Police are hunting for a man who sexually assaulted a woman entering her Greenwich Village apartment building last week. The 23-year-old woman was grabbed from behind around 2 a.m. on September 8; the attacker beat and sexually assaulted the victim before fleeing. The suspect was caught on camera walking down the street in a gray suit and open-collared white shirt, and is described by police as a 35-year-old Hispanic man, standing around 5-foot-8 and weighing roughly 180 pounds. Below, you can check out a video of the suspect: more ›

Would-be subway bomber Najibullah Zazi had two pounds of explosives in his car when he drove over the George Washington Bridge on September 10th of last year, but Port Authority police waved him through after a "cursory" inspection of the vehicle. Now the NYPD is trashing the Port Authority police over the potentially catastrophic incident, reports the Wall Street Journal in an exclusive scoop nicely timed with the debut of their Metro section today. more ›

More than a month after 7-year-old Patrick Alford disappeared from a Brooklyn foster home, police are running out of leads to follow. Originally they suspected the birth mom, but she’s been cleared since passing a lie detector test. The foster parents were a dead end too, as were canvases of the area and thousands of interviews. Even a $12,000 has failed to turn up the lost boy, leaving investigators and relatives to fear the worst. "The boy's not here - he's not here!" yelled Alford’s aunt, who’s been visited by detectives nine times. "I wish he was." more ›

Yesterday on her way from Los Angeles to New York, Rihanna was the subject of a random security search at LAX. The random selection had her out in the open stripping down to a T-backed tank top, and according to the NY Post, "it gave airport gawkers an eyeful of her body and the tattoo that runs down her back." The singer reportedly looked cold and unhappy. She's now safe and sound in NYC—performing at Hammerstein Ballroom last night, and slated as the musical guest on tomorrow's SNL. more ›

More than 85% of people stopped and frisked by the NYPD are released without an arrest or summons. But just because the police let you go, doesn't mean they forget all about you! The NYPD maintains a database of more than 500,000 people stopped, questioned, frisked, and released each year. And Councilman Peter Vallone wants the department to hit delete. more ›

Victoria's Secret held the New York portion of their National Model Search at Yankee Stadium this past Saturday, and the wanna-be Angels are now popping up all over the place. There were reportedly around 2,000 who showed up (some with wings)... but no word yet on who knocked it out of the park, or if A-Rod auditioned. more ›

Sarah Bunting is one of the many people who have put their September 11th stories online, and on the 8th anniversary she adds a little update to hers. First of all, she is looking for Don; she explains, "Don is a man I met on September 11, 2001. Don and I became 'disaster buddies,' and ever since, I've wanted to thank him for hanging out with me and helping me keep it together—but I haven't seen or heard from him since we parted ways late that morning." It was Don's birthday that morning (happy birthday, Don!) and he had just come in from Jersey City. Sarah says they "met in the lobby of the Bank of New York building, located roughly at Wall Street and Broadway. We left the bank together at approximately 11 that morning." She describes him as an "African-American man ... between 25 and 35 on that day. That means he's 30-ish to 40 now ... between 5'9" and 6' tall, and probably weighed 160-180 pounds. [He] is everything good and friendly about the world." Aw, so the search is still on after all these years, and she asks everyone to "do me a favor: pass it on. FB it, tweet it, whatever you got ... we gotta find this dude." Someone make a police sketch! And isn't it so strange to think about how there wasn't Twitter back then? more ›

Security guards have stopped searching bags belonging to people attending a biweekly movie night in Tompkins Square Park after a group of 15 activists protested Wednesday night. The Villager was at the scene, where critics of the bag checks had vowed to strip naked to ironically facilitate the security searches. Mercifully, it didn’t come to that. Josh Boyd, a co-founder of the free movie series, called off the search “because it was upsetting people.” Jeffrey Rothman, a civil rights lawyer who attended as a legal observer, sounded a triumphant note as audience members filed freely into a screening of Better Off Dead: “Rights that are not asserted wither away.” [Photo: Villager/Jefferson Siegel] more ›

Streetsblog points out a handy new website called Ride the City that’s beta testing a version of Google Maps integrated with ideal cycling routes. The New York City site lets users plan a bicycle commute from point A to point B in any borough, choosing between the “safest” route along as many bike lanes and greenways as possible, and the “fastest” route which lets you plot the most direct course by bike. All known bike shops along the route also come up on the map. more ›