The 144,160 parking placards registered in the city inventory have been reduced by over 25,000, Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler announced yesterday. The cutbacks are targeted at what many frustrated drivers see as an abuse of a system that lets police, teachers and civil servants park for free at meters and many off-limits areas. Initial cuts have focused on the 80,770 placards issued to 68 city agencies, exempting the 63,390 placards used by the Education Department.......

Turns out the number parking placards sloshing around New York is over 142,000, twice the number guesstimated by Mayor Bloomberg’s office when he announced a 20% cutback on the placards, which allow police, teachers and civil servants to park for free at meters and many off-limits areas. The new total does not take into consideration the number of counterfeit and expired placards, and the city is still not done counting, so this preliminary total is......

The police made middle schoolers cry! The NY Times has a great article about the mother lode of electronic gadgets that the cellphone police seized during a visit to Middle School 54 on the Upper West Side. While the police were probably more interested in weapons, since public schools prohibits cellphones and other electronic devices, the NYPD came up big. The Police Department was there to carry out a random sweep for prohibited items,......

You've probably have thought that blacks are stopped many times more than whites, but now there are the numbers to back that up. The Police Department delivered four volumes of statistics to the City Council's Public Safety Committee that revealed some interesting statistics about police "stop-and-frisk" searches. five times more people were stopped in 2006 than in 2002. (Last year, 508,540 were stopped; in 2002, the police stopped a little under 100,000.) And of......

Oh sweet Jesus! Doesn't the city have anything better to do than harass peaceful cyclists? It's only been six months since a judge ruled that the Critical Mass monthly ride didn't require a permit. Rather than comply with the judge's order, the NYPD has decided to simply change the rules. The New York Times reports: The Police Department wants to require parade permits for bicyclists traveling in groups of 20 or more, and any......

Tupper Thomas, President of the Prospect Park Alliance...

- The New York Times is sponsoring a welcoming party for the GOP, which will be a "Salute to Broadway." Mayor Bloomberg said this would be instead of "bad cocktail receptions" that are usually held. The Times, emphasizing their commitment to the arts (especially near their Times Square office), will be giving the 13,373 delegates and their guests tickets to musicals like The Lion King, Wonderful Town, 42nd Street, Fiddler on the Roof, Bombay Dreams,......