(Photo: Nicole Disser)
NYPD Captain Peter Rose caused a stir last week when, addressing a rise in Greenpoint sex attacks, he seemed to tell DNAinfo that the NYPD was less worried about so-called acquaintance rape and more concerned with so-called stranger rapes: “Those are the troubling ones. That person has, like, no moral standards,” he said. Acquaintance rapes, on the other hand, are “not total-abomination rapes where strangers are being dragged off the streets,” Rose was quoting as saying.
(Photo: Susan Keyloun)
On Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office revealed plans for an expansion of the NYPD’s Neighborhood Coordination Officers program. Two patrol areas in the downtown area– including the 9th precinct on the Lower East Side and the Housing Bureau’s PSA 4 in the East Village– are among a dozen new locations where the NYPD will apply its latest neighborhood-based policing strategies which they say will allow police officers to work more closely with the community and identify special concerns.
(Photo: Arielle Castillo via Twitter)
Gunfire stopped an MTA bus in its tracks as it was driving through Bushwick this afternoon, and sent a passenger to the hospital.
(Screenshot via YouTube)
The Mayor signed a series of laws today criminalizing K2, part of the City’s continuing effort to crack down on the use and sale of synthetic marijuana. The drug, which Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bratton both referred to as “poison,” is a liquid substance manufacturers spray on herbs. It has been marketed as incense, spice and, perhaps the most hilarious departure from its actual use, bath salts.
The intersection at Myrtle-Broadway in Bushwick is K2 central (Photo: Nicole Disser)
“I have a really high tolerance for people doing stuff on the street,” said G Lucas Crane, a member of the Silent Barn collective. “I’m from Brooklyn, I just wanna see people do their thing, I don’t want to call anybody out– but when it gets to this level of saturation, the community needs to do something about it.”
The Silent Barn sits just a block from the intersection of Myrtle-Broadway, a hotbed for K2 and other synthetic cannabinoids that have been targeted by city officials. Now, a coalition led by Council Member Antonio Reynoso is bringing a new kind of attention and care to this bustling but problematic corner.
Police search for weapon near scene of crime. (Credit: Matt Coch)
Three people were shot, one fatally, shortly before 8 a.m. today in Bushwick. A 53-year-old man was found dead near the corner of Knickerbocker Avenue and Grattan Street with gunshots in his torso, a police spokesperson told Bedford + Bowery. A 57-year-old man was wounded in the torso. A bullet also grazed the hip of a 13-year-old girl as she walked to school, the police said. Authorities are looking for three Hispanics in their mid-20s.
(Photo: Jaime Cone)
Bitter blasts from Old Man Winter failed to put a freeze on crime in the NYPD’s 9th precinct. The East Village experienced spikes in felony assaults, grand larcenies and robberies over 28 days starting in the last week of January when compared to the same period last year, according to Deputy Inspector Peter J. Venice, the precinct’s commanding officer.
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Deputy Inspector John G. Cappelmann (Photo: Mary Reinholz)
Crime in the NYPD’s 9th precinct dropped by a “significant” 21% over the past 28 days compared to the same time frame from last year, says Deputy Inspector John G. Cappelmann. Cappelmann, the commanding officer of the precinct, which encompasses the East Village and parts of LES, delivered the good news at last night’s monthly Community Council meeting. He did not, however, cite New York’s brutal winter weather as a reason.
The perp as rendered by his victim.
As you can probably tell from the fact that you’re reading words I’ve put on a page, I’m a writer. And if you know something about the state of writers in general, and in New York in particular, then you know I’m poor. Luckily for me and the city’s taxpayers, I’m not yet food-stamp poor (I checked, I don’t qualify), but I’m cash strapped enough that if I’m out to dinner with a friend, I’ll make sure she pays the extra dollar she owes instead of splitting the check down the middle — because, after all, that’s why I got the PBR and not the glass of house wine.
All of this is to say that I can’t afford to just hand out money to strangers on the street, especially when it comes in the form of paper and not coins. Yet, despite the fact that I’ve lived in New York off-and-on for more than 12 years, that is exactly what I did a couple of weeks ago. I handed $30 to a scam artist.
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It’s been clear since the political ads started airing in August: New York City is in a ‘fromance with Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio. And with a 54-point lead in the latest poll, the Public Advocate is slated to be our next mayor. If the winner seems to be in the bag, will people still turn up to cast their vote?
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