Police News Roundup (Weekly Edition)

Police and fire unions continue their high-profile tactics in the current rounds of labor "talks" with the city. This morning they protested in front of the live morning news shows. Newsday's account is a little more ominous suggesting the posibility of a strike. In spite of this, the Mayor and Commissioner are pledging New York will be safe for the RNC.

In Albany, Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain, the leaders of an upstate mosque will be arraigned on Thurday on charges that they laundered money to buy a shoulder fired missile.

Lenny Levitt is reporting in a somewhat indeciferable story that Commissioner Kelly and the Mayor don't like Pasquale D'Amuro the current head of the FBI's New York office. Why this is news eludes Base10. It should be noted that in Levitt's previous column, he alluded that Kelly didn't like former Commissioner Kerik either. While animosity toward the former Police Commissioner is understandable, doesn't this indicate a slow news day?

Heroes:

• The 170 graduates of the FDNY Fire Academy.
  
• Thomas Geis, one of those graduates, who lost his firefighter father in the North Tower on 9/11.
  
• Bronx Narcotics and other units for smashing a vicious drug ring in Bronx Housing projects.

Goats:

• Police Officer Eduardo DeLaCruz whose Department trial for refusing an order to arrest a homeless man. (Don't get Base10 wrong--he is appalled by DeLaCruz's behavior).
  
• Former Police Officer Craig Yokemick who pleaded guilty to federal civil rights violations stemming from an incident where he struck Kenneth Banks, a drug dealer he was trying to apprehend, with a police radio resulting in Bank's death.
  
• Convicted baby-killer Joel Steinberg for opening his big fat vicious killer mouth.
  
• Vicious monkey wielding Steve Seidler, who is claiming that his monkey--who has bitten two people--is a service animal. Why is this a police issue? Seidler is a former Police Officer who retired on a 3/4's disability pension for a hand injury and has been recently been spotted doing manual labor.

And finally in the "stop me before I pun again" department, an unidentified farmer in Australia was sent packing from an agricultural exhibit after officials discovered a banned substance in the cow's udder. This sounds udderly ridiculous!

- posted by Base10 @ 4:44 PM