Free Republic

<p>Last week, Mayor Bloomberg scolded the NYPD’s critics, from The New York Times to the Democratic mayoral candidates. The mayor said that “the attacks most often come from those who play no constructive role in keeping our city safe.”</p> <p>The mayor is right — but there’s another threat to the NYPD’s crime-fighting success, too. We now have more retired cops than active police officers, and the multibillion-dollar bill for their pension and health benefits harms our ability to hire new ones.</p>

While the Boston Police Department responded effectively to last week’s marathon bombing, terrorism experts say that the attack, which killed three and injured more than 200, might well have been prevented had the perpetrators lived in New York City. It’s not just a question of numbers and resources. Yes, the NYPD has a vastly larger force—roughly 35,000 uniformed officers versus Boston’s 2,000—and a far larger budget. The NYPD spent $330 million of its $4.6 billion annual budget in 2011 combating terrorism, a staggering sum that dwarfs Boston’s police budget. But the 1,000 cops and analysts who work in the...

BROOKLYN (CN) - NYPD officers pepper-sprayed three little children, including 2-year- and 5-month old babies, because they thought the kids' mom jumped a subway fare, the family claims in court. Marilyn Taylor sued New York City, the NYPD and Officers Maripily Clase, Suranjit Dey and Jermaine Hodge in Federal Court, for herself, her three children and their father. Taylor claims that she and her kids were preparing to board a Manhattan-bound L train on Aug. 9. She was pushing her 2-year-old in a stroller and holding her 4-year-old's hand. The father, Dehaven McClain, carried the 5-month-old close to his chest....

New York – -(Ammoland.com)- A SWAT team in upstate New York is being mocked as an example of the difference between military and police training after an officer was captured peering through a backwards Eotech sight on his combat rifle. As users on Reddit were quick to point out when the image was 1st posted, the reverse sight makes it effectively useless. Users mocked the SWAT officers training and some went so far as to question the motives of some of the men serving in local law enforcement. The officer is using a ‘military style’ assault weapon with a close...

Serbu Firearms makes guns, including .50 BMG rifles. Someone from the News York Police Department contacted them: On 03/18/2013 01:24 PM, XXXXXXXX wrote: > Mr. Serbu, > > My name is XXXXXXXX. I am assigned to the NYPD Firearms and Tactics Section. I have been directed to research a new semi-automatic .50 caliber platform for my department. > > Two weeks ago I spoke to Deanne at your office regarding the possibility of obtaining one of your rifles for test and evaluation. > > If you would please get back to me either way regarding this proposal I would appreciate...

A fiendishly deceptive article about the New York Police Department in the New York Times has set back the cause of public safety not just in New York but nationally. A front-page story on Friday twisted a police commander’s exhortation to an underperforming officer to work harder against crime into an injunction to target blacks on the basis of race. The commander’s statements were captured on a tape secretly recorded by the officer and replayed last Thursday during a federal racial-profiling trial directed against the New York Police Department’s stop, question, and frisk policy. The officer had already joined the...

...a riot in Brooklyn tonight after young people started lashing out at NYPD officers. Between 60 and 100 rioters gathered around Church and Snyder Ave. in East Flatbush and threw bottles and other debris at police, witnesses said, following a vigil for Kimani Gray, 16, who was shot dead by two plainclothes officers over the weekend. ... Officers say the 16-year old began to adjust his waistband and started to act suspiciously. Gray then turned around and pointed a .357 caliber gun at them, according to police accounts. When the two plainclothes officers saw the weapon they responded by opening...

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,...

Alec Baldwin was involved in another confrontation with the media ... after he allegedly threatened to choke a reporter to death and hurled a racial slur at a photographer. -snip- Baldwin then turned the Post's photographer -- who they say is black and a retired detective with the NYPD's Organized Crime Control Bureau -- and allegedly called him "a coon," "crackhead" and "drug dealer."

Ehud Halevy, the 21-year-old Jewish man from Brooklyn whose beating by New York police officers was caught on videotape, has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the officers responsible for the attack. Halevy filed the lawsuit against officers Luis Vega and Yelena Bruzzese on Jan. 22 in Brooklyn federal court, accusing them of attacking him at a Jewish youth center in Crown Heights. The surveillance video from October showed one of the officers punching Halevy repeatedly in the head, while another officer struck Halevy with a baton for over two minutes. The officers, who were responding to an emergency phone...

They don't call 'em Devil Dogs for nothing. Youtube.com

An NYPD sergeant who rose to fame when she was photographed with President Obama during a 9/11 anniversary wreath ceremony last year was found dead in an apparent suicide at her Long Island home Tuesday, sources said. The body of Sgt. Stephanie Moses, 40, was found in her Baldwin home in the early afternoon with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, the sources said. The 17-year veteran was a member of the department’s ceremonial unit.

A photo of a New York City police officer kneeling down to give a barefoot homeless man in Times Square a pair of boots on a cold November night is melting even the iciest New Yorkers' hearts online.

Mayor Bloomberg has snubbed Borough President Markowitz’s impassioned plea to bring the National Guard to Hurricane Sandy-scarred Brooklyn — arguing that approving the Beep’s request would be a waste of federal manpower and turn the borough into a police state. “We don’t need it,” Mayor Bloomberg said on Wednesday during a press update on the city’s ongoing Hurricane Sandy cleanup. “The NYPD is the only people we want on the street with guns.” Markowitz demanded the National Guard’s help just an hour before Bloomberg’s press conference, claiming that the NYPD and FDNY are “brave — but overwhelmed” by all the...

Police: Mom Knocked On Man's Door For Help, Was Turned Away NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The search for two missing boys on Staten Island has ended tragically. The NYPD spent more than two days searching a marshy area off Father Capodanno Boulevard. The boys, 4 and 2, were with their mother trying to leave the area during the height of the storm Monday when their SUV hit a tree and stalled. Glenda Moore and her boys got out of the car and went to a nearby home looking for help, CBS 2′s Emily Smith reported. Moore knocked on a man’s...

A New York City cop allegedly discussed plans to “kidnap, rape, torture, kill, cook and eat the body parts of a number of women,” according to a felony complaint unsealed today in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The officer, Gilberto Valle, 28, was arrested Wednesday by the FBI and is scheduled to appear today before a federal magistrate judge.

The city's top cop says not enough is known about the shooting of Noel Polanco on the Grand Central Parkway last week Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said a grand jury should probe the death of a 22-year-old unarmed driver shot and killed by police after being pulled over on a busy highway near LaGuardia Airport on his way home from work last week. Speaking with reporters before the Columbus Day Parade, Kelly said not enough is known about the shooting of Army National Guardsmen Noel Polanco by an Emergency Service Unit detective and that a grand jury investigation will be...

The priciest real estate in New York is just a few inches of SoHo. A street vendor hawking cellphone cases was slapped with $2,250 in fines for selling from a table that stood 1 inch too high and 2 inches too close to the nearest store entrance. Alessane Fall — who lives in The Bronx with his wife and six children — intends to fight the three tickets he received from the same officer on Sept. 20 because, he says, city regulations are crippling entrepreneurs. “I don’t know why the city is giving out tickets, but we’re here just to...

An NYPD officer yesterday shot and killed an unarmed Army reservist as he went to pick up a drill after they stopped his car. Noel Polanco, 22, was fired at when he cut off the police car near New York's LaGuardia Airport, after they shouted at him to put his hands up, a witness said. Passenger Diane DeFerrari insisted Mr Polanco never even took his hands off the wheel and the police had acted out of 'road rage.' Tragedy: Noel Polanco, 22, was shot dead by a police officer as he drove two passengers home from the bar where he...

Tamon Robinson was in coma after struck by cop vehicle TAMON ROBINSON tried to outrun cops, but couldn’t. The 27-year-old coffee barista died in April after being struck by an NYPD squad car that began chasing him as he swiped paver stones in the predawn light at his Brooklyn housing project. Now his mom’s being chased anew, hounded by a collection agency hired by the city with a cruel final demand, the Daily News has learned. The city has ordered her to pay the $710 cost of repairing the police car that killed her boy. “We’re still grieving, and this...