Police in Tow Row, NYPD Towing Detectives City Cars

The NYPD is regularly towing unmarked police cars – leaving detectives stranded on the street with no way to transport suspects in handcuffs, the Daily News has learned.

NYPD Tows Funeral Home Minivan with Corpse Inside

On the road to eternal peace, a body left inside a funeral home minivan wound up at hell on earth: the city tow pound.

The unscheduled stop came after a police tow truck hooked the illegally parked vehicle outside Redden’s Funeral Home on W. 14th St.

Regulators Turn Over LibertyPointe to Vally National

State banking regulators on Thursday evening shut down the troubled LibertyPointe Bank, whose chairman, Shaya Boymelgreen, built more than 2,400 apartments in New York City in the last decade. The failure was the 27th in the nation this year but the first in the city in more than a decade, regulators said.

Google gives City Bikers Bum Steer

A helmet may not be enough to protect cyclists from Google Maps’ latest feature.

The search engine rolled out a “bicycling directions” option yesterday that is filled with potentially fatal flaws, including routes that cut across Central Park’s treacherous tranverse roads and steer cyclists to truck-riddled thoroughfares.

Another NYPD Cop Steps Forward, Claims Ticket Pressure

A Bronx cop with an Ivy League degree is preparing to sue the city, claiming his failure to write tickets for 18 months led to a violent confrontation with his boss.

Officer Anthony Minoia says he was assigned to a one-block beat known in the 42nd Precinct as the “punishment post” after a bad evaluation.

The Columbia grad says the fact that he didn’t write any tickets after that was not a protest against his boss, Deputy Inspector Timothy Bugge.

“I’m not going to pull out my summons book and write a summons because my boss is telling me he’s going to make it difficult for me if I don’t,” said Minoia, 46, an Air Force vet. “I don’t use my powers to make a deputy inspector get promoted.”

Bloomberg Says a Soda Tax ‘Makes Sense’

As the battle over the state budget and the looming multibillion-dollar gap becomes more intense, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has stepped up his call for the Legislature to pass a penny-per-ounce tax on soda to stave off major service cuts to education and health care.

NYPD Officer Claims Pressure to Make Arrests

An Eyewitness News investigation talks to a police officer who reveals the pressure they are under to make quotas.

When Officer Adil Polanco dreamed of becoming a cop, it was out of a desire to help people not, he says, to harass them.

Seeing POD People? It’s No Sci-Fi Film

PODs are the sleeper cells of public health, assuming a different shape and observing different local mores each time a crisis emerges. When hepatitis A was diagnosed in a bartender at the Manhattan nightclub Socialista two years ago, POD people were on hand to vaccinate patrons, including some guests at Ashton Kutcher’s birthday party. In the case of a bioterrorism attack, they might turn up in your neighborhood dispensing anthrax antidote. On Feb. 18, they were in Anshe Sfard Hall in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, rolling up the sleeves of Hasidic Jews. That’s a long way from Ashton Kutcher.

Waronker to Initiate New School Model in Crown Heights

To most educators, 60 elementary-school kids in one classroom would sound like a nightmare.

To founding New American Academy Principal Shimon Waronker, it’s the new way forward.

Queens WWII vet Faults Toyota as ’09 Camry Hits Synagogue

A Queens World War II veteran said he and his wife became the latest victims of Toyota accelerator woes when his 2009 Camry’s gas pedal jammed – sending the car careening into a synagogue.

‘Pre-Washed’ Bagged Lettuce Aren’t As Clean As You Think

NEW YORK — In a study conducted by Consumers Union about 40% of packaged “prewashed” or “triple-washed” bagged salads, sold in New York have unacceptable levels of bacteria associated with fecal contamination.

Obama Plans to Pull Elite Coast Guard Unit from New York

Senator Charles Schumer is urging the Obama administration to scrap its plan to move an elite Coast Guard team out of New York Harbor. The plan is to consolidate Marine Safety And Security Teams from five cities, and then transfer them to Boston as a cost-cutting measure.

New York’s Phantom Taxes

The cash-starved city is socking New Yorkers with a massive ticket blitz in a bid to pump an extra $80 million into its depleted coffers, records show.

Reluctant to raise taxes publicly, the Bloomberg administration is pursuing a “stealth tax” — launching an unprecedented squeeze on Big Apple residents and businesses, cracking down on parking, health, safety and quality-of-life infractions with a vengeance, the data shows.

The ongoing blitz has worked so well that City Hall bean counters expect to rake in a record $884 million in fines by the end of this fiscal year, which runs from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010.

Retired Officers Raise Questions on Crime Data

More than a hundred retired New York Police Department captains and higher-ranking officers said in a survey that the intense pressure to produce annual crime reductions led some supervisors and precinct commanders to manipulate crime statistics, according to two criminologists studying the department.

Mayor Bloomberg Says NYC Faces Radiological Threat

NEW YORK [MYFOXNY] — On the same day Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano discussed terrorism concerns, the federal building in Lower Manhattan had a brief security scare.

Markowitz Sworn In For Third Term; Touts Progress

BROOKLYN, NY [NY1] — After being sworn in for a third term Wednesday night by Mayor Bloomberg, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz outlined his commitment to several high profile projects.

During his state of the borough address, Markowitz discussed his desire to transform the armories in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant into recreational community centers.