Paul Browne

The (Very) Earthly Pursuits of Rev. Calvin O. Butts III

Meet the reverend of real estate

Eyewitness: Police Shot Kimani Gray While The 16-Year-Old Was On The Ground

The only publicly identified eyewitness in the killing of a Brooklyn teen by two New York City police officers is standing by her claim that the young man was empty-handed when he was gunned down, and now says one of the cops involved threatened her life. In an extended interview with the Village V ... More >>

Ray Kelly, Mike Bloomberg Facing Stiff Test In Upcoming Stop and Frisk Trial, Starting Monday

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has served the city for 11 years. Mayor Bloomberg is in the final year of his third term. Next week, the legacies of both men will be tested in a major trial starting Monday over the city's stop and frisk campaign. The case is a class action lawsuit filed in 2008 calle ... More >>

Ray Kelly Calls For Grand Jury Probe Of NYPD Shooting Of Unarmed National Guardsman

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly today called for a grand jury investigation into last week's shooting of unarmed National Guardsman Noel Polanco by an NYPD detective.Kelly says there are still a lot of questions surrounding the seemingly unwarranted shooting, described by one witness as an act of "polic ... More >>

NYPD Shooting Of Unarmed National Guardsman Noel Polanco Described As Act Of "Police Road Rage"

The early morning shooting of an unarmed National Guardsman by an NYPD officer is being investigated by the Queens District Attorney's Office after a witness to the shooting describes the incident as a case of "police road rage."Noel Polanco, 22, was fatally shot about 5:15 a.m. yesterday after weav ... More >>

Woody Barrington, NYPD Detective, Penalized For Downgrading Robberies to Lost Property

The Police Department has taken 40 vacation days from a detective who was charged with downgrading robbery complaints and filing them as lost property in a Brooklyn precinct, the Voice has learned. Det. Woody Barrington, a 17-year veteran assigned to the 72nd Precinct in Sunset Park, lost the vacat ... More >>

Richard Breunich, JP Morgan Executive, Has Carte Blanche At NYPD Headquarters

A top executive at the investment bank JP Morgan Chase has special access to police headquarters, the Voice has learned. The mystery is why. Most of us regular folks have to go through a ridiculous security screening process just to get into 1 Police Plaza (a public building, by the way), including ... More >>

NYPD Called 'Provocative And Uncivilized' In Arrest of Ambassador

The NYPD's practices are once again being called into question, this time over the arrest of the ambassador of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It all centers around Gonsalves passing a police barrier Wednesday. According to a Reuters report, there's a case of he said, NYPD said, after another ambas ... More >>

Robert Borrelli, NYPD Sergeant, Adds Voice to Other Cops Citing Crime Victims Being Ignored

A Queens police sergeant, Robert Borrelli, has added his voice to other cops who say crime is being systematically downgraded throughout the NYPD. Borrelli says that he tried to report this downgrading by two commanders in a Far Rockaway precinct, but was transferred for his efforts. He also claims ... More >>

NYPD's Reporting Problem

Reactions to our 'NYPD Tapes' confirmation came like a swift billy club to the skull

Advocates Rally Against Arrests of Minority Students in Public Schools

Add this to the list of grievances activists throughout the city have with the New York Police Department. Protests of the city's surveillance of Muslims and the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policies have reached new heights in recent weeks. And today, activists are rallying around anothe ... More >>

The NYPD Tapes Confirmed

The report police hid for nearly two years that corroborates a Voice investigation — and vindicates a whistle-blower the NYPD tried to destroy

Black and Hispanic Students Targeted Unfairly by School Cops, NYCLU Claims (UPDATE)

​The NYPD took over school safety in 1998, and the New York Civil Liberties Union claims that cops have since abused their position, using their role to stop-and-frisk students. Today, the NYCLU released what's said to be the first study chronicling student arrest and summons data, and resul ... More >>

Jazz Hayden and the Fight Against Stop-and-Frisk

An unlikely activist's battle with the NYPD's frisky business

Ray Kelly, Police Commissioner, Has to Remind Cops to Take Criminal Complaints

More than a year after revelations in this newspaper and others media outlets about police under-reporting of crime complaints, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has taken the unusual step of actually reminding cops that they can't ignore civilians who want to report a crime. A department order issued ... More >>

285 Madison Remains Closed for the Week Following Elevator Accident that Killed Suzanne Hart

via Facebook​Following up on the awful elevator incident yesterday at 285 Madison that caused the tragic death of Suzanne Hart, director of new business at Young & Rubicam, the daily papers share portraits of her life and what she had accomplished in her 41 years, as well as a further look int ... More >>

Bloomberg, Kelly Finally Piss Off The Media; Furious Letters Being Written

The Bloomberg administration is being targeted by the media right now for the NYPD's banning and arresting of reporters during last week's expulsion of the Occupy Wall Street tent city. In a letter signed by media companies and press groups, New York Times lawyer George Freeman accuses the police ... More >>

Ray Kelly's Gulag

Get on the NYPD commissioner's secret list, and you're going nowhere

Occupy Wall Street: Actually Sort of Good for the Cops?

Along with Mayor Bloomberg's recent sentiments that "protests that are trying to destroy the jobs of working people in this city aren't productive" comes a slightly different, still employment-based, perspective, which is the NYPD's recent announcement that Occupy Wall Street has cost taxpayers $2 m ... More >>

Occupy Wall Street March Sullied By Violent Altercations With Police [Update: Ray Kelly's Response]

At the tail end of last night's Occupy Wall Street march from Foley Square to Zuccotti Park with major unions (and a guest appearance from Michael Moore), the facilitator of the Zuccotti rally announced a march on Wall Street. As it turned out, it was an unauthorized march, as we discovered when we ... More >>

There Will Be a Protest to Protest the Treatment of Occupy Wall Street Protesters

Occupy Wall Street is now in its 12th day. This morning brought another march on Wall Street. In other cities, similar efforts are springing up. And, there are now efforts to protest the treatment the protesters have gotten from the NYPD -- most dramatically and media-attention-getting, the pepper-s ... More >>

NYC Trash Can That Housed Improperly Discarded NYPD Docs Found in Trash

​Bucky Turco at Animal NY, who is either the most vigilant police precinct passerby (or, if you listen to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne, something of a dumpster diver) has noted on two separate occasions that the NYPD might not be discarding their police paperwork properly. In one case, the very ... More >>

NYPD Once Again Dumps Police Documents in Public Trashcan

via​Back in May, Bucky Turco over at Animal NY discovered a bunch of seemingly rather sensitive NYPD documents -- just a counterterrorism plan and whatnot -- plopped in a garbage can in front of NYPD's Manhattan South Task Force station at 42nd Street. He wrote about it (and so did we) hoping ... More >>

Autopsy Inconclusive for Sylvie Cachay, Woman Found Dead in Bathtub at SoHo House; Cops Seek Warrant for Her Ex

via Apparel News​Yesterday we told you about the mysterious death of Sylvie Cachay, the New York swimsuit designer found dead in an overflowing bathtub at The Soho House. Police are now seeking a warrant for Cachay's former boyfriend Nicholas Brooks, whom she's believed to have broken up with ... More >>

New York Mag and Other Media Offer Their Takes on NYPD Whistleblower's Lawsuit

​The word, reported here yesterday in Runnin' Scared, that NYPD whistleblower Adrian Schoolcraft was filing a $50 million lawsuit against the NYPD and Jamaica Hospital was picked up this morning by colleagues at other news organizations.

"NYPD Confidential" Offers Its Take on the Voice's "NYPD Tapes" Series

​Leonard Levitt, the highly regarded police reporter who writes the internet column "NYPD Confidential," offers his own take on the Police Department's handling of the case of Adrian Schoolcraft, the police officer who tried to report corruption and paid for it with a six-day stint in a mental ... More >>

NYPD Quotas leading to Civil Rights Violations, New Lawsuit Says

​The city is facing a new class action lawsuit filed by nine New Yorkers over the NYPD's use of quotas to get officers to issues summonses and stop-and-frisk people, court records show. The lawsuit, filed late last month in federal court in Manhattan, cites some of the quotations which appear ... More >>

Ray Kelly, Police Commissioner, and Brooklyn Councilman Al Vann Butt Heads Over 'NYPD Tapes' Series

​Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and City Councilman Al Vann had a tense exchange yesterday at City Hall over the fallout stemming from the Village Voice series, "The NYPD Tapes." New York Times police bureau chief Al Baker reports on the clash here. During a City Council budget meeting, Vann, ... More >>

The NYPD Tapes: Inside Bed-Stuy's 81st Precinct

Voice Video Shows NYPD Snapping Photos of School Demonstrators at Mayor Bloomberg's House -- Protestors Call It A Legal No-No

Civil Rights attorney Norman Siegel called a press conference Sunday, "outraged" that the NYPD was taking photographs of demonstrators at last Thursday's school closing protest in front of Mayor Bloomberg's house. He was responding to a story posted by the Voice last Friday, in which our video sh ... More >>

Queens Man Says Alter-Ego Killed Wife, Kid

​A middle-aged woman and her teenage son were found stuffed inside a bedroom closet with their throats slit yesterday, police reported. The woman's husband, Otto Herrarte , of Corona, Queens, allegedly told police at the crime scene that the killer was his alter-ego, Roberto, who lived inside ... More >>

Bloomberg's Public Info Approach: All the News We Think You Need to Know

Mike Bloomberg, mayor and media mogul, "is a big believer in transparency in government," he assured listeners this spring in a radio talk. This still didn't stop him from cutting the Mayor's Management Report, the city charter-mandated index of city business, in half, reducing its "indicators" --- ... More >>

Doh! NYPD Manages to Rankle Retired Cops With Logo Crackdown

The NYPD has somehow managed to piss off one of its most loyal constituencies by demanding that clubs made up of its own retired officers across the country stop using the department logo [as we do at left], the Voice has learned. In a curt letter sent to so-called 10-13 clubs from Arizona to Flor ... More >>

NYPD to Press: Fuck Off (Updated)

Police commissioner Ray Kelly has decided to eject reporters from police headquarters -- a move that ends decades of tradition and may be one of the most egregious assaults on freedom of the press and the First Amendment in years. In a letter dated April 10, Kelly told managing editors of the Times ... More >>

Bad NYPD Cops Only Get Tough Talk from the Civilian Complaint Board

When Cops Go Bad Does the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau Even Notice?

NYPD's Tunnel Vision

The Operation Lucky Bag subway stings were a bust, but now they're back

Cops on Steroids

Baseball has no monopoly on foul balls. The NYPD's own drug scandal keeps simmering.

Protecting Police Against Complaints

A new watchdog will have to confront a broken cop-complaint system

Seen Acting in Concert

The Hip-Hop Cops materialize in the West Village

The Game's Bad Rap

A never-ending tail with a twist: The Hip-Hop Cops follow their man but lose him in the end.

NYPD Busts Ass

Were police really busting a drug ring when it rounded up Mr. Black's colorful crew?

NYPD Lets Judith Miller Peek at "Still-Secret" RNC-Spying Documents? No Surprise: Miller Is Mum.

The Pat-Down Shakedown

Why the new bouncer-targeting nightlife proposals are little more than security theatre

Wanted: NYC Crime Numbers

Judge: City Can't Stop Critical Mass Ride

Inspector Flees Shooting Scene

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's Discipline Dilemma

Kerik: Yet Another Bad Trip

Coming to a Convention Near You: Scary Anarchist II

New York papers way, way lose their cool over protest of the Republican confab

Turf Wars

Mayor Bloomberg's latest objection to Central Park anti-war rally: it's just not safe