Former Police Commissioner Gary Griffith has lawsuit rogue police officers of leaking false information to the public after the quantity of weapons and ammunition was removed from the Commissioner’s official residence in St James.
A woman was shot four times when she was caught in the crossfire of a shootout on a Brooklyn street Friday night, cops said.
The victim was hit with slugs three times in the midsection and once in the leg, as two suspects shot at each other outside the Kings Studio event center on Atlantic Avenue in East New York, where a baby shower was being held, police said.
No one else was injured in the gunfight, which happened around 11:40 p.m., according to police.
Detectives were searching for the shooters, who fled the scene, the NYPD said.
The condition of the woman, whose age was not immediately available, was unknown, police said.
A teenage girl was targeted in an anti-Asian hate crime in front of a Chinese grocery store in Brooklyn Friday, cops said.
A masked blonde-haired woman wearing all black approached the 17-year old outside the My Mandarin market on Brighton Beach Avenue and hit her with a cardboard box around 10 a.m., the NYPD said.
The suspect, who was caught on security footage, then called her a racial slur and fled the oceanfront area, according to police.
The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force was investigating.
A 29-year-old man accused of trying to strangle an 11-year-old girl in a Manhattan park was arraigned and released on $7,500 bail on Saturday night.
Nathaniel Direnzo, of Saint Marks Place, was arrested on Saturday morning for a bizarre, broad-daylight attack on the young girl and another minor on Wednesday afternoon.
On Saturday evening, he appeared for his initial hearing with his father, donning a gray suit.
He was charged with second-degree strangulation, two counts of acting in a manner injurious to a child, second-degree harassment and two counts of assault.
According to police, just around noon on Oct. 20, Direnzo approached the girl and her classmates at Stuyvesant Square with her classmates and began to yell at them, before spraying water on the group and trying to attack them, cops said.
When the young girl tried to fight back, cops say Direnzo grabbed her by the hair and punched her in the face. He then allegedly “wrapped his hands around the girl’s neck,” trying to strangle her, police said.
The girl was taken to Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital as a result of her injuries.
One of the girl’s classmates, a 15-year-old boy, tried to intervene once he saw the girl being attacked. Direnzo allegedly hit the boy, who was treated for minor injuries on the scene by EMS.
Thanks, Magic, for your rebuilding.
Last season, Orlando team president John Hammond decided the nucleus that had made the playoffs two straight years had reached its apex as an eighth-seed wannabe.
Hammond broke up the club and fired his coach, Steve Clifford. Evan Fournier was part of the fire sale, traded to the Celtics last March.
Without any attachment to Boston, it was easy for Fournier to sign with the Knicks as a free agent in August on a four-year, $78 million contract. Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau admitted his friend Clifford, then unemployed and now a Nets consultant, had strong pull in advising him to sign Fournier.
Through two games, Fournier has played as Knicks president Leon Rose envisioned — a bold, clutch 3-point shooter who can take the ball to the basket and already is forming a connection with Julius Randle.
On Friday, Fournier shredded his former team in Orlando (18 points, three assists in 27 minutes) and will face the Magic again Sunday in a rematch at the Garden.
During the preseason, Fournier looked tentative at first while trying to fit in. Then, he had a long talk with the coaches. Now the Frenchman looks like he has been a Knick for years, averaging 25 points and shooting 45 percent from 3-point range.
“Just trying to be myself,’’ Fournier said. “I think if Leon and [general manager] Scott [Perry] brought me here, it’s because they wanted me to be myself. So, I’m just gonna be myself, make my reads, try to bring positive energy, try to bring leadership. I love basketball. I love competing. And I think I really fit with that mentality here with Thibs and all the guys and trying to be a part of something great.’’
As the Magic’s ship started sinking, Fournier was happy to be given a life raft. Orlando went on a spree at the trade deadline, agreeing to deal Nikola Vucevic, Fournier and Aaron Gordon in the space of a few hours.
“Once they pulled the plug with Vuc — because Vuc got traded first to Chicago — I remember it was the one year where I felt, OK, this might happen for real now,’’ Fournier said. ‘When I saw Vuc, I was with my wife at home like, ‘Yeah, honey, we out,’ because obviously you trade Vuc. Then it was myself, then it was Gordon.’’
The Magic (0-2) will be top candidates for the NBA’s worst record, with a host of youngsters headed by a backcourt of Cole Anthony and rookie Jalen Suggs, with Mo Bamba starting at center. Poor Anthony and Bamba — both of whom grew up in New York.
“That’s a rebuild, so a rebuild takes time,’’ Fournier said. “It is definitely gonna take them time to figure it out. It’s not my problem anymore.’’
In signing with the Knicks, Fournier had big defensive shoes to fill in replacing shooting guard Reggie Bullock, who had a strong connection with Randle.
In the second half Friday at Orlando, Randle was at the top of the key and handed it off behind him to Fournier for a 3. Though Fournier missed the shot, the play showed Randle’s trust. On the way downcourt, Fournier slapped Randle on the back, acknowledging the pass.
“The two-man game is a big part of basketball,’’ Fournier said. “Guys around me — Kemba [Walker], Jules, guys that I played against — we all know each other’s games because we’ve been in the league for a while, so I think that helps. It really feels good that guys are enjoying playing with you and we already have chemistry.’’
The official play-by-play account is cold, detached, antiseptic, cold-blooded. It feels like it should have been presented in bold-face type, or all caps, given what a seminal moment in football history it was. But it doesn’t work that way in real time. So when you dig through the archives, this is what you see:
5:11. 3 & 10, NWE 19. Drew Bledsoe, right end for 8 yards (tackle by Mo Lewis). Bledsoe fumbles (forced by Lewis), ball out of bounds at NWE 27.
Twenty years, one month and one day later, we know exactly what happened in that crashing, crushing instant. We know that Bledsoe came close to dying in the ambulance later on as the result of his injury (though he somehow managed to play one more series before being pulled from the game), and that doctors told him if he’d simply gone home that night and fallen asleep, he might well never have woken up again.
We know that the backup quarterback who replaced him for the Patriots’ final drive that day at old Foxboro Stadium, Tom Brady, actually threw a little scare into the Jets, who were leading 10-3 in what had been a brutal rock-fight of a game. Brady completed six of his first seven pass attempts, beginning at his own 26, capped by a 21-yarder to David Patten that set the Pats up first-and-10 at the Jets’ 29 with 14 seconds to go.
Brady spiked the ball. Then he targeted Charles Johnson, Patten and Johnson again, none of them connecting. The Jets survived and moved to 1-1 on the season. New England fell to 0-2, 5-13 under their suddenly hot-seated coach, Bill Belichick.
Twenty years, one month, and one day later, the Jets will return to Foxborough, Mass., to commemorate one of two defining moments in franchise history. The first one was a happy one: Jan. 12, 1969, a 16-7 win in Super Bowl III.
This one … not so much.
Maybe the laws of inertia would have taken over even if Lewis hadn’t knocked Bledsoe into the hospital. There has long been a narrative that Belichick was itchy to see what he had in Brady, whom he’d taken with the 199th pick in the 2000 draft. And given the prism of what has happened since, it’s easy to fall in line with that.
Except in reality, the Belichick who walked off the field Sept. 23, 2001, bears zero resemblance to the cast-in-stone immortal who now prowls and scowls on the sidelines at Gillette Stadium, the still-pristine football palace that stands near the old footprint of the old stadium. He was 5-13 as a Patriots coach, 41-57 overall,including five mostly pedestrian years in Cleveland.
He was already grossly unpopular among Patriots fans, the most prominent of that group being Robert Kraft, who happened to own the team — and happened to have signed Bledsoe to a 10-year, $103 million contract the previous March. That was the richest deal in NFL history. And Kraft loved Bledsoe like a son.
You think he would’ve let a lame-duck coach bench his healthy son?
It was that moment that changed everything, the moment Lewis leveled Bledsoe, the moment that allowed Brady a window of opportunity that he transformed into an 11-5 record that year … and a Super Bowl title … and another (and another, and another, and another, and another).
The Jets had won their first post-merger division title just three years before. They won another in 2002. They are still waiting to add No. 3. They have not been completely shut out by the Patriots in the 20 years, one month and one day since that collision, they’ve made two AFC Championship games, one by defeating the Pats in New England in the playoffs.
But mostly it has been an endless slog of mediocre football (interspersed with some truly deplorable football) with a huge side dish of Patriots Envy, much of it going back to Belichick’s famous departure from the franchise and infamous “HC of the NYJ” resignation note. And that will always be part of it.
Still, before Sept. 23, 2001, it looked as if that would merely be a footnote. Twenty years, one month and one day later, as the Jets make their latest trip to Foxborough for Sunday’s rematch with the Pats, we know different.
The Boy turns 35. Drake rounded up his closest friends while celebrating at his Narcos-themed birthday party, dubbed “Chico Amante” (translation lover boy). The star-studded bash was held at Goya Studios in Hollywood on Saturday night with guests including Offset, Jack Harlow, Future, 24kGoldn, and Drake’s father…
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Lil Nas X and Boosie Badazz continue to be at war. While on Instagram Live on Saturday morning, Nas trolled his followers by suggesting that he had a collaboration with Boosie despite their well-documented history. “I’ve been working on this song with Lil Boosie, bro,” he said…
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