The killing of Mt. Vernon police officer Christopher Ridley, gunned down outside of a White Plains courthouse, resulted in no indictments this week. The four men who killed him were Westchester County police officers, and the grand jury did not believe there was reason to proceed to a criminal trial. Ridley was driving by the courthouse in January when he witnessed a fight among several homeless men. Although he was off-duty, Ridley pulled over and......

On Friday night, the Westchester police shot at a Mount Vernon police officer brandishing a gun in front of a county social services building. The policeman killed was Christopher Ridley, who was off-duty at the time; now it turns out he had been trying to break up a brawl. County lawmaker George Oros explained the gunfire erupted after Ridley got up from the ground with something in his hand outdrawn (he was 100 feet away.)......

Earlier this week, a National Labor Committee report claimed that crosses sold at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Trinity Church and other churches were made in Chinese sweatshops. The NLC said that the Singer Company employed young women at 26 cents an hour and forced them to work a 100 hours a week; plus, the woman are docked pay for food and boarding, leaving them with pay of just 9 cents an hour. You can read......

Halloween tricks are never a good idea, no matter what side of the law you're on. A 14-year-old boy was throwing eggs at cars in Staten Island when two police officers decided to teach him a lesson. Police sources S.tell the Daily News that Officers Thomas Elliassen and Michael Danese picked up Rayshawn Moreno around 8:30PM, drove him to "a swampy area of the 122nd Precinct" and then "dropped him off wearing only boxer shorts......

Grieving families buried the three victims of last weekend's execution-style murders in Newark. Authorities also named a fourth suspect in the crimes: Rodolfo Godinez, a 24-year-old who has a record of robbery, assault, and weapons arrests. Separate funerals were held for 20-year-old Iofemi Hightower, 20-year-old Dashon Harvey, and 18-year-old Terrance Aerial. Newark Mayor Cory Booker attended all funerals, and when he spoke at Aerial's funeral, the NY Times noted that his words were a......

The Newark police arrested a third suspect in the murders of three young residents. The third suspect is 15 years old, and he will be arraigned in Family Court on charges of murder, felony murder, attempted murder and other counts, according to the Star-Ledger. He is the third suspect in custody; another 15-year-old is was arrested on Thursday and as was 28-year-old Jose Lachira Carranza, who pleaded not guilty to the crimes. The police......

What is wrong with people? The director of the Mount Vernon Animal Shelter found three boxes full of kittens (63 of them!!!) on her doorstep. Paula Young believes that the kittens were used as bait during dogfighting in Westchester and possibly the Bronx. She told the Journal News, "It is impossible for one person to have all these kittens, calicos, tabbies, males and females." A few days earlier, animal shelter workers found an older......

Newark authorities say that the lone survivor of an execution-style shooting that left her brother and two friends dead has picked out a suspect. Nineteen-year-old Natasha Aerial, who is still in the hospital after being shot in the head, selected a suspect from a photo array. The Star-Ledger reports that the suspect was included in the array because his fingerprints were among those found on a beer bottle at the schoolyard where the shootings took......

Nineteen-year-old Natasha Aerial, who was the only survivor from Saturday night's shootings in a Newark schoolyard, managed to speak to police yesterday. While her brother and two friends died from being shot in the head, execution-style, Aerial survived a gunshot to the head. She is heavily sedated and under police guard. Still, Newark Police Director (and former NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Operations) Garry McCarthy said, "We're getting the story piecemeal from her. Based upon......

A brutal crime took the lives of three young people and injured one more in a Newark schoolyard on Saturday night, saddening and angering the community. Twenty-year-old Iofemi Hightower, 20-year-old Dashon Harvey, and 18-year-old Terrance Aerial were "lined them up against a wall and forced...to kneel" before being shot in the head, according to Newark police. Aerial's sister Natasha was also with them, but she was shot first in another area. She survived a......

A semi-brilliant scheme to fool a health insurance provider by claiming 20 fake brain surgeries has been busted by the federal prosecutors. A group of people scammed Group Health Insurance out of over $300,000 over four years. Most notably, city employee Stanley Canella claimed he, his wife and four sons had nine brain surgeries during that time. The NY Times says it's unclear whether it's the "nine operations" that "piqued the interest of federal investigators"......

In the odd case where you murder someone in a small town and need to escape quickly to the anonymity of a large city, you hop a bus to NYC, right? Wrong. Two Ohioans were arrested late last night and this morning in connection with a shooting death in their homestate. A third person is still being searched for. 22-year-old Megan Arensburg and and 17-year old Ashley Baker were arrested and accused for shooting a......

Get ready for even more intense campaigning in NY State: The State Legislature has approved moving its presidential primary to February 5 from March. Many believe a March primary is pointless, since the most influential ones are earlier in the year. The bill passed 59-1 in the Senate; the Utica Observer-Dispatch says the lone dissent was from Democrat Ruth Hassell-Thompson of Mount Vernon. Hassell-Thompson said, "Getting people out to the polls in the cold weather......

State Senator Jeff Klein, who reps the Bronx, part of Yonkers, Eastchester, Mount Vernon and New Rochelle, released a list of the "dirty dozen" supermarkets of establishments that have failed many, many supermarket inspections. Klein's issue with inspections is that even if an establishment fails many times, they can still operate. Thus, a "three-strike law" should be put in place to make sure the stores shape up. Questionable establishments are in all five boroughs and......

The Knicks managed to play well enough last night to keep the crowd from turning hostile. In fact, they looked like they were going to actually win a game, building a 16-point lead in the third quarter and holding a 9-point lead with five minutes left. That’s when things fell apart and the Knicks collapsed down the stretch of their 108-101 loss. Mount Vernon’s Ben Gordon lived up to his nickname “Madison Square Gordon” by......

Henry Warner, Subterranean Jazzman ...