Free Republic

He went from tokens to toking. “Subway vigilante” Bernie Goetz has turned to peddling pot, cops say, decades after he pumped five shots into four black teenagers, skyrocketing him to national fame and infamy. The gunman, who divided the city after shooting four black teens in 1984, was arrested in Manhattan after selling a small amount of marijuana to an undercover narcotics cop Friday evening, police said. Goetz, who will be celebrating his 66th birthday next Thursday, reportedly chatted up the undercover female officer at Union Square Park at about 5:30 p.m. and “asked her if she wanted to get...

NEW YORK (WABC) -- A small helicopter drone flying high above buildings on the East side of Manhattan crash landed just feet away from a businessman during the Monday evening rush hour. Video he recovered from a memory card in the crash debris shows the drone twenty to thirty stories above the busy streets and crowded sidewalks near Grand Central Station. The businessman reached out to Eyewitness News saying he thinks the 3-pound drone could have seriously injured him had he taken a direct hit. He called police who took a look at the drone video, but did no further...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Something stinks in upper Manhattan. Residents claim skunks have invaded Inwood and Washington Heights, roaming the streets surrounding Fort Tryon Park and stinking up the neighborhood. “I tell my friends down in midtown or Hells Kitchen that there’s a skunk problem up here and they don’t believe it,” resident Mark Bailey said. “They’re in front of every building…they’re not just in the parks, they’re all over.” [...]

Earth has gained 19,000 Manhattans of sea ice since this date last year, the largest increase on record. There is more sea ice now than there was on this date in 2002.

An attacker pummeled a bus passenger so hard he smashed the bones in his face after calling the victim a “cracker” in Manhattan – marking the second time in two days that people appeared to be randomly targeted in racial tirades against white people, authorities said. In the latest incident, the suspect passed a 31-year-old rider on the M60 bus riding through Harlem, on West 127th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive, around 2:45 p.m., Friday, when he shouted the racial slur and punched the victim in the face, breaking his nose and eye socket, cops said. The victim...

The annual "Empty Sky'' lights, symbolizing the fallen Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, went on tonight on the Manhattan skyline.

The driver, who went by the name Afroduck, was fast and proud of it, using a dashboard camera to capture his wild 26.5-mile journey around Manhattan in 24 minutes.

A robber attacked an elderly woman after pretending to help her take pictures of her childhood home when she returned with her daughter after 73 years. Marjorie Ramondetta, 93, and her daughter Linda Reynolds, 65, were allegedly shoved down a flight of stairs in the building by a thug when they came back to the house in Washington Heights in Manhattan, New York. The man then stole the women's purses as they lay bruised at the bottom of the stairs, law-enforcement sources said.

Thanks to a little error on the part of the city of New York and a lot of blind luck, a Manhattan man pays the bargain basement rate of $1 per month in rent for his apartment. David Lieberman moved into the pad on Morningside Boulevard, an in demand section of up-and-coming Harlem, in 2006 and paid $2,100, market rate at the time for the two bedroom apartment. But since learning that the city lowered the rent to a buck for previous tenants while they waited for damages from a fire to be repaired, Lieberman has laid claim to the...

The Federal Reserves zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) and quantitative easing has clearly had an effect on the market. The stock market to be more specific. spxfedfundstraget Manhattan dwellers with budgets that would buy mansions in most of America are discovering it’s tough to find even a two-bedroom apartment in New York as the inventory of homes shrinks. The number of available units for less than $3 million — those generally considered nonluxury — has plunged by the most on record, creating a shortage that’s unlikely to be alleviated any time soon as developers focus on ultra high-end condos that...

Two of the men seeking to be New York City’s next comptroller touted their different backgrounds and experiences in an Aug. 1 forum in Laurelton, each saying his made him more qualified than the other to be the city’s next top financial officer. Democrat Scott Stringer is the Manhattan borough president and also served 13 years in the state Assembly. Republican John Burnett has spent more than 20 years in the financial services industry, including supervisory and management positions at Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch. Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who joined the Democratic campaign just prior to the deadline for...

What do northwest Washington, D.C., South Beach Miami and upper Manhattan have in common? Less than 50 years ago, the now vibrant communities didn't look much different from most of Detroit, says emergency manager Kevyn Orr—whom Gov. Rick Snyder tapped in March to revive the broken Motor City. This is what gives him hope that Detroit can stage a comeback. "D.C. in '91 was still burned out from the 1968 riots," recalls the youthful 55-year-old attorney who worked for 22 years in D.C., at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Resolution Trust Corporation, Justice Department and Jones Day law firm. "You...

In 35 years as Manhattan DA, Robert Morgenthau has gotten along with every mayor of New York -- except the current one. Mike Bloomberg, says Morgenthau, "doesn't want anybody around who doesn't kiss his ring, or other parts of his body." In a wide-ranging interview with the Wall Street Journal, the 90-year-old, who leaves office Thursday, addresses everything from his feud with the mayor to the international crimefighting role his office has played during his tenure. As usual, he pulls no punches: On enforcing economic sanctions against Iran and its business partners: "The president is smoking pot or something if...

Former WH communications director attacks GOP as intolerant over Ground Zero mosque ### Former White House communications director Anita Dunn on Tuesday launched a furious attack against Republicans who have criticized President Obama’s remarks on the Ground Zero mosque, labeling the GOP as the party of intolerance. “The Republican party as solidifying its reputation for intolerance in this year, for almost any kind of difference in American society, is going down a very dangerous long term road,” Dunn said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “They might see some short term things although I think the American people are better than that,”...

New York officials said alleged members of an identity theft ring used an electronic encoder and other tools inside a Manhattan hotel room to steal money from nearly 400 people who used credit and debit cards at a Mesquite gas station. The four suspects are accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the victims. Garegin Spartalyan, 40, Aram Martirosian, 34, Hayk Dzhandzhapanyan, 40, and Davit Kudugulyan, 42, were charged this week in New York in a 405-count indictment with various offenses including grand larceny and possession of stolen property, officials said.

A piece of landing gear believed to be from one of the planes destroyed in the Sept 11 attacks has been discovered wedged between the infamous "Ground Zero Mosque" and another New York building. The part includes a clearly visible Boeing identification number, New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said. The twisted, rusted metal part has cables and levers on it and is about 5 feet tall, 3 feet wide and 1.5 feet deep. The piece was discovered Wednesday by surveyors inspecting a lower Manhattan Islamic community centre on behalf of the building's owner. The spokesman said the inspectors...

Nearly two dozen defendants were arraigned last Friday in a Manhattan federal court for their alleged roles in a gambling ring for the fabulous people but missing from the crowd was reputed Russian mobster Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov who remains a fugitive as reported by Richard Behar for Forbes: "The feds call him a 'major figure in international Eurasian Organized Crime' who has been involved in 'drug distribution, illegal arms sales and trafficking in stolen vehicles.' In the current gambling case, he's accused of using his status as a thief-in-law (or vory v zakone) -- a select group of the highest-level criminals...

Some of Manhattan’s wealthiest neighborhoods are exploding in a wave of violent crime that hearkens back to the bad old days when people feared going out at night, according to NYPD data obtained by The Post. Chelsea, Gramercy Park, TriBeCa, SoHo and Midtown South all posted a frightening rise in rapes in the first three months of 2013 compared with the same period in 2012. Felony assaults in the usually peaceful West Village nearly tripled, the new crime statistics show. Greenwich Village’s 6th Precinct tied the Rockaways’ grimy 100th Precinct for the city’s biggest year-to-date overall crime spike. “We are...

When the state-imposed manager of Detroit, Kevyn Orr, starts the job on Monday he will wade into a city of crumbling neighborhoods where police fail to respond to some calls, arson fires burn out of control and residents scour charred buildings for scrap metal to sell. Except for the business district and a cultural area including a university, museum and some theaters, the city of Detroit, population 700,000, is in bad shape. Orr, a Washington, D.C.-based bankruptcy lawyer, will have the official title of "Emergency Financial Manager." But his remit as an unelected administrator will range far beyond money. His...

A crafty, millionaire identity thief will spend at least four and a half years in prison after admitting today that he paid waiters at some of Manhattan's fanciest restaurants to skim the AmEx cards of wealthy customers. Between 2010 and 2011, some 265 diners had their Black and Platinum AmEx card information stolen by waiters at Smith & Wollenski, Capital Grille, Wolfgang's Steakhouse and JoJo, all thanks to Luis Damian Jacas, who pleaded guilty on the brink of opening statements in his now-scuttled enterprise corruption trial at Manhattan Supreme Court. Jacas, 42, of Manhattan, paid waiters $500 per Black card,...