Supervising officers in the New York City Police Department tell WNYC that, in recent weeks, all precinct commanders have been instructed by the highest levels of the department to carefully review stop-and-frisk reports to ensure they reflect proper stops, and are not an effort to meet productivity goals.

Police target blacks and Latinos when deciding to stop and frisk someone, according to an analysis of new NYPD data by the New York Civil Liberties Union released Wednesday.

While Mayor Michael Bloomberg is proposing more cuts to non-profit social services, particularly to low-income childcare programs, a study released Monday by the Fiscal Policy Institute shows that the non-profit sector is the largest employer in the city's private economy.

Additional Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are coming forward to allege they were targeted by police officers executing old bench warrants for minor violations in order to collect intelligence about the May Day protests this week.

Nearly two dozen demonstrators arrested last year while protesting the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy have gone on trial.

FBI labs in Virginia are examining a piece of cinderblock wall removed from a Soho building half a block from where  6-year-old Etan Patz had lived, federal officials close to the investigation confirmed to WNYC.

NYPD officers and FBI agents continue to search a Soho basement for remains of a 6-year-old boy who disappeared in 1979.

Ailsa Chang, WNYC reporter, and Lisa Cohen, journalist and author of the book, After Etan: The Missing Child Case that Held America Captive, discuss the latest in the renewed efforts to find out what happened to Etan Patz, who disappeared 33 years ago.

As many as 50 NYPD officers and FBI agents using jackhammers and saws began digging in a Soho basement Friday where a cadaver dog detected human remains in recent weeks, hoping to find evidence linked to the infamous 1979 disappearance of schoolboy Etan Patz.

Dozens of NYPD officers FBI agents began scouring the basement of a Soho building Thursday, hoping to find evidence linked to the infamous 1979 disappearance of schoolboy Etan Patz.

Police union leaders, who have accused the NYPD of penalizing officers whose tickets turn into acquittals at traffic court, are now waging a media campaign to drum up public support against such disciplinary tactics.

After two recent terrorism incidents against Jewish targets overseas, the New York City police department says it is approaching the Passover holiday this year with heightened awareness.

The Civilian Complaint Review Board unanimously ratified an agreement with the City Council, mayor and police department on Monday to allow it to prosecute all cases of police misconduct that its investigators substantiate. 

Public defenders in the Bronx said more than 40 percent of the marijuana arrests they investigated in their borough between May and October 2011 show violations of constitutional rights and problems with evidence.  Many of these unlawful arrests, defense lawyers said, were made after an internal NYPD order was issued directing all officers to follow the law when making marijuana arrests.

A former Yonkers Councilwoman and a former head of the Yonkers Republican Party were convicted on bribery charges Thursday when they failed to convince jurors that gifts and money they exchanged were motivated by romance and not a scheme to buy votes.

A federal class action was filed against New York City and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly on Wednesday for what plaintiffs allege are suspicionless stops within private residential buildings.

The first substantial hearing in the suit filed by a housekeeper last year against the disgraced former IMF chief is set for Wednesday — when defense lawyers will ask a Bronx County civil court judge to dismiss the lawsuit.

Former Rutgers student Dharun Ravi has launched a high profile media campaign this week following a conviction on 15 counts of privacy invasion, evidence tampering and bias intimidation. Ravi never testified at his own trial, and legal experts say making his case before the public now could be a savvy, but risky way to influence the sentencing judge.

The family of an unarmed man who was fatally shot in Inwood by a plainclothes police officer last year is demanding a federal investigation into the death after a Manhattan grand jury declined last Friday to bring charges against Detective James Connelly after he killed John Collado.

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida, WNYC reporter Ailsa Chang and Robert McCrie, professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice department of security, fire, and emergency management and an expert in community policing, join us to look at the role of neighborhood watch groups and citizen law enforcement.