NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly appeared in an IBM ad for free, and now "watchdog groups" are upset because IBM "reaps untold benefits from the reputations of Kelly and the NYPD." Uh, the price is probably right. [NYP]

The New York Post is tough on crime. Especially celebrity crime. They take gleeful pleasure (as we all do!) in cataloging the excesses and trashy doings of the drug-addicted and famous. Yesterday's breathless report on the arrest of poor former child star Tatum O'Neal went into embarrassing detail of her arrest for purchasing crack cocaine ("I'm researching a part," a "source" told the Post). But today's front page? And accompanying exclusive report from brittle columnist Andrea Peyser? A sympathetic tale of a troubled woman just doing her best to stay clean. The lead: "TATUM is saved!" Who the hell is O'Neal's publicist, Obi-Wan Kenobi? (Or, uh, Howard Rubenstein?) Drug-addicted celebrities! You may wonder how to garner such friendly treatment in the Post after your next drug deal gone bad! We have some suggestions:

Has the Reverend Al Sharpton been on a bicycle at any point in the last 20 years? Or ever in his life? Whether he has or hasn't, he's joining tonight's Critical Mass protest, the monthly traffic-blocking mass bike ride that (full disclosure!) we've ridden in ourselves, though not in New York, because in New York they round everyone up and throw them in jail. Oh, here's the thing: it's a protest of the NYPD's policy of not giving a shit about anyone's civil rights, and Sharpton is attending it with Nicole Paultre-Bell, the fiancee of Sean Bell, the man the NYPD shot 50 times for no goddamn reason. "Although the degree of abuse is clearly different," Critical Mass organizers write (NO SHIT), "the message of the groups is clear;" we all hate cops! Full press release below. (It reveals that Sharpton will be riding in a pedicab.)

The New York Post has canned Leonardo Blair, the black reporter who earlier this month filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD alleging racial harassment. Blair probably got the sense that his employer didn't really have his back when the Post ran an editorial ho-humming racial profiling complaints the same day that Blair filed his suit. Neither the Post nor Blair would comment on the end of his employment there. At least the Daily News is now free to commission Blair to write a scandalous tell-all of racial discrimination in the inner bowels of the Post. If they don't, you have to wonder whether they're sufficiently bloodthirsty (or rather, justice-thirsty) to play with Rupert Murdoch. [NYDN]

Shocking fact: in New York City, "arrests for marijuana possession began skyrocketing in the late 1990s during the Giuliani administration." Oh, and that's "a trend that continued under Mayor Michael Bloomberg," the responsible soft-spoken billionaire who's continued many of the grossest aspects of Giulinai's reign of terror, just without the blustery hardman talk. And thanks to their team effort, New York now leads the world in marijuana arrests! But you probably don't need to worry, stoner—the vast majority of these arrests were of poor black people, because when they "decriminialized" possession of small stashes in the '70s they only meant it for like college grads and other responsible types. [WCBS]

"It's a first for mass transit in the United States. NYPD officers, armed with rifles, submachine guns, body armor and bomb-sniffing dogs will begin patrolling the city's subway system thanks to a 50 percent increase in a homeland security grant." Well, good thing we're putting that to good use! Turning an already problematic police force into a paramilitary organization? What could go wrong! If there's any of that grant money left we should use it to create androids that subdue anyone attempting to dance at a non-licensed bar. With a force as restrained and well-trained and not-roided out of their power-corrupted minds as the NYPD armed to the fucking teeth, what could go wrong? Should we be grateful it's just a ceremonial show of force, like those speeding cop car motorcades that wailed through midtown after the bicycle bombing? Or should we be worried!

In representing the New York Police Department, which is facing charges that officers improperly detained hundreds protestors during the 2004 Republican convention, the New York City Law Department has subpoenaed MIT doctoral candidate Tad Hirsch, creator of TxtMob, demanding he turn over the time, content, and identity of people who sent and received SMS messages through the service. Hirsch says most of the data is gone, and his lawyer argues the subpoena is overly broad.

Here's something else for you to do this weekend: avoid getting murdered. New York City's murder rate this year is up by 26% compared to last year [NYDN]—and just in time for the NYPD to cut 1,000 officers! Far be it from us to advocate for more cops, but this seems like it might be a problem. The police department argues that regardless of the increase, it's still the second-lowest murder rate in the city's recorded history. Okay fine, but that might not last long with all those Michael Bloomberg-branded firearms for sale now. Below, a handy NYC crime report with weekly, monthly, and yearly perspectives. Now go buy your gun.

1800 rookie cops—actually, only 900 new ones, if that's really how many graduated from the Academy this year—are being sent out "to patrol high-crime pockets that have resisted the overall crime drop" in New York City. Wait, 900? "That's funny... I only counted about 650 cops at graduation," writes a poster on NYPD Rant, who has some suggestions for questions that reporters might ask of the NYPD. Anyway! The good news: The murder rate is at an astonishing low! So will it work? Or will a bunch of gun-toting youngsters who make $25,100 a year just end up, you know, bumping the murder rate back up? Time will tell! Maybe just don't make any sudden moves on the street starting tomorrow, okay?

The New York Police Department is issuing video iPods to members of its Police Academy to help them study for final exams. Might we also suggest a brief course in how to tell the difference, at 50 yards, between a shiny 80GB MP3 player and a shiny 9mm Glock? Friendly fire is so much less friendly than it sounds. [WNBC]
Related: New York Politicians Blast Proposed Counterterrorism Cuts [WNYC]

According to a stunning Post exclusive, the NYPD pretty much operates like last week's wacky Onion story about an "entire precinct made up of loose cannons." They obtained the 2006 annual report by NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau, and they make the most of the alternatively hilarious and creepy findings. Cops are all stealing from dead people and doing drugs and coercing women into having sex with them.

Hey, maybe those tourist-halting pedestrian traffic-impeding ground compasses will be a blessing in disguise if the NYPD keeps arresting dudes who stand around blocking the sidewalk. Maybe this is all a complicated sting operation!

While the campus is in full uproar, Columbia University is refusing to give the NYPD security videotapes of the office of Madonna Constantine, an African-American professor who found a noose hanging on her office door Tuesday morning. The police began asking for the footage yesterday, but Columbia administrators have turned them down, forcing the police to seek a court order for the tapes. An odd choice for the school to make. Two explanations come to mind!

At least, that's what we thought after reading this exchange between the Razor Apple people and the purported masterminds behind that tagging of 10 subway cars we linked to the other day. Seems as though the whole thing may have been an elaborate stunt—with some nefarious (for the graffiti artists, at least) ends.

Commit a crime in the nightclub business, and it's your victim who'll be looking at a laundry list of consequences if you're successful. In any criminal endeavor, there's an element of risk involved. In the ID-checking game, however, this risk is borne solely by the bar and club employees who'll find themselves sitting in the back of a squad car when some nineteen year-old manages to procure that first precious sex-on-the-beach.

You people are killing each other at a much higher rate this year, and we don't know why, although we're liking the idea of a "reclassified homicide," which is where one New Yorker kills another one, but the one who's been killed doesn't die until the following year. 2006 gave us an unusually high number of reclassified homicides, so we suppose we can take comfort in the fact that hospital care is improving, if nothing else.

The idea is to serve, protect, and not round off the corners of your head or the edges of your beard. Payot intact, the newest member of the NYPD, a dyed-in-the-wool Hasid from Williamsburg named Joel Witriol, will be "on the job" starting New Year's Eve, keeping the city's transit system free of goyim-induced danger as you scurry off to shul. No word yet on whether he'll be riding the Hanukkah caravan in Union Square next holiday season, but given recent events, we're thrilled to see a touch more diversity on the force.

Looks like someone at the NYPD's been shopping at Urban Outfitters, or this is all part of some nefarious plan to infiltrate the elusive hipster demographic. Don't they know that skinny white guys make the worst cops?

We sophisticated New Yorkers know that the law is relative; it is what the police officer makes of it. Some situations call for harshness beyond the letter of the law, i.e. riding a bicycle, being black, while others call for leniency, i.e. the professional courtesy of letting fellow officers go without a ticket in traffic stops.

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