Results tagged “policeplaza”

And by "you," we mean New York's Finest. Reader Graham tipped us off to a empty storefront at Grand and Crosby that has been wrapped in this Albuquerque Police Department recruiting ad; he sent the picture and said, "It pretty much speaks for itself." Sure does - it tells us there was no empty ad space right across from 1 Police Plaza.

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."

We started the morning with some Giuliani-9/11 news, so here's some end-of-the-day Giuliani-9/11 musings. There's an awesome update to one of our favorite Rudy Giuliani stories - the story, or mystery, of why was the Office of Emergency Management's emergency center placed at 7 World Trade Center. Here's how it goes:

Yesterday afternoon, demonstrators protested the Queens grand jury indictments of three police officers in the November 2006 shooting of Sean Bell. Marchers, who walked from Union Square to 1 Police Plaza, were upset that only three of the five officers who shot at Bell and his two friends, all of them unarmed, were indicted.

Rikers inmate David Brown who engaged a hit man to behead Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and blow up police headquarters was arraigned on charges of criminal solicitation yesterday. Brown, with a long rap sheet - 14 felonies out of 30 convictions - mentioned that he wanted to kill Kelly to another inmate, who called in a tip to the Crimestoppers tipline. When an NYPD detective posed as a hit man and spoke to Brown, the inmate indicated he'd pay $15,000 to behead Kelly and between $50,000 and $150,000 to put bomb outside 1 Police Plaza. Brown said he wanted to kill Kelly because he was frustrated with the Commissioner's inaction during the Sean Bell shooting aftermath.

Yesterday, the NYPD revealed a plan hatched by a Rikers inmate to kill Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and place a bomb at 1 Police Plaza. David Brown, an ex-con who is in jail because he violated his parole by "disobeying an order of protection against his ex-wife" (he tried to kill her in 2001), told an undercover cop posing as a hit he was "fed up with the case where the guy got shot 50 times," referring to Sean Bell. Brown allegedly added the shooting "got me frustrated to the point where I want [Commissioner Kelly] murdered." Other things the 400-pound inmate said: "I want his head chopped off" and "I want them to feel like I'm a motherf------ terrorist."

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.

+ And happy 102nd birthday, NYC Subway! You don't seem a day over 85!

- Every group of 35 of more pedestrians must obtain a permit and approved route from the NYPD or would be subject to arrestWhile it's clear that this is an effort to screw over protests and Critical mass rides, we'd doubt the NYPD breaks up the groups of tourists gumming up the streets in their packs!

The much-ballyhooed $11 million Real Time Crime Center, the NYPD's hub that has computers and the latest technology tracking and processing criminals, went down went down yesterday, because of a software upgrade problem! Guess the $11 million didn't buy a better backup system for such cases. Newsday reports that while 911 wasn't compromised, the downtime "delay the inputting of arrest and crime reports for several hours." As in, criminals couldn't be processed at the precincts (they had to go to central booking) and background checks couldn't be conducted at the usual computers (police had to go to central booking or 1 Police Plaza). The NYPD says that the problem was caused by Verizon's SONET ring architecture, which sounds about right given our experience with shoddy Verizon high-speed Internet access at work.

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.

The Post ends its article about the suicide with "Suicides on the Brooklyn Bridge are nothing new, but most people who decide to end their lives on the city landmark do so by taking a plunge into the East River."

Choire, if you're in locked up for contempt of court, Gothamist will be sure to have our good friend, Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy see what he can do. Oh, wait, he's not real...okay, we'll start a tip jar for your legal fund.

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