After the Midtown violence on Easter night that prompted Mayor Bloomberg to call it a "wilding," the NYPD has "deployed a task force" to investigate the incident and "prevent further chaos," according to the Post. The paper's source said, "There's a lot of heat coming from Headquarters. God forbid there's another incident." more ›

Last year Vespa drivers were removing their license plates and scratching off their VIN numbers in order to avoid getting ticketed for illegally parking. Now the NY Post reports that motorcycle and scooter enthusiasts have formed a task force! more ›

A Suffolk County deputy sheriff shot an accused fugitive in Queens yesterday morning as a federal task force was taking him into custody. Charles Mitchell, wanted on a felony drug warrant, was being escorted by two officers to a police car in Cambria Heights when he "appeared to tug at the waistband of his droopy pants," sources tell ABC7. Mitchell had not yet been handcuffed, and it's unclear if he was actually armed. According to the Post, the officer who fired the round into Mitchell's lower abdomen is a 13-year veteran of the Suffolk County Sheriff's office and assigned to the US Marshals Violent Felony Task Force. Paramedics took Mitchell, 28, to Jamaica Hospital, where he was in stable condition. (The Post's source says he had jumped parole and was wanted for an attempted murder.) A witness, 62-year-old Patricia Humphrey, tells the Daily News that "the kid had nothing but a McDonald's bag in his hand. The man who did it looked stunned, too." more ›

Party's over, bedbugs. Today Mayor Bloomberg (heard of him? We humans call him the MAD DOG) has just created a Bedbug Advisory Board to take the fight to you. A veritable Justice League is forming, comprised of the best and brightest in pest management, entomology, and... Consumer Affairs. And come nine months from now, these geniuses are going to report their findings to the mayor, and who knows what they'll recommend? Everything's on the table—even DDT. Well, probably not, but if you're a bedbug who's smart enough to be reading this on the internet, there's nothing we can do to stop you at this point anyway. (Not really a joke, NYC bedbugs have been mutating into unstoppable super insects.) The creation of the Advisory Board, which mirrors steps taken by other bedbug-infested cities, came out of a City Council hearing on the blood sucking fiends last month. And with an increasing number of New Yorkers plagued by the resilient pests, we're not waiting around for the government to take action: we're releasing the hounds. more ›

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... more ›

Tomorrow, a new state task force will convene to talk about the threat of mold to the health of New Yorkers and what can be done about it. The New York State Toxic Mold Task Force was formed at the urging of health experts, who are concerned that there isn't enough being done to combat an organism that wrecks properties and endangers the lives of tenants and homeowners. According to state senator Liz Kreuger representing... more ›

Marko Perkovic (known as Thompson on stage, portrayed by Kitler at right) is coming to town, and the protesters are awaiting -- with good reason. The Croatian rock star is known for nostalgically warbling for the Ustaša regime and glorifying the Nazis in his songs, and we can't imagine his anti-Semitism sing-a-longs are going to be very popular here in New York. The musician isn't all about the controversial topics (though it does get him lots of publicity), he also croons tunes about God and family. Can these lighter topics balance out his glorification of war and his nation's Nazi past? No...but he'll be bringing his full set for two shows to the Croatian Center in Midtown next month anyway.

In past concerts, he has performed an anthem of the country's Nazi-backed military regime — the Ustaša — that references extermination camps where tens of thousands of Jews, Serbs, and Gypsies were killed during World War II. He greets adoring crowds with a famous Ustaša slogan — and many respond with the Nazi salute. more ›

The Bronx DA's office is investigating Ralph Reyes, a Bronx man who was singled out by the New York Post last week as the center of New York City's dogfighting world. The Post was acting on information provided by the Humane Society of the United States, which has an Animal Fighting Task Force that investigated Reyes and dogfighting in the city, but abandoned its project when it was unable to get much cooperation from local law enforcement. more ›

The Giants are heading south to play Atlanta this evening and the Falcons won't have their star quarterback, after Michael Vick was caught running a dogfighting ring out of his Virginia home. It turns out that New York City might be the nation's dogfighting capital though. The New York Post reported yesterday that Bronx resident Ralph Reyes runs an unlicensed kennel out of the basement of a residential walk-up building on Valentine Ave. That's where he allegedly breeds and supplies American Pit Bull Terriers for fights to the death. more ›

Ah, City Councilman Peter "I hate graffiti" Vallone weighs in on the chalk "graffiti" made by 6-year-old Natalie Shea on her home's front stoop. Back in 2005, Vallone introduced the law that requires property owners to clean up graffiti, so when a neighbor called 311 to complain about Natalie's drawings (again, mind you, on her own stoop, not a neighbor's stoop), her parents got a warning letter from the Department of Sanitation. more ›

investigation by the Hate Crimes Task Force. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a possible abduction at the Mobil gas station off the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, a suspicious death on Cornelia St. in Queens, and a pedestrian struck at Buffalo St. and Hylan Blvd. on Staten Island.
• The Dept. of Buildings declined to revoke permits for Donald Trump's planned 46-story Trump SoHo "hotel" on Spring St. near the Holland Tunnel.
• A State Bridge Task Force completed its inspection of New York's 49 steel deck-truss bridges and found them all to be structurally sound. Still, a bill before the Senate to boost federal spending on bridge maintenance would direct 10% of a $1 billion increase, or $100 million, to New York State.
• A Coast Guard vessel conducting a routine homeland security patrol came upon a 27-year-old man treading water without a life jacket about 400 yards southeast of Staten Island's South Beach.
• Gridskipper has a guide to establishments that brew, distill, and ferment all kinds of potent potables right here in NYC.
• The Gowanus Lounge reports that an F train express line could arrive as early as next year. Or maybe around 2012 or early 2013.
• The New York Times describes the run of the vintage six-car 'A' train yesterday on the line's 75th anniversary.
• IvyGate reports that bars surrounding Columbia University will all be getting ID scanners to keep out underage patrons, and Columbia itself will be picking up the tab for the devices.

Last November, a 22-year NYPD veteran who was fired after failing a drug test - because his wife put pot in the meatballs - was waiting to hear whether Police Commissioner Ray Kelly would reinstate him. Many months later, Kelly has given his word: Anthony Chiofalo remains fired. more ›

While the jury is still out on whether Mayor Bloomberg's improvements to the public school system have really worked, he, along with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and School Chancellor Joel Klein, announced new initiatives to help middle schools improve academic performance and provide better resources for students, parents, and teachers alike - plus $5 million to fund them. The money will go to the 50 lowest-performing middle schools, so they can staff up with guidance counselors, offer mentoring programs to less experienced supervisors, and offer Regents-level classes. more ›

We know July 4th is around the corner when we hear about the police seizing caches of illegal fireworks. Yesterday, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced "one of the largest fireworks seizures" in city history: 9,000 pounds of fireworks were found in Sheepshead Bay. Newsday reports that the fireworks included "mortar shells typically used in professional displays, as well as something called the 800-Shot Grand Finale Saturn Missile Battery, which is as big as a small table." more ›

Yesterday, ACT UP members and others protested in Times Square to denounce the U.S. military, with particular focus on Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staffs General Pace's remarks about homosexuality being immoral. Andres Duque at Blabbleando has a great post on the protest as well some some nice photographs - check out activist Larry Kramer stirring things up again! Also see Towleroad's coverage. more ›

Score one for the Mayor's Anti-Graffiti Task Force: The NYPD arrested 34 year old Patrick McCormick, tag Map, yesterday. McCormick was on the NYPD's 50 "Worst of the Worst" graffiti vandals list. The thing is, McCormick was arrested after smashing the window of an A train in front of a police officer, who was behind him. It was on Saturday afternoon, near the Beach 98th Street stop in Rockaway. The police suspect that McCormick was trying to destroy a rival's tag, but the head of the transit bureau James Hall said, "He broke the window so we weren't able to determine that for sure." more ›

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 that in the summer of 2005, she cooked up two separate pots of meatballs and laced them with weed so her husband would test positive and get booted from the force. more ›

more ›

The NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating why 28 year old black man ran into the Belt Highway, where he was hit by a car. Eyewitnesses say that two white men "struggled with" and "forced" Michael Sandy into traffic on Sunday night. Given that Sandy's race and the fact he was in Plumb Beach, a gay cruising area off the highway, the police have been investigating the incident as a possible hate crime. The Post has this account:

At about 9:40 p.m., he was confronted by two young white men, who began looking through the interior of the vehicle before Sandy ran off toward the Belt, witnesses told cops. more ›

more ›

- Wright would give Kenneth Daniels cash in $100 bills and quarters. $667,722 in hundreds and quarters! more ›

Nice work, NYPD. The Post is reporting that an al Qaeda expert from the FBI the police department hired has quit before he even started! Daniel Coleman, a former FBI agent who CNN called the "al Qaeda hunter", was hired ostensibly to bolster the NYPD's anti-terror efforts. But when Coleman asked the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence David Cohen if he spoke to the detectives on the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force, things when fubar. Here's how the Post explains it:

more ›

We're pretty sure that City Councilman Peter Vallone has a rolodex of statements ready to give whenever there's a graffiti arrest in Queens, but this is the first time Gothamist has heard Queens DA Richard Brown weigh in on graf. With the arrests of two men for "criminal mischief and making graffiti", Brown said, "City officials and anti-graffiti activists have done a remarkable job over the years in cleaning up New York City's image as a graffiti-scarred city. We cannot allow vandals to mar the beauty of our city and return us to the days when our transit system and our highways and buildings were covered with graffiti." According to AM New York, Peter Korolis used the tag Kaspo and may face up to 4 years in jail while Kevin Varela, who tagged under "Toon 84" (his stuff can be seen in Queens and Brooklyn), faces up to 1 year. more ›

Happy Fat Tuesday! To help you celebrate it up here LIFEbeat Presents the Manhattan Mardi Gras. The proceeds will go to NO/AIDS Task Force. The New Orleans based AIDS service organization was virtually wiped out by hurricane Katrina. So even if we're in the Big Apple, we can help out the Big Easy. more ›

Terror tips can count: The NYPD and FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force let London authorities know about Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the men who bombed a London Underground station last summer, before the bombings. British authorities may have not kept on Khan's trail because he didn't seem to be part of a radical group, and Senator Charles Schumer is alikening this missed opportunity to our country ignoring that memo that said bin Laden wanted to attack us. more ›

- Awesome truck photographs from lucky dog on Flickr more ›

The Daily News has facts and figures from the NYPD's "war against graffiti". There's been a 93% jump in graffiti busts versus last year; might it be because police coordinators received digital cameras to document new tags? And did you know there's a computer program called "Graffitistat," much like Compstat which records major crimes? There's a quote from City Councilman Peter Vallone, the biggest graffiti hater in City Hall (this side of Mayor Bloomberg), and most of the apprehended seem to be young. One professional graffiti artist, Ki Soung, tells the Daily News, "They don't know how to get permission and they don't care. They do it overnight and they disappear. It's not right." more ›

The NY Times looks at the "cat and mouse game" between the graffiti artists and the police. There are a couple factions: Those who fly under the radar to tag illegally, the taggers who go "legit" and take commercial commissions, and the police who try to stop the illegal taggers. The Mayor upped the ante by forming the anti-graffiti crime unit (the Mayor's Anti-Graffiti Task Force) earlier this year, and one graffiti writer, Ray (tag: PRIZ), told the Times, "When the 'goon squad' first started cracking down, a lot of people went out there with the attitude, 'We're going to get over tonight.' So of course, they got caught." The police are keeping tabs on graffiti websites, even as the taggers "map out targets and plot escape routes...go out exclusively at night, favoring rooftops and boarded-up buildings that aren't likely to be painted over quickly, if at all." While the NYPD says it's one of the most expansive anti-graffiti programs in the country, we doubt graffiti (or street art, for that matter) can be held down, as it's a natural response to life that's been around for thousands of years. For any mayor to successfully rid a city of graffiti, the city would need to be burned down. Anyway, ee can sense City Councilman Peter Vallone's office immediately issuing a press release that's picked up by the Daily News where he blasts the Times for giving the taggers coverage! more ›

The Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested five Egyptian men in Newark, NJ for having "maps of the New York City subway system and video of New York landmarks," plus train schedules and $8,000 in cash. Hmm, that could be the mark of a tourist, but if the video of the landmarks doesn't have people wearing goofy Statue of Liberty headpieces or posing with the wax figures outside of Madame Tussaud's, then, yeah, that's pretty strange. ABC News reports that one of the suspects told the authorities the maps were for his new job as a street vendor, as well as the fact that he was the only person the apartment, but then authorities found a few other men in a search. This comes as the Daily News reveals the MTA keep files on people who are "stopped or questioned for filming or photographing bridges and tunnels." One source said most people let authorities see what they had filmed, saying, "Most of the time they show us the images right there because they are tourists." more ›