Free Republic

Another high-ranking NYPD officer has been disciplined amid the wide-ranging federal probe into alleged police corruption, law-enforcement sources said Wednesday. Brooklyn South Borough Inspector Peter DeBlasio was put on desk duty after he refused to answer questions before a federal grand jury hearing evidence in the case, sources said. FBI agents also had gone to DeBlasio’s home twice to interview him, the sources said. Captain’s Benevolent Association President Roy Richter said he was surprised by the department taking disciplinary action against DeBlasio.

The head of the city’s sergeants union accused Police Commissioner Bill Bratton of hypocrisy Sunday and called for his resignation. “What I am seeing on a regular basis now in the NYPD lately is, it’s a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ attitude, and this is coming directly from Commissioner Bratton,” Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins said on John Catsimatidis’s radio show on AM 970. […] The union chief complained that everyone in the department was aware of ticket-fixing before that scandal broke and that it was part of the culture — but now that it has...

These are the guns and knives Mayor de Blasio doesn’t want you to see. A surging tide of weapons — including loaded revolvers, 9mm handguns, meat cleavers and daggers — has been confiscated this year from students in city schools, most of which do not have metal detectors.

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — More than a hundred people have been arrested in the Bronx in what authorities are calling the largest gang takedown in New York City history. Authorities are expected to announce charges Wednesday against 120 alleged members and associates of two rival street gangs.

n this case, however, the Google search on the slogan or hashtag allows the Propaganda Man to verify for himself that Al Sharpton did indeed tell his listeners, "I don't believe in marching! I believe in offing the pigs! Well, they got pigs out here! You ain't offed one of them!" and "I'll off the man. Well, off him! Plenty of crackers walking around here tonight!" The Propaganda Man can also verify independently that Hillary Clinton has made at least two appearances at Sharpton's National Action Network, where she praised Sharpton and essentially solicited his support for her candidacy. This...

After a successful attack on corruption in New York’s state government, the hard-charging federal prosecutor in Manhattan appears to have set his sights on New York City. Over the past few weeks, a series of loosely related public corruption investigations coordinated by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara have spilled into public view, with targets including high-ranking New York Police Department officials, the union representing city jail guards, and the political fundraising activities of several people with ties to New York City’s mayor. Already an embarrassment to the nation’s largest police department, it remains unclear whether the widening probes could do damage...

ALBANY — The head investigator for the state Board of Elections probed the 2014 fundraising efforts by Mayor de Blasio and his team on behalf of the Senate Democrats and found enough “willful and flagrant” violations to warrant a criminal referral to the Manhattan DA’s office. The Daily News obtained a bombshell memo state Board of Elections Chief Enforcement Officer Risa Sugarman sent to the board’s four commissioners on Jan. 4 recommending the referral. “I have determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a violation warranting criminal prosecution has taken place,” Sugarman wrote. “The violations discovered by this investigation can...

ALBANY — The head investigator for the state Board of Elections probed the 2014 fundraising efforts by Mayor de Blasio and his team on behalf of the Senate Democrats and found enough “willful and flagrant” violations to warrant a criminal referral to the Manhattan DA’s office. The Daily News obtained a bombshell memo state Board of Elections Chief Enforcement Officer Risa Sugarman sent to the board’s four commissioners on Jan. 4 recommending the referral. “I have determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a violation warranting criminal prosecution has taken place,” Sugarman wrote. “The violations discovered by this investigation can...

In the 1960s and 70s a war against cops began. It sprung up in prisons and on street corners of the worst neighborhoods in America. It was nurtured and strengthened in our prisons, mostly by Black and Hispanic men sitting around the yards of places like Sing Sing, Joliet, Chino and Walpole. The streets were so dangerous that by the early 1970s the New York City Police Department, my Department, was losing 10 cops killed by savage attacks each year. That worked out to 20 dead cops in a 24 month period; one dead cop every six weeks. As a...

The bad news has been snowballing for Bill de Blasio, what with the emergence of a federal probe involving, among other things, top cops in Brooklyn accepting diamonds, trips and more from two big donors to various appendages of his political operation and what’s now four separate investigations into a city-aided flip, again involving a wired backer of the mayor, of a Lower East Side nursing home for AIDS patients into luxury condos. I wrote last Sunday that “after this week, I’m losing faith that de Blasio’s horse trading is paying off for the city.” And it appears I’m not...

It was good that we did it. There was a mixup regarding meeting place that caused us to have fewer people than we should have had at five-thirty, but we eventually ended up with a bunch of stalwarts who were still there bringing people in from the sidewalk and yelling to drivers when I left at a quarter to eight. We followed the old freeper rule that a few protesters, or even one protester, is better than no one at all. One of the people in a video I watched last night said, "There are actually some pro-Trump people here."...

: In Brooklyn, a coalition of protesters, including union, Black Lives Matter, and New York communist party activists, has put up a barricade in front of a McDonald’s, although it remains open. A march started at Brooklyn’s Supreme Court, complete with a marching band and dancers. The protesters told Breitbart News that they were the same people out at 5 AM this morning, and they plan to be at Grand Central Station this evening.

Hillary Clinton and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio sparked controversy at an event on Saturday with a racially charged joke. Clinton and de Blasio were joined onstage by Leslie Odom Jr. in costume as Aaron Burr, whom he plays in the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. Clinton thanked de Blasio for his endorsement–which many pointed out came rather late in the game–and ribbed him, “Took you long enough.” The mayor replied, “Sorry, Hillary, I was running on C.P. time.” The abbreviation refers to the stereotype of “Colored People time,” and several people in the audience could be heard gasping or...

The Albanian Islamic Cultural Center in Tompkinsville was among several sites under surveillance in that neighborhood by the NYPD, based on a secret department report obtained by The Associated Press. (See full report below.) A tower and crescent moon are silhouetted by the sun at the Albanian Islamic Cultural Center in Tompkinsville. The NYPD targeted the Tompkinsville neighborhood within the 120th Precinct because it had seen a "high influx" of Albanian immigrants from Montenegro, Kosovo and a "small percentage" from Albania. The secret NYPD report said that "Albanian businesses" were concentrated along Victory Boulevard and included hangouts such as social...

As Bob Dylan told us long ago, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” These days, a foul wind blows from City Hall. With subpoenas issued, investigations spreading and at least one federal grand jury at work, the question isn’t whether Bill de Blasio’s administration has a corruption problem. The questions are how big is the problem, how many agencies are tainted and how high up the pecking order does it go? […] The two biggest and most recent scandals involve lucrative gifts and cash given to current and former top officers in the NYPD,...

Four senior New York City police officials have been transferred amid a corruption probe into whether officers took free trips, meals and other perks, and Commissioner William Bratton said Thursday police and federal investigators will “follow the leads wherever they take us.” “The public has an expectation of a high degree of trust and integrity in its police department,” he said. “This is not a particularly good day for the department.” The corruption investigation by the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau began in 2013, Bratton said in a statement. In early 2014 the FBI and Department of Justice became involved in...

While covering Occupy Wall Street’s “Day of Action” Thursday morning, Daily Caller reporter Michelle Fields and videographer Direna Cousins were struck by NYPD officers as police tried to clear Wall Street of protesters. “The police officers were beating the protesters with batons, and were also beating the media,” Fields told TheDC. “They hit Direna and me with batons. They hit other members of the press in order to get them to move out of the street.”

The NYPD is investigating the alleged attack in Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn. A transgender woman reported to police that she was raped inside the bathroom at the historic New York City gay bar Stonewall Inn on Saturday night. The 25-year-old victim told police she entered the bar’s single occupancy unisex bathroom when a man claiming he needed to wash his hands walked in behind her. He then allegedly groped and raped her, before fleeing the scene. The victim left the Christopher Street bar in the Greenwich Village neighborhood and returned an hour later, according to an NYPD spokesman. The victim...

One minute Yvonne Rosado was dancing with her pet pit bull inside their Bronx apartment — and the next, her dog was dead in the hallway, a city cop’s bullet in its head. A gruesome video captured the officer, responding to a domestic violence call at a neighboring apartment, pumping a fatal gunshot into beloved 4-year-old Spike. The pet’s devastated owner says the cop needlessly lost his cool when the typically pleasant pooch, its tail wagging happily, wandered outside before the Feb. 13 tragedy. “The officer just reacted badly,” a teary Rosado told the Daily News on Thursday. “I was...

The New York Police Department has been directed by a U.S. court to remove from its online records an investigation pertaining to the rise of Islamic extremists in the West and the threats these individuals pose to American safety, according to legal documents. As part of a settlement agreement reached earlier this month with Muslim community advocates in U.S. District Court, the NYPD will purge from its website an extensive report that experts say has been critical to the department’s understanding of radical Islam and its efforts to police the threat. The court settlement also stipulates that the NYPD make...