Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:36:53 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Geoffrey Gray :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Geoffrey+Gray istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/decade-in-one-meal/35188/ Wed, 28 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST Sitting on the open air terrace of the restaurant that bears his name, super chef Martin Berasategui looked past a bust of himself propped in a corner and then over some rolling fields, and pronounced that his dishes are art. They are creations, he said, designed not just to be eaten, but to be judged, savored, examined, re-examined, and remembered. Such culinary declarations are not unusual here outside of San Sebastian, in the north of Spain.This is Basque country,one of the most competitive... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/sports/judahs-aging-patsy-was-a-raging-bull/25585/ Tue, 10 Jan 2006 00:00:00 EST The post-fight party was pushing past 4 a.m., and over the din of bruised-up boxers and their trainers and their hangers-on all clinking glasses of champagne, frizzy-haired promoter Don King raised the hand of the 16-1 underdog and new WBC welterweight champion to applause. "Baldomir, Baldomir," King boomed. "Viva Baldomir!" It was an unlikely and unimaginable scene, especially considering the unknown and aging journeyman boxer, Carlos Manuel Baldomir, of Argentina, was never supposed to be at... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/sports/mayweather-hatton-eye-title-bout/16145/ Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - In the end, all of Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s promises were kept, and the punishment was dished out in full. As he tattooed a sluggish Arturo Gatti with doubled-up right hands, left hooks, sneaky uppercuts, and a barrage of body shots, Mayweather even found the time to fire off one last teasing taunt. It came during a clinch following a dazzling six-punch combination, when Mayweather stared over Gatti's shoulder and gazed in the direction of Gatti's corner. Mayweather looked... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/father-of-slain-6-year-old-boy-criticizes-da/15453/ Wed, 15 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST It has been more than a quarter-century since Etan Patz left his SoHo loft for the school bus stop only two blocks away, never to return. The 6-year-old's body has never been found, although an imprisoned pedophile has long been linked to the disappearance. Yesterday, the boy's father, Stanley Patz, a commercial photographer, said local law-enforcement officials failed to thoroughly investigate the claims against that suspect, Jose Ramos, despite information obtained by investigators that... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/silky-silverman-out-to-prove-63-isnt-too-old/15290/ Mon, 13 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST YONKERS - He still keeps a pair of handcuffs in the back pocket of his jeans, just in case. After 41 years and two months as a New York police officer, Silky Silverman had to turn in his gold shield and leave his life as a plainclothes detective because he had reached the New York Police Department's mandatory retirement age, 63. While Mr. Silverman has been able to make a handful of arrests in retirement, spending time away from the squad room at the 43rd Precinct in the South Bronx, one of... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/88-year-old-is-raped-in-chinatown/15169/ Thu, 9 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST A man followed an 88-year-old woman into her Chinatown apartment yesterday morning, then raped and robbed her, police officials said. The alleged sexual assault and robbery took place at about 10 a.m. yesterday morning. The male suspect has yet to be identified, police said. The suspect trailed the woman as she walked to her apartment. He then grabbed her, threatened her with force, and pushed his way into her apartment, which is located near Pike Street. Once inside the apartment, police said... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/armstrong-takes-on-nypd-crooks-again/14932/ Mon, 6 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST The last time Michael Armstrong was appointed to monitor police corruption in New York City was in 1970, and more than a few cops were prosecuted for working "on the pad," collecting "tips" from store owners, numbers runners, prostitutes, and others. More than three decades later, Mr. Armstrong, a noted criminal-defense lawyer who served briefly as Queens district attorney, has been appointed by Mayor Bloomberg to run the city's embattled police watchdog, the Commission to Combat Police... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/runaway-girl-15-sold-into-slavery-officials-allege/14849/ Fri, 3 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST A 15-year-old runaway from upstate New York was sold into slavery for $500 and forced to perform sexual acts while imprisoned in a Queens basement to pay off the buyer, court records show. Law enforcement officials said the alleged sale of the teenager, who ran away in January of last year, is the first case in recent memory of a pimp paying cash to take ownership of a prostitute. Police detectives are searching for the man who made the alleged sale, law enforcement officials said. "Obviously... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/pakistani-sailor-kiss-case-drama-angers-activists/14746/ Thu, 2 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST Activists from New York's Pakistani community criticized city officials yesterday for turning over the case of a Pakistani sailor arrested for the forcible kissing of an underage girl during Fleet Week to the Pakistani Navy. The low-level charge was not even deemed a criminal offense by Manhattan prosecutors last week, but, if convicted of the charges in a Pakistani military court, the sailor stands to face 14 years in the brig. "In this country there's all this talk about justice - this is not... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/pakistani-sailor-in-rough-waters/14669/ Wed, 1 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST For the Pakistani sailor, you might almost call it the kiss of death. Because he allegedly forcibly kissed a 14-year-old girl in Central Park during Fleet Week, the sailor, Nadeed Ahmed, stands to face a long sentence in a Pakistani military prison. Prosecutors initially said Mr. Ahmed was charged with a harassment violation and released on his own recognizance. Yesterday, however, after a meeting with high-ranking U.S. Navy officials, prosecutors from the office of the Manhattan district... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/inmate-who-seeks-resentencing-linked-to-police/14703/ Wed, 1 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST Hoping to prevent the release from prison of a drug offender who has served a lengthy sentence, the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, is attempting to link the inmate to the 1988 murder of a rookie police officer. The inmate, John McCaskell, of Queens, has served 15 years since his arrest in 1990 for carrying four ounces of cocaine. Two years later, he was sentenced to 25 years to life. Now he is seeking release under the revised Rockefeller drug laws. He is one of an estimated... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/child-uses-steak-knife-to-settle-dispute/14610/ Tue, 31 May 2005 00:00:00 EST After a tussle over a ball, a 9-year-old Brooklyn girl allegedly stabbed her 11-year-old friend to death yesterday afternoon with a single thrust of a steak knife, police said. About 1:30 p.m., on the seventh floor of the Linden Houses public-housing complex in the East New York section, police responded to 911 calls from neighbors who saw the body of the 11-year-old, Queen Washington, sprawled in a pool of her blood in the hallway. The girl was barefoot, wearing red and purple shorts, the... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/on-the-town/tyson-finds-sanctuary-among-200-fine-feathered/14358/ Wed, 25 May 2005 00:00:00 EST PHOENIX - Every morning in the cool of dawn, before the sun rises over the shrubs and strip malls of the desert valley, the former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson shuffles out into the backyard of his modest ranch home and into his last prized possession: his pigeon coop. Inside are more than 200 of his closest friends. They have royal pedigrees from breeders in Germany, Russia, and France, and come with feathers colored vanilla, chocolate with spots, and mother of pearl. It is 5:30, and Tyson... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/family-battles-sothebys-for-painting-seized/14288/ Tue, 24 May 2005 00:00:00 EST At age 87, an architect and professor of art history, Manuel de la Torre, was still fighting to recover the art collection he left behind when he fled Cuba more than four decades ago as an anti-Castro protester after the communist revolution. Yesterday, two months after his death, members of de la Torre's family picketed the Upper East Side headquarters of Sotheby's, repeating claims that the international auction house had attempted to sell one of their prized paintings that had been seized by... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/commissioner-is-high-ranking-academic/13872/ Mon, 16 May 2005 00:00:00 EST Delivering the commencement speech yesterday at his alma mater, the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, encouraged the graduating class of St. John's University to embrace careers in public service in New York. "Part of being a commencement speaker is giving sage advice, so here it is," Mr. Kelly said. "Stay in New York... The future is under construction here." Mr. Kelly, one of the most academically accomplished of public servants, is no stranger to graduation ceremonies: He received a degree... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/arrests-of-female-juveniles-rise-even-as-crime/13784/ Fri, 13 May 2005 00:00:00 EST While crime in the city has decreased at a rapid clip in virtually all categories, the number of arrests of female juveniles has risen in the past few years, statistics from the New York Police Department show. Arrests of male juveniles, too, have been climbing since 2002, as the percentage of females among youths between ages 7 and 15 arrested for felonies, misdemeanors, and violations has been inching up, according to the police data. On Wednesday, inside the Acorn High School for Social... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/undercover-detective-bares-all-in-confessional/13585/ Tue, 10 May 2005 00:00:00 EST Sitting in a bar-restaurant in Midtown on an overcast afternoon last week, the undercover detective turned author was finishing his second Bloody Mary and telling cop stories from his book, a memoir. There was the time he went too far, when he dropped a single bullet into the chamber of his five-shot Smith & Wesson to play Russian roulette with an innocent man in the backseat of his patrol car. At the time, the undercover detective, Robert Cea, was under investigation for murder. The New... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/snyder-to-announce-intention-to-become-citys/13509/ Mon, 9 May 2005 00:00:00 EST At an early-morning fund-raising event tomorrow, a former Supreme Court judge, Leslie Crocker Snyder, plans a formal announcement of her candidacy for Manhattan district attorney. The first female prosecutor to try homicide cases in New York, Ms. Snyder, who has worked in private practice and as a legal analyst on television since she left the bench in 2003, would become the first female district attorney in the city's history. To win election, she will have to defeat her former boss, Robert... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/police-search-for-motive-after-grenades-explode/13410/ Fri, 6 May 2005 00:00:00 EST After a pair of World War II era grenades exploded early yesterday outside the Midtown building housing the British Consulate, the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said detectives had not isolated a motive behind the explosions. No one was reported injured and damage was minimal in the blasts, which went off around 3:30 a.m. at 845 Third Ave. If the grenades had been detonated during business hours, Mr. Kelly said, the explosions could have caused significant injuries. While yesterday's... Geoffrey Gray http://www.nysun.com/new-york/fire-department-reaches-scene-of-blast-within-six/13415/ Fri, 6 May 2005 00:00:00 EST The phones started ringing moments after the blasts. About 3:30 a.m., the 911 operators received the first calls from residents in Midtown. The operators contacted the Police Department, the Fire Department, ambulances, and the city's Office of Emergency Management. At 3:32 a.m., the Fire Department reported the 911 call, and six minutes later, the first engines arrived at the scene, according to a Fire Department spokesman, Tom Bubelnik. For police officers, the trip to the crime scene was... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/bus-fleet-owner-arrested-for-forging-registrations/13334/ Thu, 5 May 2005 00:00:00 EST The owner of a bus carrier serving hundreds of students at Manhattan private schools was arrested yesterday for allegedly forging registration stickers on more than half of the buses in his fleet and failing to carry insurance, police said. The owner, Patrick Florio, of Frank's School Transportation, was arrested after detectives and transportation officials began inspecting his buses and found that more than half of the fleet lacked legitimate registration stickers, police said. Serving more... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/union-official-found-stabbed-to-death-on-country/13202/ Tue, 3 May 2005 00:00:00 EST Along the gravel-and-dirt shoulder of a country road outside a sleepy Massachusetts town, the body of a New York union official and former state employee from Brooklyn Heights was found over the weekend. The woman was stabbed to death, the authorities said yesterday. About 1:30 p.m. Sunday, a passing motorist spotted the body of the union official, Jan Stackhouse, 52, who worked for a local of the Service Employees International Union and had been a financial analyst at the State's Economic... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/kelly-says-wtc-developers-knew-of-concerns/13107/ Mon, 2 May 2005 00:00:00 EST As planners look to redesign the Freedom Tower, citing security concerns lodged by the New York Police Department, Commissioner Raymond Kelly said yesterday that developers have known about unresolved police questions about security at the former site of the World Trade Center for more than 16 months. In a statement issued late yesterday afternoon, Mr. Kelly rebutted assertions in recent press reports that the development team did not know about the security concerns until April 8, when the... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/police-dept-slow-to-embrace-change-in-lineup/12955/ Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST When he was told by the arresting officer to stand for a lineup at the 105th Precinct, at Queens Village, the 23-year-old boxer felt a sense of relief. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with five other men, Gerald Harris said, he knew there was no way that whoever was gazing at him from behind the mirrored pane could have picked him. It wasn't that the other men were several inches shorter and looked nothing like him. It was that he didn't commit the robbery for which he had been arrested. "I... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/dna-identifies-silver-spring-rapist-suspect/12874/ Wed, 27 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST Using DNA evidence found on a pair of women's underwear more than 30 years old, the Manhattan district attorney's office identified a man suspected of more than 21 violent sexual assaults and burglaries in the suburbs surrounding Washington, D.C., and other areas, the D.A., Robert Morgenthau, said yesterday. The alleged "Silver Spring Rapist," Clarence Williams, 58, had been charged in the 1970s with two violent rapes in New York City. After a hung jury in his trial for the 1973 rape of a... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/giving-terrorism-fight-more-time/12729/ Mon, 25 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST As deputy chief of the Criminal Intelligence Unit of the New York Police Department, John Cutter, working from an undisclosed location at Chelsea, oversaw the arrests of a man police said wanted to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and of two Al Qaeda sympathizers who allegedly plotted to bomb the Herald Square subway station during the Republican National Convention. In his first interview since he left the department last fall to run a private-security firm owned by a flamboyant former detective... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/ex-officers-brace-for-corruption-trial/12673/ Fri, 22 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST Two detectives who worked together on the Brooklyn robbery squad, and then lived as neighbors in retirement at Las Vegas, were together again yesterday, this time wearing prison garb inside a federal courtroom, preparing for what could be the city's most sensational police corruption trial. In an indictment unsealed in federal court last month, the former colleagues, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, are charged with working as hit men for mob figures while also serving as decorated... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/official-says-police-not-cooperating-with/12439/ Tue, 19 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST In testimony during a City Council oversight hearing yesterday, the chairman of a mayoral agency designed to serve as an independent monitor of possible corruption within the New York Police Department said his office has had "significant difficulty" fulfilling its mission because of "lack of cooperation" by police officials in disclosing information. The chairman, a former federal prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, testified that the Commission to Combat Police Corruption has been unable to... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/city-council-to-hold-a-hearing-on-police/12360/ Mon, 18 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST For the first time in more than a decade, senior officials of the New York Police Department are to take questions from City Council members in an oversight hearing today designed to evaluate measures police brass are taking to prevent corruption among the city's 37,000 officers. According to an internal briefing memo sent to council members last week and obtained by The New York Sun, the first agenda item in the hearing will revolve around the circumstances surrounding two retired police... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/roundup-nabs-more-than-10000-fugitives-nationwide/12283/ Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST In what authorities are calling the largest such roundup in the history of the country, more than 10,000 people were placed under arrest last week as part of a "high impact" initiative planned by Attorney General Gonzales, to mark the annual National Crime Victims Week. In the New York area, between April 4 and 10, federal marshals working in concert with local law enforcement agencies placed 158 people under arrest, mostly during predawn raids and for drug-related crimes. The theme of mass... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/manhattan-da-hopefuls-battle-over-signatures/12291/ Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST The two rivals in the campaign for Manhattan district attorney have not yet formally declared their candidacies, but a dispute has broken out between their campaign staffs about whether the eight-term incumbent, Robert Morgenthau, will challenge the petitions circulated by his opponent, Leslie Crocker Snyder. According to letters between representatives of the camps, members of Ms. Snyder's staff say members of Mr. Morgenthau's staff are violating an agreement they made in February not to... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/sergeant-charged-in-tangled-housing-fraud-scam/12131/ Wed, 13 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST A police sergeant linked to the still unsolved murder of his common-law wife was charged in a tangled housing fraud scam, according to an indictment unsealed in federal court yesterday. The sergeant, Martin Peters, 41, was charged for three housing-fraud schemes: illegally accepting a rental subsidy from the department of Housing and Urban Development, falsely reporting his income in bankruptcy papers, and obtaining citizenship through a sham marriage. According to the indictment, Mr. Peters, a... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/author-says-criminal-justice-system-isnt-working/12050/ Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST For most of the past decade, Jeremy Travis has been trudging through the back end of the nation's criminal-justice system for answers to questions that most members of law enforcement don't have the jurisdiction, or the political gumption, to consider. It is a social landscape that is difficult to see and to track, and one that is of great concern, Mr. Travis argues, in a time of record-breaking prison populations and what he calls "the expanded universe of invisible punishment." Mr. Travis's... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/two-neighbors-running-for-judgeship-in-dusty/11980/ Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST The Surrogate's Court occupies a fancy old building in downtown Manhattan, with the swirling Italian marble and ornate flourishes of the Beaux Arts movement of a century ago. Inside - along with dusty folders of city records that date as far back as the 1600s - is one of New York's most lucrative, politically influenced, and, at times, scandal-prone courts. Its domains are death and patronage - specifically, the long, arduous legal battles over wills trusts, and estates; battles that involve... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/police-sergeant-rules-squared-circle/11904/ Fri, 8 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST Sergeant Jean Martin trains in a dank Long Island gym so small the fighters are forced to skip rope in the parking lot. Instead of the adoring moniker that Clint Eastwood showered Hillary Swank with in the Oscar-winning film "Million Dollar Baby" - "ItalMo Cuishle," Gaelic for "my darling, my sweet" - her fellow police officers in the Queens transit precinct call their sergeant "Chuckles." "It's because of my laugh and my smile, I guess," Sergeant Martin said yesterday with a giggle. As the... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/morningside-heights-drug-gang-caught/11819/ Thu, 7 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST A gang of teenagers and young adults calling themselves "Money Comes First" were arrested yesterday and charged with a variety of drug-related crimes, including selling crack and marijuana, police said. The gang based its operations in the Grant Houses, a massive public housing complex at Morningside Heights, authorities said. The arrests came after police spent nearly a year conducting an investigation dubbed "Operation Tombstone," named after the popular Western movie that the leading case... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/spitzer-to-appeal-decision-on-phillips-parole/11656/ Tue, 5 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST The office of the New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, said yesterday he is planning to appeal a State Supreme Court decision granting a new parole board hearing to a former police officer who is 74 and suffering from prostate cancer. Mr. Spitzer's decision marks another chapter in the dramatic career of the former officer, William Phillips, who has served three decades in maximum-security facilities. Phillips, who was convicted of murdering a prostitute and her pimp in the early 1970s... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/straphangers-are-again-left-hanging/11582/ Mon, 4 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST The riders' reactions could be read from their faces. Confusion. Scorn. A grimace. Then a muttered curse. What had straphangers struggling yesterday was the bursting of a primary water pipe in early afternoon after a weekend of high winds and rains. It drowned the track beds of the nos. 1, 2, 3, and 9 lines in pools of water. Fearing a devastating electrical fire, engineers shut off electricity and shut down train service between Canal and 34th streets for most of the day and into the evening... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/youngsters-bearing-a-terrible-burden/11213/ Mon, 28 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST In one case, the girl ran away from a group home upstate and went to work for the first man she met when she got off the train at 42nd Street. She was 12. In another, the girl went home with an older guy she met aboard a subway car, only to work for him later from the basement of his grandmother's Bronx row house, which had been turned into a makeshift brothel. She was 13. "Sarah," a 16-year-old former prostitute from Queens, said she first met her pimp the night she ran away from foster care... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/crooked-cop-now-jailhouse-lawyer-seeks-parole/11217/ Mon, 28 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST In one life, Billy Phillips was a dirty cop who walked his beat in high-shine Gucci loafers and mutton-chop sideburns. Instead of working at a precinct, he worked 13 years toward his pension from inside the lone phone booth behind the dark-wood bar at the old P.J. Clarke's at 55th Street and Third Avenue, putting drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, and a menagerie of other unsavory criminals "on the pad" - old cop-speak for extortion. "I never felt that the good Lord is that down on a hustler,"... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/crime-stats-show-misdemeanors-rising-felonies-flat/10914/ Tue, 22 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST While the reported number of violent and felony crimes has decreased throughout New York in recent years, the number of complaints and arrests for misdemeanor and low-level crimes has been steadily rising, police statistics show. The most dramatic increase for misdemeanor arrests appears to be in Manhattan, where the number of arrests jumped last year by nearly 9%, with a total of 69,838 arrests compared to 64,197 in 2003. Police could not determine if that increase includes the 1,800 arrests... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/democrats-criticize-ferrer-for-comments-on-diallo/10706/ Thu, 17 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST A chorus of elected Democratic officials and community leaders criticized the leading Democratic mayoral candidate, Fernando Ferrer, yesterday after Mr. Ferrer changed his position on the shooting death of Amadou Diallo. Almost immediately after Mr. Ferrer remarked on Tuesday that the police who shot Diallo with a hail of bullets did not commit a crime, city politicians accused the candidate of inconsistency on a highly sensitive issue. Mr. Ferrer, as they point out, played a role in the mass... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/drug-felon-finds-that-new-laws-dont-mean-quick/10664/ Wed, 16 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST Fifteen years and 65 days ago, Chris Clemente was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania when he was arrested after police caught him throwing small bags of cocaine, vials of crack, a spiked baseball bat, and firearms from the window of his brother's apartment in Harlem. It has been a long time in prison since then. In 1991, Clemente was sentenced under the state's Rockefeller drug laws to 16 years to life in prison for drug and weapons possession. Now, Clemente, 34, is one of New York's... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/detectives-were-mafia-killers-prosecutors-say/10420/ Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST To their neighbors, they were two retired detectives and former partners from Brooklyn who lived off their police pensions in side-by-side houses down a cul-de-sac in Las Vegas. To federal prosecutors who filed charges this week, they are turncoat cops responsible for aiding leaders of New York's five organized-crime families in committing at least 11 murders, dealing drugs, and thwarting police investigations, in what could be one of the most egregious cases of corruption in the recent history... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/massive-indictment-rocks-gambino-family/10342/ Thu, 10 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST In a sweeping indictment unsealed yesterday, more than 30 alleged members of the Gambino crime family, including top bosses and capos, were charged with a panoply of crimes spanning more than a decade. The crimes included extorting restaurants, a radio station, nightclubs, labor unions, and construction companies. They were also charged with running illegal gambling operations and selling swag and stolen luxury cars, along with orchestrating numerous acts of violence, such as the recent beating... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/national/former-fund-raiser-for-senator-clinton-pleads/10277/ Wed, 9 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. - Moments before entering a guilty plea to a securities fraud charge in federal court yesterday, Peter Paul began describing his swift fall from the money-drenched dotcom era, the bleak breakfasts in the Brazilian penal system, and his own legal battle against Senator Clinton and her campaign fund-raisers. Paul, an Internet speculator and potential key witness in the government's case against Mrs. Clinton's former national finance chairman, admitted in court to a "pump and... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/police-overtime-soars-as-crime-continues-to-drop/10199/ Tue, 8 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST Even as the number of reported crimes has continued to drop, the amount of overtime pay shelled out by the New York Police Department has risen to new heights. According to the department's internal list of "Top 100" overtime earners, some officers are making thousands of dollars more in overtime pay than they make in salary, and some midlevel officers are grossing nearly as much as top police brass. Last year's biggest overtime earner was a sergeant, John Moynihan, who supervises a detective... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/national/alleged-killer-of-family-lived-one-floor-above/10216/ Tue, 8 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST One of the two alleged killers of a Jersey City, N.J. family spent nearly a week living in the same two-story building with the bodies of the family he is alleged to have slain, prosecutors said yesterday. They said the man lived in an upstairs apartment with his wife and children as the corpses of his slain landlord's family - bound, gagged, blindfolded with duct tape, and horribly punctured and stabbed - lay decaying one floor beneath. The victims - Hassam Armanious, 47; his wife, Amal Garas... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/police-commissioner-shrugs-off-terror-suspects/9994/ Thu, 3 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST The police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said yesterday that a sketch of Grand Central Terminal discovered on the computer hard drive of a man suspected of involvement in the Madrid train bombings did not constitute an imminent or substantial threat to New Yorkers. The schematic of Grand Central is "an amateurish," partly hand-drawn document that is only one page and features the train station's cavernous sanctuary along with an adjoining room, Mr. Kelly said. The commissioner said he first... GEOFFREY GRAY http://www.nysun.com/new-york/ex-judge-says-city-needs-da-for-a-new-century/9640/ Thu, 24 Feb 2005 00:00:00 EST Leslie Crocker Snyder likes to say that she has wanted to put away the bad guys since she was 5 years old. Her earliest memories are of listening at night in her bed to the FBI's list of most wanted criminals crackling over the radio. Ms. Snyder went on to work in the criminal-justice system, becoming one of the state Supreme Court's most hard-nosed judges. She has the death threats to prove it. Even after leaving the bench in 2003 for private practice and some work as a television commentator...