Hoboken disbanded its SWAT team this week after another scandal rocked the police department of the tiny New Jersey town across the river. A number of minority officers recently filed a lawsuit accusing a high-ranking co-worker of behaving like a white supremacist, regularly deriding minorities. Now the SWAT team has been disbanded days after photos became public showing the unit's commander and other cops cavorting with waitresses at a Hooters restaurant in Alabama. The Mile......

A sophomore at New York University was found dead in his Water Street dorm room on Friday night. The Washington Square News reports that other residents were told about the death on Saturday and that the university did not send out an NYU community-wide email per a request from the deceased students' parents: "The family has asked that they be accorded the utmost privacy, and the university will do its best to honor its wishes......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian struck on 11th Ave. and West 43rd St. in Manhattan, a shooting on 21st St. in Queens, and a shooting on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. Veteran political reporter Gabe Pressman weighs in on the wave of mortgage foreclosures sweeping New York and finds overwhelming evidence of racism. A privately funded program to encourage lower income and minority students to take Advanced Placement courses will pay cash for......

Yesterday, people critical of developer Bruce Ratner's massive, billion dollar Atlantic Yards project held the Third Annual Walk Don't Destroy Walkathon. And leading opponent Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn held a press conference asking a new question that goes beyond eminent domain and the size and scale of the plan. Now the question is whether the Atlantic Yards will be safe from a terror risk. Earlier this week, Newark Police Director - and former NYPD......

A student carrying a single shot .50 caliber rifle was arrested on the Queens campus of St. John's this afternoon. WNBC reports that the male student had the gun in a bag, as well as a President Bush mask. Also:Police sources said the man is a student of Guyanese descent who lived in a campus dorm. Sources said the student takes medicines for psychiatric issues and that police were investigating whether he had gone......

The police discovered the decomposed body of a 20-year-old woman at 4 Washington Square Village yesterday evening. WABC 7 says that the victim was last seen alive on Wednesday and was found "inside a locked bedroom." Neighbors had called the police to complain about a foul odor; the police are handling the situation as a homicide until they hear from the ME's office. NYU's spokesman John Beckman released a statement; here is some of it:“The......

Yesterday, the odd news about the NYPD's arrest of three men involved with an egg-shaped submarine near the Queen Mary 2, off the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, revealed that a Brooklyn artist was behind the whole benign operation. Police Commissioner called artist Duke Riley's stunt "marine mischief," adding that the "creative craft of three adventuresome individuals" did "not pose any terrorist threat." The NY Times describes Riley's intentions:Mr. Riley’s plan was also military, in a......

The police department has launched a citywide dragnet to find suspects who fired at two police officers during a Brooklyn traffic stop early yesterday morning. 23-year-old police officer Russel Timoshenko was shot twice in the head while 26-year-old police officer Herman Yan was shot in the arm and chest. A surveillance video showed that the cops were shot before they had reached the driver and passengers in the car. The Daily News' Michael Daly......

After two days on life support, the 56-year-old bodega owner, who was shot in the face during a robbery attempt, died yesterday morning and police continued their search for the group suspected of robbing a number of bodegas over the past four months. Police Commissioner Kelly said the robbers are "certainly" considered "dangerous," but Cruz's family wonders why the police didn't tell the community about the robberies. One of Cruz's eight children, Karina Cruz, asked,......

While 11-year-old Xochil Garcia is still being praised for her quick thinking and bravery after escaping and helping nab a man who tried to abduct her, some adults are upset at the law. Her parents, as well as City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., are angry that the suspected kidnapper, Bernard Mutterperl, was set free on $25,000 bail. According to court documents, 19-year-old Borough Park resident Mutterperl told the police "when he sees young girls, he......

With the Grand Theft Auto IV trailer circulating a good six months before the game's release, NYC officials are giving the thumbs down. The Daily News has comments:"It's despicable to glamorize violence in games like these, regardless of how far-fetched the setting may be," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. "The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers," said Jason Post, a spokesman for Mayor......

The Brooklyn Record points us to an article in the Brooklyn Downtown Star reporting there may be some hiccups in getting this whole Music Hall of Williamsburg thing off the ground: "Combined with the Galapagos Art Space next door, which also serves alcohol to guests, the two venues would offer roughly 12,000 square feet of bar on a block zoned for residential as well as commercial use. The Music Hall of Williamsburg - 8,000 square......

The City Council's Public Safety Committee is discussing a number of new proposals to crack down on nightlife problems. The NY Sun reports that one of them would allow the city to shut down businesses like shops and bar "if more than one person is killed within a year." Another would allow the city to shut down fake ID businesses - including their legal fronts. Assistant Police Commissioner Robert Messner says that public nuisance laws......

You've probably have thought that blacks are stopped many times more than whites, but now there are the numbers to back that up. The Police Department delivered four volumes of statistics to the City Council's Public Safety Committee that revealed some interesting statistics about police "stop-and-frisk" searches. five times more people were stopped in 2006 than in 2002. (Last year, 508,540 were stopped; in 2002, the police stopped a little under 100,000.) And of......

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling that allows people between 18 and 21 years to buy spray paint and broad-tipped markers. Yes, the city has been trying to block the sale of things that might lead to graffiti for over the year, but the law was so nutty that District Judge George Daniels stopped the city's ban until the issue could be further looked into. Well, the 2nd Circuit wrote that......

Yesterday, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger sent a letter explaining the school's response to the incident where student protesters and members of the Minutemen Project got into an unseemly brawl during a College Republican sponsored talk. The full text of the letter is after the jump; here's the pertinent part about punishment:Third, there has been a comprehensive review of security at student events. In this case, an examination of the facts shows that Columbia......

Con Ed and the family of Jodie Lane, the Columbia graduate student whose electrocution death in the East Village stunned the city this past January, have reached a settlement: $6.2 million for Lane's wrongful death and $1 million for a scholarship to be formed in her name. Lane, a 30 year-old psychology student, had been walking her dogs on East 11th Street when she stepped onto an electrified area where exposed electrical wires had reacted......