Len Levitt

Why didn't Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance attend Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's momentous news conference last Thursday on the Etan Katz case?

Kelly announced that a suspect the public had never heard of -- Pedro Hernandez, a worker in a bodega near where 6-year-old Etan disappeared -- had been...

Chuck Schumer put his Senatorial arm on FBI Director Robert Mueller last week -- pressuring him to call NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and brief him on the recently foiled Yemeni bomb plot.

But while Schumer calls for inter-agency cooperation from Mueller, neither he nor any other politician calls for...

Let's get this straight, readers.

The NYPD did not -- repeat, did not -- undermine the FBI's investigation of Najibullah Zazi's 2009 plot to blow up the New York subways, as NYPD Confidential and the New York Times had reported.

At least, that's what Police Commissioner Ray...

Detectives from the NYPD's Intelligence Division were at it again last week.

According to National Public Radio's WNYC, Intel detectives arrested half a dozen Occupy Wall Street protestors on old warrants for minor violations to question them about their May Day demonstrations, which were expected to shut down...

Running successfully for mayor would be Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's greatest triumph.
Running unsuccessfully could be his greatest humiliation.

Despite the cheerleading of the New York Post and the Daily News for Mayor Ray, the one city official integral to such a bid seems conspicuously unenthusiastic: Kelly's boss --...

The Associated Press's expose of the NYPD's widespread and legally questionable spying on Muslims, deservedly and importantly, received a Pulitzer Prize -- despite the caterwauling of the Daily News and the New York Post, which derided the series as a "year-long, non-stop hit job."

The AP described how the...

The firing of Detective Gescard Isnora fits the harsh punishments Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has issued to cops involved in fatal, high-profile mistakes -- especially racially charged ones.

If there is a constant to Kelly's discipline, it is this: the more vulnerable to criticism he perceives the department or himself...

Ever wonder why the Daily News runs all those editorials deifying the NYPD, even as the department arrested the paper's own reporters during the Occupy Wall Street protests?

Or why these editorials praise the NYPD's fight against terrorism in such slavish terms that not even the News' own readers...

The Civilian Complaint Review Board [CCRB] has never amounted to much.

Its work involves the most minor police misconduct.

At best, its value is symbolic -- a check, albeit limited, on police power.

Last week's agreement between the mayor, police commissioner and city council speaker that revamps...

Defense attorney Elizabeth Fink last week underscored an ugly truth about the NYPD's three key terrorism cases.

In each case, terrorism suspects have turned out to be mentally unstable young men. At least two of them have histories of psychiatric treatment.

One of them was schizophrenic.

A...

The New Jersey FBI head who publicly criticized the NYPD's widespread spying on Newark's Muslims had the green light from FBI headquarters for a rare rebuke of NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, sources said.

Or at least he didn't have a red light.

FBI special agent Michael Ward, who...

Within 24 hours after Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle died from accidentally crashing his plane into a Manhattan high-rise in 2006, the NYPD was searching for a terrorism link.

The circumstances surrounding the fatal accident suggested a tragedy, not a terrorist attack. Lidle, 34, owned the small Cirrus plane, which...

The New York City Police Department sent at least four officers to Buffalo, N.Y. to spy on that city's Somali community, according to an internal Intelligence Division "briefing report" obtained by NYPD Confidential.

The NYPD launched its upstate spying operation even though the briefing report notes that...

Are NYPD spokesman Paul Browne's pants again on fire?

NYPD Confidential disclosed last week that an Intelligence Division document indicated that the police had spied on Al Sharpton's National Action Network on May 3, 2008, to learn its plans for city-wide demonstrations over the acquittal of the three cops...

An NYPD informant spied on the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network [NAN] as the group was organizing large-scale protests of the Sean Bell case acquittals, a police document shows.

The confidential informant infiltrated a NAN meeting on May 3, 2008, and reported back to the NYPD's...

In yet another slap at the NYPD's demoralized top brass, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has abolished a top three-star chief's job, giving it instead to an obscure civilian.

Reversing four decades of tradition, Kelly last week appointed the civilian, Arnold Wechsler, to head the Personnel Bureau, with...

Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Paul Browne, known to readers of this column as Mr. Truth, your expiration date is past due. It is time for you to depart the NYPD.

Since hooking up with Kelly two decades ago and becoming closer to him than any man on the...

We would like to apologize for past warnings not to believe more than 50 percent of anything that emanates from the mouth of police spokesman Paul Browne. We were far too generous.

The credibility, or lack of, concerning Mr. Truth, as he is known to readers of this column,...

Rupert Murdoch may have called Governor Andrew Cuomo "chicken" for refusing to take on the city's teacher's union.

But judging from his latest State of the City address last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg sounds like the real chicken for refusing to take on Ray Kelly.

Now that the Associate Press investigation of the NYPD's widespread spying on the city's Muslims has apparently run its course, what's been the result?

The city's Muslim communities have reacted with anger and distrust. Several Muslim leaders boycotted Mayor Michael Bloomberg's annual interfaith breakfast and about 500 Muslims