Free Republic

The screaming tabloid headlines harken a darker, scarier time in New York history. “Four more murders in one night,” the New York Post wrote under the grieving loved ones of a shooting victim. The front page of The Daily News blared “Subway Crime Soars.” In reality, the uptick in violence is small. But even the perception that New York is suffering any sort of backslide into the violence-plagued bad old days of the 1970s has empowered critics of Mayor Bill de Blasio. De Blasio has assured the public that overall crime is down and that measures are already being put...

A New York man who sought help from a fortuneteller to fix a romantic relationship says she scammed him out of more than $700,000. Now the allegations have the Manhattan psychic, Priscilla Delmaro, and another person facing charges of grand larceny. The 32-year-old Brooklyn man told police he consulted Delmaro in August 2013 who told him that evil spirits were keeping him from a woman he claimed to love and wanted to be with who did not share his same affections, The New York Times reported ( http://nyti.ms/1dU288a ).

Why Police Love/Hate American Drug Dealer/Rapper Shawn 'Jay Z' Carter Brooklyn, NY - Marcy Houses - Hi. During the 80s-90s there were hundreds of Brooklyn cops and investigators who loved/hated Shawn 'JayZ' Carter and his crew of drug dealers. Thanks to Shawn and the anti-social activities his crew of teens/adults engaged in, including selling highly addictive drugs to his neighbors and shooting his competitors from the nearby Tompkins and Lafayette Houses, hundreds of thousands of dollars in police overtime were generated while investigating the murders, shootings and armed robberies resulting from the drug activity Shawn proudly raps about. Yup,...

Smash the patriarchy! New York police allegedly arrested two men for “manspreading” (sitting with their legs far apart) on the subway, according to a report entitled “That’s How They Get You” released by the Police Reform Organizing Project. “On a recent visit to the arraignment part in Brooklyn’s criminal court, PROP volunteers observed that police officers had arrested two Latino men on the charge of ‘man spreading’ on the subway, presumably because they were taking up more than one seat and therefore inconveniencing other riders,” the report states.

A Brooklyn teacher who was arrested in 2011 on charges of drugging and raping a middle school student is demanding that the city let her keep her teaching job, according to a new lawsuit. Claudia Tillery, 45, argues in papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court that she was acquitted of all criminal charges in April 2014 and the Department of Education’s hearing officer improperly used sealed evidence, DNA tests and the prosecutor’s testimony to toss her from the teaching post she's had since 1996.

Activists in favor of boycotting Israeli products at the Park Slope Food Coop lamented in an article the strong showing of Borough Park residents among the cooperative’s membership, which the New York Daily News on Monday said was basically a swipe at the local Jewish community. In an article written by boycott, divestment and sanctions activist Ann Schneider for New York online newspaper the Indypendent last week, the divestment proponent appeared to lament the strong presence of Borough Park residents among the food cooperative’s members. Speaking to her friend and “long-time member” Carol Lipton, Schenider wrote: “[Lipton] reminded me that...

On Saturday, a few dozen misguided marchers straggled across the Brooklyn bridge, demanding that more Americans be disarmed. Notice the widely debunked "120" school shooting meme in the sign. When you have to resort to easily disproved lies, your "movement" has no moral validity. Consider, in a city of 12 million, in the heart of the densest support for citizen disarmament in the country, in a legal regime that has stifled the right to bear arms with numerous infringements for a century, this morally bankrupt astroturf organization is able to attract, pay, or bully only a few dozen marchers.

Woman steals $10k worth of mini alcohol bottles • An aeroplane cleaner working at JFK Airport has been arrested for allegedly stealing more than 1,400 miniature bottles of booze worth US$10,000. Juanette Cullum, 48, of Brooklyn, allegedly stole the alcohol over a three-year period from American Airlines planes in Terminal 8, reports the New York Post. Police were alerted to the thefts by an airport security guard, and uncovered 1,429 miniatures bottles hidden in a wardrobe at Cullum’s home. On average, the 50ml bottles have an RRP of US$7 each on flights. But while the loot is estimated to worth...

The “homeless billionaire,” a world-renowned architect and the future of Brick City.Newark is building again. Yes, that Newark—the city in Jersey that burned after the ’67 riots, the one that helped to define “white flight,” that struggles still with almost impenetrable unemployment and homelessness and crime. That city is building. And here it all is—its past and present and future—pouring through Irene Hall’s floor-to-ceiling windows downtown: the whites and browns of the Old First Presbyterian Church, founded in 1666; haggard red brick facades with windows sealed off by cinderblock; the neon blue lights of Hotel Indigo, which opened last year...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) BROOKLYN, Iowa (CNN) - Hillary Clinton kicked off her Brooklyn, New York, headquartered presidential campaign on Sunday, but what she and her staff may not realize is that there is already a campaign HQ in Brooklyn. Iowa, that is. Standing on W. Front Street in Brooklyn, Iowa, is a nondescript building with a few small windows and red, white and blue lights outside. Above the door, the building is identified as "Campaign HQ," a company that is "Now Hiring!!" The business has little to do with Clinton, who currently finds herself road tripping from New York to Iowa for...

Do you ever feel like you didn’t make the most of your time as a 4-year-old? Like you failed to appreciate how awesome life was when “gift shopping” meant bringing home a macaroni necklace? Like you’d give anything to see nap time on your schedule again? Your inner child is in luck — but only if your outer adult can afford to enrol in “adult preschool,” which is an actual thing now. No jokes. Based in Brooklyn, N.Y., Preschool Mastermind is a one-month long program that purports to help grown-ups over the age of 18 “re-learn the basics and experience...

A New York City law firm known for filing class action lawsuits on behalf of chain restaurant workers is going after Dinosaur Bar-B-Que for what it says is the systemic underpayment of tipped workers like servers and bartenders. The law firm of Fitapelli & Schaffer said it has filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York involving all six New York state Dinosaur Bar-B-Que locations, including the one opened in Troy in 2010. Dinosaur has made tipped workers spend at least 20 percent of their time doing non-tippable work — like rolling...

Seven children, ages 5-15, were killed in a raging fire that destroyed a Brooklyn home early Saturday morning, law-enforcement sources said. The mother of at least three of the children, and one other youngster, were critically injured. The fire started at 12:23 a.m. in the brick home on Bedford Avenue between avenues L and M in Midwood. FDNY firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze while Hatzolah and other paramedics frantically worked to keep the victims alive. “Two of the children weren’t breathing when they brought them out. The firefighters were running with them down the street on stretchers,” said a...

The video shows a group of girls punching another girl as a cheering crowd encircles them at a McDonald's in Brooklyn. The young woman attacked at the McDonald's falls to the ground and is kicked and stomped. On Friday, police arrested 17-year-old Tilani Marshall and a 15-year-old girl whose name is not being released because of her age, said a New York Police Department spokeswoman. The girls face charges of robbery and gang assault in the second degree, and another person connected to the attack was arrested on Friday in Atlanta, she said. Atlanta police spokesman Ralph Woolfolk in an...

Maybe it is her short, spiky hair, or the cigarettes, which she gives to the men repairing the wiring in her Brooklyn apartment. Maybe it is because she swears. For whatever reason, the Rev. Ann Kansfield does not fit the stereotype of a minister. Not that she is worried about meeting anyone’s expectations for what a clergywoman should say or do. “We shouldn’t have to hide ourselves or worry about being judged,” Ms. Kansfield, who ministers at the Greenpoint Reformed Church, said. In her newest ministry, that self-assuredness is likely to serve her well. Ms. Kansfield, 39, is to...

The NYPD is investigating after video surfaced online showing a group of girls fighting inside a Brooklyn McDonald’s while dozens of fellow teens watch and cheer. The video, posted to Facebook, captures the Monday afternoon brawl at a McDonald’s on Flatbush Avenue in Flatbush. The footage shows four girls fighting with another teen wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt while throngs of bystanders shout in the background.The larger group of girls can be seen grabbing the girl in the blue sweatshirts, pulling out her hair extensions and punching her in the upper body. At one point, the girl in the blue...

Bloody pandemonium erupted in the Borough Hall subway station in Brooklyn Tuesday night when a retired correction officer shot and killed an apparently unarmed man who had confronted him on a No. 4 train moments earlier, police said. The man who was slain, Gilbert Drogheo, 32, and another man began harassing the 69-year-old retired officer as he boarded a Brooklyn-bound 4 train at the Bowling Green station in Manhattan around 6:30 p.m., according to police sources and a witness.

Sen. Velmanette Montgomery Worries Local Grocery Store Will Be Replaced With Boutique Market A Brooklyn state senator apologized Tuesday for remarks invoking the subject of race in a discussion about a Clinton Hill grocery store set to close – and the possibility that a “boutique” grocery store that could replace it. State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) was quoted in The Brooklyn Paper as saying the soon-to-close Key Food store should be replaced with a similar store, because communities of color have eat differently than white communities. “Supermarkets are an important part of the community. It’s an important amenity, especially for...

Three men living in Brooklyn were arrested and charged on Wednesday with providing material support to the Islamic State, a terrorist organization that controls large parts of Iraq and Syria and has been actively recruiting Westerners to its fight. One of the men was arrested early Wednesday morning at Kennedy International Airport, where he was attempting to board a flight to Istanbul and then planned to travel to Syria, according to the authorities. The men were identified as Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, Akhror Saidakhmetov, and Abror Habibov. ... (Excerpted per guidelines)

Two men saved a little boy and his teen sister from a Brooklyn blaze on Monday, scaling scaffolding at a burning apartment building and catching the children as they were dropped from a window by their mother. Davon Flunory, 20, and his friend Kevin Ravenell, 27, leaped into action after spotting Cipriani Lundy and her kids, 4-year-old Julian and 15-year-old Imani, screaming for help in the window of their smoke-filled third-floor apartment in the Eleanor Roosevelt Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “My first instinct is to call the Fire Department,” recalled Flunory, who was visiting a relative in the building when the...