with members of the NYPD, arrested a man in New York for killing Henry. more ›

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The city has hired a criminal defense lawyer to represent its various agencies who are coming under attack for the Deutsche Bank fire that claimed two firefighters lives. The Manhattan DA's office started a criminal probe, after some disturbing practices by the contractors and questionable omissions by the Fire Department and the Buildings Department came to light. Eventually smoking, by workers hired to help dismantle the WTC-dust contaminated building, was cited as the probable cause of the fire; smoking is prohibited on job sites, especially ones involving hazardous materials such as the Deutsche Bank fire, but more alarmingly, a standpipe (which delivers water to other floors) had been disconnected, making fighting the fire much more difficult. more ›

The Brooklyn judge presiding over the case of Darryl Littlejohn, the suspected murderer of John Jay graduate student Imette St. Guillen, wants the trial to start as early as next January, even as Littlejohn is facing unrelated charges of kidnapping in a Queens courtroom. Judge Cheryl Chambers ordered another pretrial hearing for October 11 and wants both the defense and prosecution to come to a mutually agreeable date upon which they can get the murder trial moving. more ›

The summer of 1977 was host to a serial killer, a day-long blackout and a crime rate around 75% higher than today's. The NY Sun reports that "politicians, police officers, and reporters are gathering together to remember that time and celebrate." John Jay College of Criminal Justice's Eugene O'Donnell is the one holding the press conference today which will focus on the anniversary of the capture of David Berkowitz, aka the " Son of Sam." more ›

The family of the tow truck driver who was right on top of the steam pipe that exploded in Midtown spoke about 21-year-old Gregory McCullough's progress. His mother, Tanya McCullough-Stewart, told the NY Times he had opened his eyes for the first time last week, "They can’t tell us if he’ll be O.K. because his injuries are too severe. He is still in a coma but the nurses said he can hear us. So I sing to him and I know he’s listening. I know he can hear me.” more ›

The City University of New York is planning on raising math and English requirements for 2008 freshman at 11 colleges. CUNY's chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, told the NY Times, "We are very serious in taking a group of our institutions and placing them in the top segment of universities and colleges. This is the kind of profile we want for our students." more ›

The city continued clean-up at the site of Wednesday's Midtown steam pipe explosion at East 41st and Lexington Avenue. Vanderbilt Avenue has been reopened, and Third Avenue was scheduled to be reopened today. Clean up of 42nd Street between Third and Park should be done by Monday, while clean up of Lexington between 42nd and 43rd should be done by the end of the weekend. Here's what the city said about the asbestos samples:

The Department of Environmental Protection tests of 12 air samples showed none of them testing positive for asbestos. The steam, humidity, and rainfall probably helped the situation because it prevented asbestos particles from becoming airborne. more ›

Since cellphone technology is just about commonplace there days, the police and prosecutors are relying on cellphone data to help build cases against suspected criminals. The NY Times looks at how more and more cases seems to involve cellphone data. more ›

Yesterday afternoon, 1,097 police cadets graduated from the Police Academy in a ceremony at Madison Square Garden. The Mayor said, "Just a few weeks ago, the FBI reported that violent crime went up in the rest of the nation during 2006, but here in New York violent crime decreased. The NYPD has continued to drive violent crime and property crime down to historic lows this year - and year after year. Today we welcome 1,097 men and women into the ranks of our Police Department to continue the proud tradition of New York's Finest." more ›

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced new recommendations for police procedure; the recommendations were made by a special panel formed after the shooting of Sean Bell, an unarmed Queens man. The police press release (which is mis-dated according to the NY Times' CityRoom blog) reveals that there are nineteen recommendations in total, the most notable one stating that breathalyzer testing will be mandatory for all on and off-duty police officers whose "firearm discharge results in injury or death." more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting at Tremont and University Aves. in the Bronx, a person pinned by a bus on the upper level of the Queensboro Bridge, and a car overparked into a storefront at 258th St. and Riverdale Ave. in the Bronx.
• The Queens mother of a kidnapped soldier in Iraq hopes that her son is still alive, even though her son's ID and other effects were found in an al Qaeda safehouse.
• Thanks to the "Mad Hatter," NJ is on pace to set a record for bank robberies in 2007.
• New York firefighters have mixed opinions about Giuliani's Presidential aspirations and invocations of 9/11.
• Someone was required to be rescued after falling into a sewer in Brooklyn (fuller post tomorrow).
• Langston Hughes' former 127th St. Harlem brownstone is being converted to a performance space.
• Brooklyn North criminal violence is up 64% over the last two years. A John Jay College criminal expert and neighborhood resident pins the blame on teenagers.
• A community group wants to respond to difficulties encountered with (more darn) kids by privatizing Manhattan Beach, which is maintained by the Parks Dept. Gowanus Lounge has all the details of heavy restrictions proposed for a popular seaside destination for city dwellers that can't afford shares in the Hamptons.

The state legislature in Albany is prepared to issue a formal apology for the historic practice of slavery and will be the first northern state in the Union to do so. Several states on the Confederate side of the Civil War have already issued similar apologies. Albany lawmakers are pushing to pass the resolution in time for "Juneteenth", which is an unofficial holiday celebrating the June 19th arrival of federal troops in Texas to announce the final eradication of slavery from the United States and its territories in 1865. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A stabbing at Canal and Broadway, a naked EDP in Brooklyn, and a car into scaffolding at 54th and 8th in Manhattan
• Interesting story about the state NOW endorsement for the Democratic candidate and the city NOW endorsement for the Republican candidate in today's special election for an Upper East Side Assembly seat
• The soaking NYC got from tropical storm Barry may have caused a wall collapse in Staten Island
• A twenty-something pair of designers (one from Japan, one from Brooklyn) won the competition for Gateway National Recreation Area's new design
• Would you pay $25,000 for Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver's fund-raiser?
• A new online magazine for the hip New Yorker who likes to fish (literally), aptly named This is Fly [Via Complex]
• A Brooklyn resident who recently graduated with honor from John Jay College has vanished in Florida
• Criss Angel emerged from his cement box in Times Square; eh, Blaine there, done that

Long before people cried out against 50 shots in protest of Sean Bell's death at the hands of the police, they decried 41 shots. We were surprised to hear that Kenneth Boss is still an officer with the NYPD. Seven years ago he fired five of the 41 shots that killed unarmed Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He was acquitted of murder charges by an Albany jury, along with three other officers who subsequently left the job. Other cops now call Boss "Kenny No-Gun" because the department will no longer let him carry one. Disarmed, he fills his days fixing tools and playacting as a participant in police drills. Boss returned from a seven-month deployment to Iraq with the Marines last year, where he earned a Navy Achievement Medal. Earlier this year, he filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD asking that it fully reinstate him and give him his gun back. He tried this back in 2002, when he filed essentially the same suit in a State Supreme Court, which eventually decided that the Police Commissioner had the right to determine which officers on the force could be disarmed. more ›

Congratulations to everyone graduating this month! As NYU's commencement was today, with speaker jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, we decided to list the many NYC commencement speakers, with help from The Chronicle of Higher Education (if we've missed any or gotten it wrong, let us know in comments): more ›

How much of an emergency is getting back to the Governor's mansion for a meeting between Don Imus and the Rutgers women's basketball team? Because the NJ State Police confirmed that Governor Corzine's SUV, which crashed last Thursday along the Garden State Parkway, was going 91 MPH, well over the 65 MPH speed limit. more ›

The city's murder rate so far has dropped dramatically. There have been 84 murders through Sunday, and the Post reports that's an "average of roughly one per day - an astonishing figure compared to the early 1990s when six New Yorkers were killed during a typical 24-hour period." For reference, last year, there were 117 murders during the same period. more ›

At 7AM, the three detectives indicted in the shooting of Sean Bell last November turned themselves. WNBC reports that Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora, and Marc Cooper will be fingerprinted and processed before their arraignment this afternoon. more ›

An apartment building doorman was stabbed outside the East 80th Street building where he worked. Police believe that 30-year-old Pasquale Esposito (pictured), was the unlucky third in a love triangle and arrested 22-year-old Steven Figueroa for the murder. Figueroa, who worked as a doorman nearby, and his girlfriend had broken up briefly, and the woman went out with Esposito during that time. more ›

The family of Imette St. Guillen spoke to the Daily News as tomorrow will mark the one year anniversary of her death. St. Guillen, whose bound body was found dumped near the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, was last seen at the Falls restaurant and bar in SoHo. The gruesome nature of her death - raped, stripped naked, and tied with duct tape - worried some that she was killed by a serial murderer, but then suspicion fell on an ex-con bouncer at the Falls, who was later charged with her murder. more ›

The NY Times has a nice profile of Amanda Burden, the influential Department of City Planning commissioner whose policies will shape the city for years to come. more ›

They say New York is home to a million stories, and so far this year, we've published 7021 of them here on Gothamist. So in case you missed any of those, let's take a little stroll back in time, and review the most significant stories the past 12 months, shall we? Here's part one of a semi-chronological look at 2006; part two will go up tomorrow: more ›