Untitled Photo of Lunar New Year Parade, NYC, by Raymond Haddad at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an officer struck on 42nd St. and 8th Ave. in Manhattan, a bomb threat on 76th St. and Amsterdam Ave. in Manhattan, and a shooting on Mayfair Dr. in Brooklyn. Don't speed (108 m.p.h.), at night (2:30 a.m.), while drunk (.113 BAC), while tailgating and driving erratically, on an urban highway (Staten Island Expressway.) One young......

To no one's surprise, Senator-turned- actor-turned- presidential- candidate-wannabe Fred Thompson has dropped out of the hunt for the Republican party nomination. Thompson had not done very well in any of the early caucuses or primaries and his exit may actually mean a bump for Mike Huckabee, who has a similar more-conservative-than-the-others platform. Thompson left Law & Order to pursue the nomination, giving Jack McCoy a promotion and giving the public dreams of a Law &......

Law & Order returned for its eighteenth season with two episodes last night. As producer Dick Wolf is wont to do, things on the show have changed. The cast changes have definitely skewed things younger and has made the show seem more like Law & Order: The Next Generation. Which isn't a bad thing, since it seemed more like a natural evolution. And don’t worry, we won’t reveal the endings of the episodes in......

Law & Order is back for its eighteenth season and it is back in its traditional home of Wednesday at 10 p.m., although this week we get two hours starting at 9 p.m. and thanks to a stockpile of scripts written ahead of the writers strike, we can expect oodles of new episodes into the spring. Also thanks to the WGA strike, it will be the best thing on television for the for the foreseeable......

Robert Morgenthau's stranglehold on the position of Manhattan District Attorney has lasted 33 years but today's Post tittered that he was mulling an "early exit." Page Six reported that a "well-connected legal source" said the 88-year-old DA was orchestrating a retirement to have Cyrus Vance Jr. installed for a few years. Apparently Morgenthau wants Vance Jr., once an assistant DA, in place to block his former protegee and 2005 Democratic primary opponent Leslie Crocker Snyder,......

Members of the Writers Guild of America have been striking in Los Angeles and New York this past week over details of a basic contract between writers and producers - one of the biggest sticking points is the amount of residuals writers get from DVD and new media distribution. The NY Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd asked Seth Meyers (who we spoke to on Tuesday) to give her a weekend update about the strike:......

This might be the first time a British actor has played a Law & Order regular: Linus Roache will be playing the new Executive District Attorney. (Sam Waterston's Jack McCoy is getting a promotion to DA, since Fred Thompson has left the show to pursue a presidential campaign.) We foresee sexual tension between his character and Alana de la Garza's Connie Rubirosa! Is it a coincidence that Roache is the second star from short-lived NBC......

Now that Law & Order has been renewed for four more seasons, shakeups to the cast have been expected. And the most notable one is that Fred Thompson, who plays District Attorney Arthur Branch, is leaving the show to pursue a presidential campaign. We hope the writers work that in! Law & Order producer Dick Wolf said, "I've spoken to Fred today, and although he told me he has not made a firm decision about......

Now that he's been found medically fit to stand trial, jury selection has started in the trial of Peter Braunstein, the journalist who allegedly posed as a firefighter and molested a former co-worker on Halloween in 2005. The thing is 70% of the jurors questioned yesterday had heard about the trial and left, thanks to the moment-to-moment coverage of the case (exhibit A, B, C). But the NY Times said 30 prospective jurors who would......

Fans of Late Night with Conan O'Brien are familiar with the hilarious Pale Force cartoons that feature comedian Jim Gaffigan and O'Brien as very pasty crime fighters. But recently, the series hit a new high with the Law & Order: Pale Face story arc. While Jim and Conan investigate tanning bed murders, they go to Dick Wolf's barbecue restaurant (picture, top right) to canvas witnesses. Later, we see Lieutenant Van Buren, Detective Lenny Briscoe,......

[Belated spoiler alert because we cannot believe that people weren't glued to their TV sets last night to see this crazy finale - many apologies] Attractive young actresses who look great in a suit, beware: If you're cast as the new assistant district attorney to work with Jack McCoy, your character might come to some sort of strange end. Last year - yes, just January 2005 - Elisabeth Rohm(bot) left the show and uttered those......

Oh, to be a district attorney in NYC! Yesterday, at a rally outside Criminal Court, Sam Waterston voiced his support to get more funding for city DA's. He said, "The real DAs and ADAs deserve a lot of credit and not just for providing us the stories that keep us on the air," according to the Post. Yeah, we remember the episodes where the rich defendants or high profile defense attorneys belittle Jack McCoy's paltry......

This is awesome and more dangerous than Jack McCoy sleeping with Claire Kincaid: A disgruntled ex-secretary's complaint that a judge was having an affair with an assistant district attorney now may have repercussions for the judge's rulings. Defense lawyer Ron Kuby now claims that Supreme Court Justice Jaime Rios' "improper sexual relationship" with former ADA Meryl Lutsky and is asking for a new trial for Tyrone Johnson, who was convicted in 2003. Former secretary Judith......

Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes sure does have a lot of enemies. One of his rivals is pointing out many of his top assistant DA's don't live in Kings County, which might violate their "duty as public servants to live in the city where they work," as the Post puts it. John O'Hara filed a complaint with the Conflict of Interest Board; the Post notes that O'Hara has been "prosecuted three times for the felony crime......

In the world of television, there is one television program that has been entertaining people for fourteen seasons and has attracted a wide following, hooked on the self-contained stories, doses of New York cynicism, and fight for justice in this crazy world, with some fans veering on the obssessive. This is a story about two of obsessive fans who got to visit the set of Law & Order. Gothamist, wearing our love for Dick......

Our friend and fellow Law & Order fan, Brandon Bird, alerted us to this painting, Night Away, he did of Lennie Briscoe and Jack McCoy. Brandon put together the Law & Order Artistic Intent show in California last year, with artwork inspired by the best cop and lawyer show ever. The painting was a commission, which says something about the L&O fanbase. Yes - "CRAZY" is it. (Gothamist loves the painting, but we're alarmed at......

A month ago in Slate, Jack Swansburg brilliantly dissected the connection between TD Waterhouse, the Law & Order stars featured in its ads, and our nation's economy. Steven Hill, aka Executive District Attorney Adam Schiff, reminded investors that TD Waterhouse was trustworthy in uncertain economic times. Recently, Sam Waterston, Assistant Executive D.A. Jack McCoy, took over for Hill in TV and print spots during this slow crawl to better economic times. Swansburg also mentioned ads......

We can see the headlines and photos now: "Gawker Gagged!" with editor Choire Sicha, handcuffed and being led to 1 Police Plaza, yelling, "Anything to defend the rights of journalists...I mean, bloggers!" Newsday reports that federal court officials are wondering how the "secret questionnaire" for Martha Stewart's jury selection got leaked to "chatty hipster Weblog" Gawker, which posted one potential juror's email. "Court officials said they were reviewing the Gawker posting but declined to comment......

TD Waterhouse has passed their spokesperson torch from from Law & Order crotchety Executive District Attorney portrayer, Steven Hill, to Law & Order current District Attorney, Jack McCoy, aka Sam Waterston! Here, he's looking casual, in a sweater, versus the suits we usually see him in, stepping into a TD Waterhouse location to tell you why they are a good option for...something...Gothamist was distracted by thinking about what Jerry Orbach could shill. Probably, hair pomade,......