Free Republic

Two women were arrested after they robbed and then intimidated three tenants out of their Brooklyn apartment — and the crime was partly motivated by race and class resentment, law enforcement sources said. Precious Parker, 30, and Sabrina James, 23, knocked on the door of an apartment building on Ocean Ave. near Newkirk Ave. in Flatbush at 9:30 p.m. on Thursday and held a 34-year-old man, a 37-year-old man, and a 25-year-old woman at gunpoint demanding they move out or be killed, police said. The women then stole $800, an iPhone and personal information

A dramatic photo captured the moment on Friday when a Brooklyn mugging victim became a crime fighter — as she busted the punk who allegedly snatched her cellphone and held him in a bear hug for the cops. Clara Vondrich, 36, was taking a business phone call while standing in front of a Williamsburg coffee shop on South Third Street at 1:20 p.m. when the teen approached her with two pals.

MANHATTAN — American flags were removed from atop the Brooklyn Bridge's two towers Tuesday morning and replaced by white flags, sources said. Police, including the NYPD's counter terrorism and intelligence divisions, were checking surveillance footage from the bridge after images of the white flags hit social media about 7 a.m., sources said. "Why are there white flags on top of the Brooklyn Bridge?" City Council member Mark Weprin tweeted at 9:34 a.m. It was not immediately clear how the white flags, which are usually a military symbol for surrender, got there. Witnesses reported seeing NYPD counter terrorism officers heading up...

In a stunning security breach, the giant American flags at the top of both sides of the Brooklyn Bridge were replaced by white flags overnight, cops said. The two new flags appear to be American flags that were painted over white — the traditional symbol for “surrender” — and were flying Tuesday morning from both towers. ... The NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit will is replacing the white flags with American flags as they set up a crime scene

A Brooklyn man was sentenced Monday to 18 years ​behind bars for raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter — who kept the sickening sex attack a secret until revealing it in a college-application essay nearly a decade later. Albert Tarrats, 62, remained mum throughout his sentencing in Brooklyn Supreme Court, but prosecutor Anna Krutaya read a statement from his victim, who ​wrote that she’s still haunted by his monstrous crimes. “Getting closure and justice on this horrific situation is the best thing I could have gotten from this experience,” the now-18-year-old woman wrote.

From the In My Backyard Desk, some sensational news, via The Brooklyn Eagle: The Most Reverend Nicholas DiMarzio, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, will ordain 13 men to the priesthood on Saturday, June 28. This group of men, who have served for the past year as transitional deacons, composes the largest class of new priests in the United States. The diocese is thus helping to reverse a long decline in vocations that has led to a shortage of priests within the Roman Catholic Church.The ordination liturgy will take place at the Brooklyn DioceseÂ’s newly renovated...

Brooklyn’s courthouses are being rocked by the “Williamsburg Effect.” The influx of well-off and educated white people to trendy neighborhoods such as Williamsburg is rapidly “gentrifying’’ the borough’s jury pool — and transforming verdicts, lawyers and judges told The Post. It’s good news for prosecutors in criminal cases — and bad news for plaintiffs in civil lawsuits, they said.

Although he no longer lives in the borough, anti-gentrification spokesperson Spike Lee insists, "Brooklyn is still going to be inside of me." And he inside of it: Lee's Do the Right Thing may be immortalized in true NYC-style — with a street sign. Brooklyn Community Board 3 has voted to approve renaming the Bed-Stuy block of Stuyvesant Avenue between Lexington Avenue and Quincy Street, where the movie was filmed, “Do the Right Thing” Way, in time for its 25th anniversary. The City Council has the final say, and it could be tough. "It's a bit complicated, because the City Council's...

The NYPD has captured the maniac they believe stabbed two children in a Brooklyn elevator, killing one, by using DNA evidence from the murder weapon, police sources said Wednesday. Daniel St. Hubert, 27, was taken into custody Wednesday evening, three days after he allegedly killed Prince Joshua Avitto, 6, and severely injured Mikayla Capers, 7, with a kitchen knife at the Boulevard Houses on Schenck Avenue. St. Hubert is a convicted felon who was released from prison nine days before he ambushed the youngsters in their East New York building on Sunday. Not long before his capture, Mayor de Blasio...

When Barack Obama leaves office on January 20, 2017, he’ll need a new place to live. And like the race to succeed him as president, as absurd as it sounds this far out, there’s already a front-runner: According to Politico, Obama just can’t stop talking about moving back to New York City, where he lived as a young dreamer in the early ‘80s. “I just desperately want to take a walk through Central Park again, and just remember what that feels like,” the president reminisced at a fund-rasier in 2012. But his life after the White House won’t be all...

Rosario Socope, a Guatemalan immigrant in the country illegally, had an unwelcome surprise waiting for her when she attended a pretrial hearing on a felony charge at a courthouse in Brooklyn this month. As she stepped out of the courtroom into a public hallway, she was approached by immigration agents seeking to deport her. As her husband, her social worker and one of her lawyers looked on aghast, the agents hauled her away. The encounter was only the most recent in a long series of such cases across the country that immigrant advocates and politicians say have spread fear of...

In the interest of furthering cross-culturalism, Presidential Medal of Freedom award winner/multicultural advocate/poet Maya Angelou once said that “[it was] time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” With that pluralistic thought in mind, why not begin that lesson with the story of an elderly Muslim immigrant from Pakistan living in Brooklyn, New York named Noor Hussein? According to prosecutors, 75-year-old Noor met his late wife, 66-year-old Nazar, in Pakistan, where they married before emigrating to Brooklyn. Clearly the honeymoon was over, because Noor, which means "light" in Farsi,...

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday morning that Etsy is getting $5 million from New York state to stay in Brooklyn, a pretty nice sum for a company whose CEO publicly acknowledged just weeks ago that it “could only exist in Brooklyn.” “A company like Etsy could only exist in Brooklyn,” Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson said during an April 23 appearance at a Brooklyn Tech Triangle symposium. “Almost all of our employees live in Brooklyn and our Manhattan employees are treated with scorn.” Etsy, which was founded in Brooklyn in 2005, plans to add more than 340 jobs by 2019 (a...

A man that police say was shot by officers after pointing a gun at them Friday night is now under arrest. Teddy Spann, 24, of Staten Island is charged with criminal possession of a weapon and menacing a police officer. The incident happened Friday night in Brooklyn. Police say a loaded .380 caliber firearm, seen above, was recovered at the scene. Investigators say three plainclothes officers in an unmarked car noticed a 24-year-old man tugging at his waistband at around 9:40 p.m. Friday near Malcolm X Boulevard and Monroe Street. Two of the officers approached the man and say he...

Rep. Michael Grimm (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) got some full-throated support from ally Guy Molinari and radio talk show host Geraldo Rivera on Tuesday. Appearing on Rivera's radio show on WABC, Molinari called Grimm "a great American" said he was certain that the criminal case against Grimm was a political witch hunt aimed at defeating the only GOP member of the city's House delegation. "There's no question about that whatsoever," Molinari said.

Staten Island Rep. Michael Grimm denied reports Tuesday that he had a kinky 17-minute sex romp with a woman in the unisex bathroom of a Brooklyn wine bar. The Republican congressman, who is single, said he didn’t score at The Owl’s Head in Bay Ridge on the Friday preceding the government shutdown two weeks ago. “I will not dignify this absurd distortion of the facts with a response,” the pol said, calling the accusations a “Democrat-led smear campaign.” A source said Grimm went to the bathroom only to check on the woman, who was upset. “It wasn’t 17 minutes,” the...

<p>If the Rev. Al Sharpton, the bigoted, anti-Semitic, non-tax paying race-hustling poverty pimp, had any credibility left, it just vanished.</p> <p>The beneficiary of a lifetime of passes from our race-conscious mainscream media, Sharpton ran into an outlet not afraid of him -- The Smoking Gun. They obtained material that exposed Sharpton as an FBI "informant." Sharpton, of course, denies that this constitutes "snitching." No, he says he "volunteered" to "cooperate" with the FBI -- and for the most honorable of motives.</p>

Marty Resnick installed his sculpture on the grounds of Kingsborough Community College before moving in 1975 to live off the land in Southeast Ohio. The origins of the scrap metal artwork puzzled faculty members for decades.Friends of an enigmatic artist have solved a Manhattan Beach whodunit that has stumped locals for four decades. A rusting sculpture on the campus of Kingsborough Community College has puzzled faculty members who long ago had lost the identity of its creator — if they had it to begin with. “When they were doing the inventory they had no record of the sculpture,” Kingsborough Art...

"Is this your car or do you know whose it is? Looking for the owner who potentially wears a lot of necklaces and enjoys San Pellegrino sodas. I didn't steal your car but I think my mom may have. It's a long story. I'll explain, but your car is safe and sound." When Nekisia Davis, a Red Hook granola maker, took a weekend trip to Miami with her friends earlier this month, she used her extra airline miles to fly her mother up from Houston to dog-sit. In addition to taking care of Ruby, Davis's Pomeranian mix, her mom was...

Eight middle school students were hospitalized after they were caught drinking booze out of a water bottle and an AriZona ice tea bottle inside a classroom, a parent and the Department of Education said. The seventh-grade girls were passing around the alcohol-filled bottles inside at William A. Morris Intermediate School, 445 Castleton Ave., on Wednesday afternoon, the DOE said. The water bottle smelled of alcohol, but the DOE did not say what kind. "We're going to really discuss this," said Makishan Brown, of West Brighton, mother of one of the girls. "I have zero tolerance about this." Brown said the...