REMEMBERING a FALLEN HERO & FRIEND… NYPD Officer Chris Hoban!

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May 032012
 

REMEMBERING a FALLEN HERO & FRIEND… NYPD Officer Chris Hoban!

 

 

 

 

 

Bio & Incident Details

Age: 26

Tour: 4 years

Badge # 25547

Cause: Gunfire

Incident Date: 10/18/1988

Weapon: Handgun; .357 caliber

Suspect: Shot and killed

 

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Officer Hoban was shot and killed during an undercover drug buy. During the operation the three suspects began to suspect that Officer Hoban and his partner were police officers. When they searched Officer Hoban’s partner they located his service weapon. Officer Hoban immediately pulled out his gun and a shootout ensued in which Officer Hoban and one of the suspects were fatally wounded. The other suspects were sentenced to 25 years to life.

Officer Hoban had served with the agency for 4 years. He was survived by his parents and two brothers.

Direct Link: http://www.odmp.org/officer/6554-police-officer-christopher-g-hoban#ixzz1tsZVGEhw

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4 NYPD Officers Wounded in Brooklyn Shootout!

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Apr 192012
 

4 NYPD Officers Wounded in Brooklyn Shootout

 

Police were called to the Sheepshead Bay home of 33-year-old Nakwon Foxworth Saturday night after he allegedly menaced some employees of a moving company

NBC New York News
By Jonathan Vigliotti
Monday, Apr 9, 2012

 

 

4 NYPD Officers Wounded in Brooklyn Shootout
NBC New York

Scene of shootout in Brooklyn early Sunday. Inset photos: Capt. Pizzano (top left), Officer Ayala (bottom left), Detective Keenan (top right), and Officer Granahan (bottom right)

Authorities say four NYPD officers were shot during a shootout with a man barricaded in a Brooklyn home, but all are expected to recover.

Police were called to the Sheepshead Bay home of 33-year-old Nakwon Foxworth Saturday night after he allegedly menaced some employees of a moving company. When they arrived, Foxworth ran into his apartment, taking his girlfriend and an infant hostage, police said.

The woman managed to escape. Six officers from the Emergency Service Unit team went inside Foxworth’s building and the suspect opened fire on them, shooting 12 times, said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

Detective Michael Keenan, 52, was shot in the front calf; Officer Kenneth Ayala, 40, was shot in the thigh and left ankle; and Officer Matthew Granahan, 35, was grazed in the calf, said Kelly. Capt. Al Pizzano, 49, was wounded in the face.

Ayala and Granahan were able to return fire, and they hit Foxworth in the abdomen.

Foxworth was taken to Kings County Hospital. His condition was upgraded to serious Monday morning. He was charged Sunday with attempted murder, assault on a police officer, criminal possession of a weapon and menacing.

Though the four police officers wounded over the weekend are expected to be OK, the spate of police shootings has rocked the department. Eight police officers have been shot in the last four months.

“All the shootings have a disgraceful fact in common: all were committed with illegal guns that came from out of state,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “And that is the case with nearly every shooting in our city.”

Foxworth had a small arsenal of illegal guns in his home, Bloomberg said. He previously served 10 years in prison for robbery and was released in 2010. He also served two years for attempted murder.

 

Direct Link: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Brooklyn-Police-Officer-Shootout-Barricaded-Home-Hostage-146581605.html

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FBI busts drug ring operated out of Woodhaven den

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Mar 142012
 

 

FBI busts drug ring operated out of Woodhaven (Queens, NY) den

 

The Queens Courier

By Alexa Altman

 

Photo by Robert Stridiron
Photo by Robert Stridiron

Twenty alleged members of a drug trafficking organization, centralized in Woodhaven, have been indicted for conspiracy to distribute heroin.

The ring, called the Perez Organization, FBI officials believe, operated out of a location on 87th Avenue and 78th Street and oversaw distribution networks existing in Nassau and Suffolk counties, as well as a storage facility in Brooklyn, according to the indictment and a detention letter filed by the government.

“The charges and arrests announced today [Tuesday, March 13] have ended the activities of an alleged heroin distribution organization whose members were drawn from a variety of backgrounds but were united by common cause — profiting personally while seriously endangering the lives of so many residents in our communities,” said Loretta Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

According to the FBI, members of the Perez Organization were responsible for dispensing over 20 kilograms of heroin, possessing a street value of around $2.75 million, to drug dealers in Queens and Long Island over the past nine months.

The arrests and indictments of these individuals were the end result of a nine-month-long investigation, called “Operation County Connection,” run by the FBI and Nassau County Police Department (NCPD), along with assistance from the Suffolk County Police Department, the New York City Police Department and the U.S. Marshals Service, Eastern District of New York.

Over the course of the investigation, sparked by an increase in heroin use on Long Island, law enforcement officials used wiretaps to document the dealings of the defendants. According to the FBI, more than 5,400 individual doses of heroin, set for distribution, were recovered from affiliates of the Perez Organization. Over $30,000 worth of heroin was recovered by agents throughout four storage facilities in Queens, Brooklyn and Roosevelt, New York.

Ed Wendell, president of the Woodhaven Residents Block Association, applauded the efforts of law enforcement officials responsible for bringing down the organization.

“Well done to the FBI and the NYPD for nabbing these guys,” said Wendell. “Heroin is one of the most destructive drugs out there. It’s pretty low to be peddling heroin. You’re a leech on society.”

While Wendell was not especially troubled by the discovery of a drug ring in his neighborhood, he was stunned to see locals involved in such a scenario.

“It’s not the kind of thing you’d expect from someone in this community,” said Wendell. “You don’t look at your neighbors and think they could be someone who’s part of a drug gang.”

The alleged defendants are Jose Perez, 26; Norberto Rodriguez, 27; Wilfred Castillo, 26; Jose Taveras, 38; Rafael Pichardo, 30; William Baez, 30; Edwin Adames, 33; Leonardo Lopez, 25; Sean Brunette, 22; Anderson Taveras, 22; Kenneth Suarez, 33; Eric Suarez, 28; Dana Sollecito, 23; Tina Catrini, 29; Matthew Catrini, 24; Josephine Javis, 50; Roland Stern, 68; Corey Stern, 37; Kathryn Pappas, 21; and Felix Vargas, 33.

If convicted, each of the defendants potentially faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

 

Direct Link:  http://queenscourier.com/2012/fbi-busts-drug-ring-operated-out-of-woodhaven-den/

 

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You’re not getting a sorry: Police Commissioner Kelly, NYPD have kept us all safe. Critics of ‘spying’ on Muslims are missing the bigger picture

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Feb 272012
 

 

You’re not getting a sorry: Police Commissioner Kelly, NYPD have kept us all safe

 

Critics of ‘spying’ on Muslims are missing the bigger picture

 

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

By Mike Lupica

Monday, February 27, 2012, 6:00 AM
<br /> Police Commisioner Ray Kelly speaks to the media about the police shooting of Ramarley Grahaman 19, who was unarmed at the time he was killed.<br />
Anthony Lanzilote for New York Daily News

Despite some controversial tactics, Police Commisioner Ray Kelly and the NYPD have kept the city safe – and he doesn’t have to apologize to anyone.

They came over from Jersey 19 years ago in a yellow Ryder van that had a bomb in it, some of them from a walk-in mosque over a store on Kennedy Blvd. in Jersey City, and parked in a garage underneath the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and that is the first time radical Islamists tried to blow up lower Manhattan.

It was the first time Ray Kelly was serving his city as Police Commissioner, and that night he was in the North Tower with a Port Authority engineer, after a day when only six were killed at the World Trade Center instead of thousands.

“Don’t worry,” Kelly remembers the engineer telling him, “these buildings will never come down.”

 

REPORT: WHITE HOUSE HELPS PAY FOR NYPD SURVEILLANCE OF MUSLIMS

 

That day is part of the permanent history of the city now. So is Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric from Brooklyn and Jersey who helped mastermind it all, and Ramzi Yousef and Eyad Ismoil, who were in the Ryder van. Their own history? It involved using the mosques at which they worshiped and the decent and law-abiding Muslims who worshiped around them as cover.

That was Feb. 26, 1993. Now it is all this time later and Sept. 11, 2001, is in between, and Kelly is once again the Police Commissioner of New York, the best the city has ever had, at a time when Kelly’s city needs him most. And, apparently, Kelly is supposed to apologize to big New Jersey politicians because they don’t like the NYPD going over to Jersey and occasionally engaging in surveillance of Muslims.

Sen. Robert Menendez leads the charge on this, so does Cory Booker, mayor of Newark. Gov. Christie has weighed in. The idea is that Kelly and his undercover cops have over-stepped their bounds, that they are targeting and profiling Muslims as a way of keeping New York safe.

“As far as I can tell, it was a knee-jerk response,” Kelly was saying yesterday. “I frankly can’t tell you what made them react the way they did. Maybe it was just political instincts at work. Whatever their motivations, they’re wrong.”

Kelly was asked if he plans to apologize to anybody and said, “Absolutely not.”

He said: “We are going to continue to do whatever we need to do, within the law, to protect the people of New York City. New York is where they’ve come before, and where we believe they want to come again, to hit us again and kill us.”

Then Kelly was talking about Feb. 26, 1993, again.

“It should have been a huge wake up call,” he said. “But because the guys behind it were caught so quickly, people just thought they were inept, and nobody would ever try again. Then it was eight years later and I’m watching from the Bear Stearns building as the first tower fell and remembering what the engineer told me that night about the buildings never coming down. So apologize for doing what I’m paid to do, for being realistic about the way we protect this city, and what we know about the way radical Islam works? Not happening.”

You wish President Obama would show this kind of starch with Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, tell him that the burning of the Koran was an accident, and that not only is he not apologizing, he’s waiting for Karzai to apologize to this country for two of our military officers getting shot in the head by an Afghan soldier. And if Karzai can’t find a way to do that, maybe it’s time for us to get out of his country and let him figure things out for himself with the Taliban.

Nobody is saying the NYPD is perfect, the force is too big and the city is too big and too complicated. But there is suddenly the insulting idea, and not just from Jersey, that Kelly is the one crossing the line of racial and religious profiling, even as he has done everything in his power to keep the city as safe as possible at the most perilous and dangerous time in its history.

“Do some of the things I hear offend me?” Kelly said. “They do, because I’m proud of our record, the way we’ve gone into all sorts of communities in New York City and that includes the Muslim community. I have two liaisons into the Muslim community I hired personally. And we frankly talk to a lot of people of that faith who say the same thing a lot of people say: Thank you for protecting us.”

The guys who came for New York 19 years ago came from working class neighborhoods, and from that mosque on Kennedy Blvd. in Jersey City. It doesn’t mean every Muslim in every place like that is a suspect now. It also doesn’t mean Ray Kelly isn’t allowed to send his guys over there. Not only should he not apologize for doing that, he should tell any politician who doesn’t like it to kiss his ass.

 

Direct Link:  http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/a-police-commissioner-kelly-nypd-safe-article-1.1028917?localLinksEnabled=false

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Documents Show NYPD Surveyed L.I. Jewish-Owned Businesses In Anti-Terror Effort

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Feb 272012
 

Documents Show NYPD Surveyed L.I. Jewish-Owned Businesses In Anti-Terror Effort

CBS New York News
February 24, 2012 9:08 PM


Great Neck Glatt (credit: CBS 2)

Great Neck Glatt (credit: CBS 2)

 

 

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) —

 

NYPD Video Segment

 

The search for radical terrorists took the NYPD to kosher butchers and candy stores on Long Island.

Friday night, CBS 2 learned Jewish-owned businesses were put under surveillance, along with mosques and businesses that cater to Muslims.

The NYPD is under fire from critics for putting mosques and Muslim facilities under surveillance. On Thursday, Rep. Peter King offered this response: “If you’re going after radical Muslims, you don’t go to Ben’s Kosher Deli.”

But what about Great Neck Glat, a kosher meat shop, which proudly flies the flag of Israel inside?

Secret documents obtained by the Associated Press show Great Neck Glat is one of almost a dozen Jewish-owned businesses the NYPD surveyed in Nassau County.

The anti-terror effort was focused there because many in the Great Neck Jewish community trace their roots back to Iran, CBS 2′s Tony Aiello reported.

Locals say they support the NYPD in general, but don’t know what to make of the surveillance.

“I hope they are not wasting their time,” said one local resident.

“I think we’re wasting time by spying on places like kosher butchers and kosher hair salons, basically Great Neck to begin with,” said business owner Benny Rafailov.

Congressman King, however, said to trust the NYPD.

“Something that may on the surface not necessarily be connected can make sense to them,” King said.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the program earlier Friday, saying it was not “a political statement or a political football to play with.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union says it’s clear the police surveillance program has crossed a line.

“The NYPD is just putting people under surveillance by virtue of ethnicity, by virtue of national origin, by virtue of religion, but not by virtue of suspicious behavior or evidence of wrongdoing,” said Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU.

The NYPD surveillance also happened in New Jersey. Governor Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker both said it raises serious concerns.

Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly say the surveillance continues.

 

Direct Link:  http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/02/24/documents-show-nypd-surveyed-l-i-jewish-owned-businesses-in-anti-terror-effort/

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Pursuing iPhone Thief, Officer Knew Right Buttons to Push

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Jan 282012
 

Pursuing iPhone Thief, Officer Knew Right Buttons to Push

The New York Times
By C. J. HUGHES
January 27, 2012

As crime-solving tools go, it may not have the same pedigree as, say, the oversize magnifying glass. But with apologies to Sherlock Holmes, an iPhone — specifically, the iPhone 4 — proved quite useful in helping police officers track down a robber on Thursday in Manhattan.

And at a pace that may shock any reader of a long-winded Victorian detective novel, it was all wrapped up within a half-hour.

The case involved the robbery of a similar iPhone from a handbag store. On Friday, the arresting officer, Robert Garland, shared details about how the low-level crime occurred, and how the high-tech arrest was made.

At about 7 p.m. on Thursday, a cashier at Tuci Italia, at 1393 Avenue of the Americas, near West 57th Street, was taking a break near the entrance of the shop and watching videos on YouTube, Officer Garland said, noting she was wearing headphones.

Then, a man came into the shop, pointed a gun at her, grabbed her iPhone and fled, she told the police.

When Officer Garland and Sgt. Richard Coan arrived, they found the woman crying, but Mr. Garland reassured her. “I told her when I walked in, ‘I’m going to find your iPhone,’ ” he said.

The ace up the sleeve of Officer Garland, an avid Apple consumer — he and his wife own iPhones, iPads and Macintosh computers — was something called “Find My iPhone,” a free 5.4-megabyte piece of software, or app, that he had on the iPhone in his pocket.

Punching in the victim’s Apple ID, which is the log-on people use to buy, say, songs from iTunes, he quickly determined by the location of a small gray phone icon on a digital map that the robber was near Eighth Avenue and 51st Street.

As Officer Garland and his partner drove there, the signal source shifted, closer to Eighth Avenue and 49th Street. There, a man later identified by the police as George Bradshaw, 40, of New Lots, Brooklyn, stepped outside a Food Emporium.

Officer Garland pushed the “Play Sound” button on his phone. Instantly, a pinging beep — not unlike the sound of a submarine’s sonar — began emitting from Mr. Bradshaw, 20 feet away.

As the officers closed in, joined by another pair, the pinging stopped. Had Mr. Bradshaw been an Apple aficionado, he might have known how to disable the iCloud setting, which could have stopped the trace.

Instead, Officer Garland said, the suspect left the phone unchanged, and the officer hit “play” again, prompting another round of pings. Mr. Bradshaw was caught red-handed, or more specifically, with the stolen iPhone in his right sock, Officer Garland said. The victim later identified him as the robber, and the phone was recovered.

“She was ecstatic,” Officer Garland said.

Mr. Bradshaw, already facing charges in a cellphone theft last month, was charged with robbery and possession of stolen property.

 

Direct Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/nyregion/pursuing-iphone-thief-officer-knew-buttons-to-push.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26

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NYPD investigating whether Officer Michael Pena, charged in teacher’s rape, is a serial rapist

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Jan 232012
 

NYPD investigating whether Officer Michael Pena, charged in teacher’s rape, is a serial rapist


DAILY NEWS

Bob Kappstatter / STAFF WRITER

August 26 2011, 1:39 AM
Michael Pena was charged with raping a teacher headed to work after forcing her into an apartment courtyard at gun point.
Photo: Jefferson Siegel for News
Michael Pena was charged with raping a teacher headed to work after forcing her into an apartment courtyard at gun point.

 

 

The NYPD is investigating whether a cop busted for allegedly attacking a school teacher in upper Manhattan last week is a serial rapist.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly made the startling disclosure Thursday when asked about Officer Michael Pena.

“Investigators have picked out some [cases] that they think have the potential of having been perpetrated by this individual,” Kelly said.

Police released few details on the other attacks, saying only that they happened during the three years Pena has been on the force. Kelly didn’t say where the other unsolved sex assaults occurred.

Prosecutors said Pena, 27, was drunk about 6:45 a.m. on Aug. 19 when he approached a woman and asked her for directions. They said the off-duty cop showed the 25-year-old Bronx teacher his department-issued 9-mm handgun.

“You’re coming with me,” he told the woman, according to police sources.

The woman was dragged behind a building in Inwood and raped, police said. Officers from the 34th Precinct said they arrived to find the cop and the woman dressed, his gun on the ground.

Pena, held on $500,000 bail, was indicted Wednesday. Assigned to the 33rd Precinct, the three-year cop has been suspended from the NYPD.

Since the arrest, investigators have been checking DNA and police sketches for possible connections to other rapes.

Kelly called the rape “a very, very disturbing case,” and said the department has also been scrutinizing Pena’s department records and his screening process.

“I met with psychologists, the head of applicant processing – everyone that was involved with his coming into the department,” Kelly said. “We found nothing remarkable, nothing exceptional in his background, that in hindsight should have been done.”

Kelly said it was “very disturbing that anyone with that tendency, or that potential, that capability at all, is a member of the New York City Police Department.”

Direct Link:  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/nypd-investigating-officer-michael-pena-charged-teacher-rape-a-serial-rapist-article-1.946828#ixzz1kLPL6IMM

 

 

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TRAGIC STORY: Intervening After Robbery, an Off-Duty A.T.F. Agent Is Killed

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Jan 012012
 

Intervening After Robbery, an Off-Duty A.T.F. Agent Is Killed

 

The New York Times

By AL BAKER and TIM STELLOH
December 31, 2011

 

Paul Mazza/Associated Press

A police officer stood on the sidewalk in front of Charlie’s Family Pharmacy on Merrick Road in Seaford after a robber was killed while fleeing the store. An off-duty special agent was also fatally shot while trying to stop the robber.

 

An off-duty special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was fatally shot on Saturday afternoon when he, along with at least one other law enforcement officer and a retired officer, tried to stop a robber who had just held up a pharmacy on Long Island, the authorities said.

The apparent robber was also killed.

Details of the shooting, which occurred outside Charlie’s Family Pharmacy on Merrick Road in Seaford, remained murky on Saturday night as the authorities seemed unsure how it unfolded and who fired the fatal shots.

Senior Special Agent John Capano, an explosives specialist who was in his 40s, had been a special agent for 23 years, said Joe Anarumo, a special agent with the bureau.

“Today, doing his job in an off-duty capacity, he intervened in an armed robbery and subsequently was shot,” Special Agent Anarumo said, adding, “He is a hero.”

Joseph G. Green, a spokesman for the New York office of the bureau, said he had worked closely with Special Agent Capano in the early 1990s when they were assigned to a joint firearms task force with the New York Police Department.

“It is a sad and tragic way to end the year,” Mr. Green said. “Over time, he became a certified explosives expert for A.T.F. who oversaw and assisted in conducting explosives training for law enforcement here in the United States, but also volunteered to travel overseas to Afghanistan and Iraq as part of A.T.F.’s explosives training for our troops in the military and police in those countries.”

Special Agent Capano was married, lived on Long Island and had two children, a daughter who is in high school and a son who is in college. His father is a retired law enforcement officer, Mr. Green added.

It was just before 2 p.m. on Saturday when a man walked into the drugstore, said Officer Maureen Roach, a Nassau County police spokeswoman. She did not say if the man was armed.

“He was demanding OxyContin and cash,” said Lt. Kevin Smith of the Nassau County police, adding that he did not know how much was stolen.

There were customers in the store at the time of the robbery, Lieutenant Smith said, though he said he did not know how many.

A law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was unresolved, said the preliminary accounts indicated that after the man left the pharmacy, he went to a parking lot, and people pointed him out as the possible robber. Special Agent Capano then confronted the man.

Somehow in the struggle between Special Agent Capano and the robbery suspect shots were fired, “and that is when the agent is shot,” the official said.

Next door to the pharmacy is a deli that, according to the official, was believed to be owned by a retired Nassau County police officer or detective. Some people from the pharmacy ran into the deli and told the people there what had happened. Also in the deli was an off-duty member of the New York Police Department, the official said.

“They come out and see these guys struggling,” the official said.

The official said it was believed that either the retired Nassau officer or the off-duty New York officer shot at the struggling men. The suspect was hit by gunshots and was fatally wounded.

It is not clear if Special Agent Capano was shot then or if he had been wounded in the struggle with the suspect. He was taken to Nassau University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Ryan Lecertosa, 24, was on his way home when he drove past the pharmacy Saturday afternoon and heard several gunshots. He said he saw a large man in front of the shop with a blood-soaked shirt.

“He was holding his chest, and then he collapsed,” Mr. Lecertosa said, adding that the man was instantly surrounded by about six people.

As the authorities try to establish just what happened, they will have to collect whatever guns were present, and try to figure out who fired, and how many shots. They will check the ballistics. Autopsies will be performed. Among the questions will be what bullets caused what wounds. Eyewitness accounts will be gathered, as well as any admissions made spontaneously, if they were.

Asked for details about the shooting and whether New York police officers were somehow involved, Detective Brian Sessa, a New York Police Department spokesman, said: “We are looking into it. It is not our investigation; it is Nassau County’s investigation. We’re looking into it.”

The episode aroused memories of the shooting deaths last June of four people inside a pharmacy in Medford, N.Y., several miles east of Seaford, in Suffolk County. The killer, David S. Laffer, 33, pleaded guilty in September to first-degree murder. After killing the four — a pharmacist, a clerk who was still in high school and two customers — he fled the store with thousands of pain pills.

That crime, described by prosecutors as one of the most horrific in the history of Suffolk County, appeared to have been a severe example of a national epidemic involving drugstore robberies by prescription drug addicts.

 

Direct Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/nyregion/off-duty-atf-officer-is-killed-intervening-after-robbery.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29

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Surging Back Into Zuccotti Park, Protesters Are Cleared by Police

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Jan 012012
 

Surging Back Into Zuccotti Park, Protesters Are Cleared by Police

The New York Times
By COLIN MOYNIHAN and ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
December 31, 2011
 
 
 
Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Members of the Occupy movement shouted “Shame!” as officers pulled one demonstrator from the park.

 

More than 500 people associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement gathered in Zuccotti Park on Saturday and, in a return to scenes from earlier in the year, the evening began with the sound of drumming and calls of the now familiar slogan, “We are the 99 percent” — and it ended with torn-down barricades and a scuffle with police officers.

Just after 10:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, officers carried a person out of the park, prompting protesters to follow behind them, shouting “Shame!” The reason the person was escorted away was unclear.

About 20 minutes later, a group of protesters grabbed some of the metal barricades that surround the park and began piling them inside. As they gripped the barricades, police officers took hold as well, and a shoving match began, the silver bars trapped in between. At least one police officer fired an arch of pepper spray into the crowd behind those barricades.

Moments later, at least a dozen police officers charged into the park, plowing directly into a crowd of people, some of whom were trying to flee, pushing and shoving. One man was thrown down and pinned to the ground by several officers.

In the park, some protesters shouted “Peaceful!” and “Nonviolent!”

As the scuffle subsided, a group of police officers gathered on Cedar Street.

The evening began more diplomatically.

About 100 people arrived at the park at about 7 p.m., according to witnesses, and someone put up what was described as a small multicolored tent, about two feet tall, made for a child. Two young girls, who were at the park with their mother, began playing inside.

Though the New York City Police Department had officers fanned out throughout the city for the holiday, there were police officers lined up across the street from Zuccotti Park, at the ready alongside private security guards. They stepped in.

Police officers and security guards, who stood at the ready across the street, told protesters to remove the tent, saying it violated rules issued by the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties. Meanwhile, an officer and a guard blocked other protesters, and at least one reporter, from entering the park. Some people disregarded their instructions and squeezed through the spaces between metal barricades along other parts of the perimeter.

According to Brendan Burke, an organizer with the Occupy movement, police and security officers said that if the tent was taken down, people would be permitted to enter. So shortly after 8 p.m., demonstrators dismantled the brightly colored tent and handed it over to security guards. The guards stepped aside, and protesters were allowed in, after their bags were searched.

In the six weeks since officers cleared the park in an overnight raid, a spot in its northeast corner has been cordoned off with bright yellow tape. That corner, with its high granite ledge, is where general assembly meetings were usually held. On Saturday night, the tape was down and the meeting reopened.

At one point, a man stood on the ledge and was ordered down by a security guard.

“You’re fighting a losing battle,” the man answered. “Give me one good reason why I should get down.

As midnight approached, the hundreds in Zuccotti Park shouted “Whose year? Our year!”

Just before 1:30 a.m., security guards and police officers entered the park, where only about 150 people remained. A line of officers pushed protesters from the park and led about five people out in handcuffs. One officer used two hands to repeatedly shove backwards a credentialed news photographer who was preparing to document an arrest.

A police commander announced through a megaphone that the park, which is normally open 24 hours a day, was closed until 9 a.m., but did not provide a reason. A few moments later, officers told the crowd that had just been moved from the park that the sidewalks surrounding Zuccotti Park were also closed, and directed people across Broadway.

Just before the park was cleared, about 200 protesters marched north through SoHo and into the East Village. At 13th Street and 2nd Avenue, officers surrounded dozens of protesters walking on the sidewalk around 3:00 a.m. and began arresting some of them.

“We were trying to go to Tompkins Square Park,” Isham Christie, who was on the march, said. “The police blocked us and we doubled back and they blocked us again.”

Mr. Christie said that about 50 people were eventually surrounded by officers on a stretch of sidewalk on Second Avenue. “They arrested most of them,” he said.

 

Members of the Occupy movement celebrated New Year's at Zuccotti Park.
Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Members of the Occupy movement celebrated New Year’s at Zuccotti Park.
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He should have been behind bars: NYPD ‘cop killer’ was freed from jail last month – despite being wanted in North Carolina shooting

 Articles of Interest, Crimes & Criminal Activity (Organized Crime, Narcotics, Predators, Cyber Crime, Cyber Stalking, UnSolved), FALLEN & INJURED HEROES, Law Enforcement, WANTED CRIMINALS & POI  No Responses »
Dec 132011
 

He should have been behind bars: NYPD ‘cop killer’ was freed from jail last month – despite being wanted in North Carolina shooting
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
13th December 2011

 

 


The thug accused of gunning down a veteran NYPD officer yesterday is no stranger to jail, and should have been there months before the shooting.

In a startling revelation, career criminal Lamont Pride was already wanted in connection to a Greensboro, North Carolina shooting in August.

After the incident, he reportedly fled to New York.


CONVICT & COP KILLER:  Lamont Pride

OFFICER DOWN: 22-year NYPD veteran and father of four Peter Figoski, right, was allegedly gunned down by Lamont Pride, during a Brooklyn robbery attempt

Last month, he was busted in Gravesend, Brooklyn, for drug possession and child endangerment.

The New York Post reported that Pride has a rap sheet dating back to 2006, a record speckled with mostly drug and robbery charges.

Pride, 27, now faces murder charges after his arrest shortly after the Brooklyn shooting.

Officer Peter Figoski, who could have retired two years ago with a full pension, was pronounced dead in hospital at 7:17am yesterday morning, hours after he was shot in the face responding to a break-in.

In a heart-breaking turn of events, it was revealed that Officer Figoski’s two grieving daughters of the were raced to his bedside by the New York City Police Department, but sadly missed their father just hours before he died.

State Police lieutenant Michael Greco was called at 3am to arrange for Mr Figoski’s daughters Christine, 20, and Caitlyn, 18, who were away at college, to fly through the night to bid their father goodbye.


Family man: Veteran New York City police officer Peter Figoski (2nd from left), who was killed in the line of duty yesterday is pictured with his four daughters

As the New York Post reports, daughter Christine attends SUNY Oneonta and Caitlyn goes to SUNY Plattsburgh.

After receiving the call from Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s detail, Greco had State Police helicopters fly the women to Albany International Airport, where they caught a flight to JFK International Airport.

A NYPD highway patrol then raced them from JFK to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center.

At the hospital, their sisters, Caroline, 16, and Corinne, 14 – both in high school – were waiting, as was their mother, Mr Figoski’s ex-wife, Paulette.

The New York Daily News reports it was 10:30am. Mr Figoski had been dead for a little over three hours.


Losing one of their own: Brooklyn residents look at police officers standing near the crime scene where Officer Figoski was shot dead

The 22-year veteran police officer killed in the line of duty yesterday was responding to a break-in when he was shot in the face and killed by one of the suspects hiding inside the Brooklyn apartment when officers arrived, police officials said.

A second suspect who was fleeing the scene with Pride is still on the loose.

Figoski had more than 200 arrests in his career and had 12 medals awarded, including eight for exceptional police duty.

He was part of a back-up team of officers who responded to a report of a break-in at the basement apartment in the East New York section of Brooklyn, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

The building owner, who lives on the first and second floors, called 911 at about 2:15am

The two suspects had tried to flee, but couldn’t find a way out through the back of the apartment and were hiding in a side room as officers walked past them and started to interview the tenant and a neighbour.


Investigation: Two robbery suspects at the Cypress Hills home tried to flee, but couldn’t find a way out through the back of the apartment and were hiding as officers walked past them

They were trying to escape through the front when they ran into Figoski, who was shot once.

Figoski’s partner, Glenn Estrada, was struggling with a second suspect in front of the home when he heard the shot and saw the suspect running.

He chased after him for blocks before capturing him, Commissioner Kelly said. He was treated for a shoulder injury during the fight.

Commissioner Kelly said: ‘I want to commend Officer Estrada, who had the presence of mind to focus on the man with the gun, and the courage to chase him down and capture him.’

Police recovered a silver semi-automatic pistol under a parked car near where Pride was arrested.

There was one round discharged from the weapon, and the shell casing had jammed inside the gun.

Kelly said the gun had ten other live grounds and the gunfire could have been worse had the weapon not jammed.

Figoski, 47, of West Babylon, New York, comes from a long line of city heroes bleeding blue.

His brother, Robert Figoski, is a retired police officer and his brother-in-law is currently an officer.


Robbery turns deadly: One of the thugs remains on the loose after the deadly Brooklyn shooting

‘It is a family that has dedicated its lives to making this city safe and it’s just such a tragedy,’ Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

The tenant told police he heard the suspects pounding on the basement door, claiming to be police.

They broke down the door and demanded money, pistol-whipped him and took $770 in cash and a watch, police said.

The tenant works at a nearby bodega and told police one person was wearing a ski mask.

Robbery turns deadly: One of the thugs remains on the loose after the deadly Brooklyn shooting

A ski mask was recovered on the street corner where Pride was arrested.

Bloomberg, an outspoken advocate for gun control, said the gun was purchased illegally and reiterated his plea for stricter gun laws around the country. New York has some of the strictest nationwide.

‘These guns are bought and used to kill people and you saw that this morning,’ Bloomberg said.

It was the second time this year an NYPD officer was killed in the line of duty.

Officer Alain Schaberger fell nine feet off a stoop and broke his neck while responding to a domestic violence call in Brooklyn in March.

The man accused of pushing him has pleaded not guilty to murder.

The shooting on Monday recalled the the 2007 death of Officer Russel Timoshenko.

He was shot twice in the face during a traffic stop in Brooklyn and later died. His partner, Herman Yan, was saved by his bullet-resistant vest.

Direct Link:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073444/Death-NYPD-officer-Peter-Figoski-Suspect-Lamont-Pride-wanted-North-Carolina-shooting.html#ixzz1gSlk68Z0

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