Results tagged “onepoliceplaza”

Talk about an awkward business relationship. Former police reporter and Newsday columnist Leonard Levitt continues to visit Police Headquarters every week to gain sources and get tips — even though he was once banned from the building and had to rely on civil rights lawyers to regain his press pass. Levitt, who currently runs the website NYPD Confidential, isn't well liked by the brass at One Police Plaza. “His self-absorbed bitterness and inaccuracy remind me of the old biddy, an aging malicious gossip I knew growing up in the Bronx,'" Paul Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, told the Times in an e-mail.

With the NYPD's decision to close offices that daily newspapers and other media outlets have at police headquarters, the NY Times offers a mini-history of crime reporting: "Collegial, masculine in spirit, if not gender, and challenged in all matters of hygiene, the shack crew has for 146 years lived in the midst of the police, sometimes in the basement, sometimes across the street in a set of very grimy offices that inspired the name 'the shack.'" There are lots of anecdotes: When 1 Police Plaza opened in 1973, one reporter broke in the new offices "by using the drawers of his desk as an ashtray for his cigars"; rival reporters watched out for each other—"If a reporter’s telephone rang while he was at the bar, someone would invariably answer, 'Oh, he’s across the street.'" The Shack will be closed on July 31 while 1PP undergoes renovations; reporters can file stories from a conference room, but there won't be desks (or doors where amusing things are displayed). A former Shack reporter for the News, David J. Krajicek, told the Times, "If you’re there every day, you’re keeping an eye on the institution. Proximity does not necessarily translate to access, but it does translate to focus."

Earlier this week, the NYPD told the established press who have desks and office space at Police Headquarters (1 Police Plaza) that they'd need to vacate by July 31, due to construction and renovations. A few hours after that notice, the NYPD then decided the press could still file stories from a little-used conference room but would no longer have the desks. When asked about the decision, Mayor Bloomberg said, "This is not a First Amendment issue; this is a construction issue. We just don't have enough room." Though the NYPD says it will try to find the press permanent desk space in two years, the NYCLU accuses the department of trying to control the media; NYCLU spokesman Christopher Dunn told Newsday, "There's no question that the press is much better able to report on the Police Department if they can actually have their offices inside of police headquarters."

News organizations that have desks at NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza downtown were told they need to get out by July 31. Why? Because the NYPD wants to make room for a new Joint Command Center. [UPDATE: The NYPD has changed its mind! Update below.]

The NY Times highlights how, in spite of being many years away from opening, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum does have one exhibit in place: The 62 foot by 64 foot foundation wall, aka the slurry wall, from the original World Trade Center. However, the big challenge now is securing it.

The roadway has been closed to regular vehicle traffic since 2001; the NYPD asserts that it's necessary to protect its HQ from a truck bomb attack. Chinatown residents are increasingly frustrated, however, at the disruption caused by the closure of a vital thoroughfare. People who live nearby argue that the police department has placed a chokehold on an entire neighborhood and that if One Police Plaza is such an obvious terrorist target, perhaps it should be moved from a residential area. One middle school teacher said "I’m only let into my building at the whim of a cop."

Yesterday, the police arrested Francisco Torress of Queens, as well as Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom, in connection with the 1971 murder of a San Francisco police officer. Bell and Bottom are currently serving jail time for murdering two NYPD officers in 1971; while Bell and Bottom were convicted of the 1971 killing NYPD cops Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones, Torres and his brother were found innocent due to insufficient evidence. A SWAT team descended on Torres's home in Jamaica, Queens yesterday morning. A neighbor told the Post, "We thought he was a disabled Vietnam veteran. That's what he told people."

Last night, Trent Benefield left the hospital a week and a half after he and his friends were shot by police outside a Queens nightclub. His friend, Sean Bell, was killed while the third friend, Joseph Guzman, remains in the hospital with around 19 wounds. Benefield thanked the Reverend "Al Sharpton, the community, the community leaders for sticking by" him. And he told NY1 that there was "no fourth man," as police have claimed, in their car.

Back in August 2004, Gothamist applied to get a working press pass from the NYPD. This involved going down to One Police Plaza (exciting!) and meeting with the lieutenant in charge of the Public Information Office (a nice gentleman by the name of Eugene J. Whyte Jr.) The lieutenant explained that because of the Republican National Convention, it might take some time to get back to us. In the interim, we filed all of the paperwork (tax forms, letters of support from local magazines, newspapers, and photo agencies, printouts of the site, etc.) Then time started to pass. We called in every couple of weeks, but nothing happened.

Times Square will be closed to vehicles tomorrow starting at 4PM. Basically, the viewing sections start fillingn up starting at 43rd Street, moving up Broadway and Seventh Avenue all the way to Central Park. For more information about security in Times Square on New Year's, here's the official press release. And for more information about getting your party on in Times Square, check out what the Times Square Bid says.