Just hours after thousands of people marched in the streets to denounce the killing of a gay man in the West Village, police say they received reports of two other anti-gay bias attacks.

The Camden City Police Department is no more. In its place is a special Metro Division of a new county-run force. The move is aimed at helping the city, which has struggled with high crime rates for years and budget problems that led to police layoffs.

We follow up on a theme that emerged during our special with WBEZ on gun violence in New York and Chicago. How much does it matter that police live in or be familiar with the neighborhoods they police? Should cops be required to live in their beat neighborhoods? Cops and residents alike, call 212-433-9692, or post your comment here.

East Flatbush is a neighborhood on edge after the shooting death last weekend of a young man by police led to unrest along Church Avenue.  The street is also a shopping hub, and the tension there has been bad for business.

It’s been nearly a week since 16-year-old Kimani Gray was shot by plainclothes officers in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. Days of protest have followed with people in the community expressing anger as the city defended the officers' use of deadly force. His mother, Carol Gray, has been struggling this week to separate the details of her son’s life with how he died.

For the last three years, the New York Police Department has been trying to set in stone the rules, procedures and techniques for being a detective. 

The Supreme Court has limited the power of police to detain people who are not at home when their residence is to be searched. By a 6-3 vote Tuesday, the justices sided with a Long Island, N.Y., man who was picked up about three-quarters of a mile away from his apartment as police searched it for a gun.

A wounded New York City police officer has left the hospital, while another two were recovering Friday, hours after being shot in separate incidents that left one suspect dead and four under arrest.

Police say that 27 children and adults, including the gunman, were killed at shooting at a Connecticut elementary school Friday that sent frightened pupils into the parking lot.

A man accused of fatally shooting a Nassau County police officer and another man has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

The alleged gunman in the shooting death of a Nassau County police officer and a civilian near the Queens-Long Island border is being treated for what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound — officials said it was "unknown" if he would survive.

A veteran Nassau County highway patrol officer has been struck and killed while investigating a multi-vehicle accident on the Long Island Expressway.

(Photo by Kate Hinds)

Police in New York have written over 20,000 tickets since a more stringent texting-while-driving law took effect in 2011 – more than four times the amount than in the prior year.

"These tickets should send a resounding message to all drivers: keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel," said Governor Cuomo in a press release.

The law went into effect on July 12, 2011. It made driving while using any portable electronic device a primary, rather than just a secondary offense -- meaning that drivers can be stopped solely if they are found to be using such a device while driving.

When he signed the bill into law last year, Cuomo said it was "common sense — but sometimes you need law enforcement, and you need laws, to remind society of common sense and enforce common sense."

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has called texting while driving "a national epidemic" and said it's responsible for about ten percent of all traffic fatalities.

A county-by-county breakdown of tickets issued before and after the law can be viewed below (source: NY Governor's Office).

Michael Armstrong describes the1970-72 Knapp Commission investigation into police corruption, prompted by the New York Times' report on whistleblower cop Frank Serpico. In They Wished They Were Honest he examines how the commission affected the NYPD's public image, what leads to police corruption, and the toll it takes on society.  

a livery cab (photo by Kate Hinds)

(Ailsa Chang -- New York, WNYC) The city has settled a federal lawsuit charging that the New York City police department has been unlawfully detaining, questioning and searching passengers for weapons in livery cabs as part of a city livery cab inspection program.

The two passengers who filed the lawsuit last May, Terrence Battle and Munir Pujara, are both men of color. They alleged they were pulled out of their cabs and searched for weapons even though the officers did not suspect either them of criminal activity.

Neither of them was charged with any offense after their encounters.

As part of the settlement, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has committed to retraining officers and instructing them that passengers riding in livery cars participating in the Taxi/Livery Robbery Inspection Program, or TRIP, can only be removed on certain conditions: if the officer fears for his safety, or if he suspects the passenger is armed or has committed a violent crime.

Kelly issued a new operations order commanding all officers to follow these rules. Although the department issued a similar operations order detailing this policy about a decade ago, criminal justice advocates said too few officers heeded the rules.

"The problem was no one knew about that operations order and there had never been any training on it, so police officers around the city mistakenly believed that they could frisk and search passengers without suspicion," said Chris Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represented both plaintiffs.

Dunn said they interviewed more than a dozen livery car drivers who claimed they were getting stopped routinely and their passengers were getting pulled out without any reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.

TRIP is meant to protect livery drivers from crimes perpetrated by passengers, especially robberies. Drivers who voluntarily participate in the program consent to being pulled over by a police officer at any point to check on their safety. Participants display a decal in their windows stating, "This vehicle may be stopped and visually inspected by the police at any time to ensure driver’s safety."

The plaintiffs didn't challenge the actual vehicle stops in their lawsuit -- only the manner in which they were treated after the officers pulled the livery cabs over.

In addition to promising the retraining of officers, the city paid Battle and Pujara $10,000 each.

City lawyers called the TRIP program "entirely constitutional" and noted that the program itself was not challenged in the lawsuit.

“The police department remains committed to ensuring that the program is run correctly and to ensure the continued safety of livery cab drivers and their passengers,” said Mark Zuckerman of the city's Law Department.

Dunn said, as with the the stopping and frisking of pedestrians, TRIP resulted in unwarranted frisks and searches that disproportionate impacted minorities.

"Yellow cabs just aren't available in the outer boroughs, the communities where blacks and Latinos primarily live," said Dunn. "Really the targets -- and the victims -- of this practice wer blacks and Latinos."

On April 29, 1992, nearly 20 years ago, an all-white jury acquitted four white Los Angeles Police Officers in the case of Rodney King, a black motorist who suffered severe injuries after a brutal beating from the LAPD. South Los Angeles promptly exploded into riots that lasted six days, leaving more than 50 people dead, thousands injured, and $1 billion in damage. Anna Deavere Smith is an playwright, actress and author of "Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992," a one-woman show that Smith developed from interviews with 300 subjects involved in the Rodney King case and its aftermath. She reflects on the riots that tore the city apart, 20 years ago, and discusses whether and how police-community relations have changed since 1992.

Although violent crime has decreased across the country, for one group, the numbers seem to tell a different story. According to statistics compiled by the FBI, the number of police officers killed in 2011 was up by 25 percent from the previous year — and up by 75 percent from 2008. A total of 72 officers were killed in 2011. And for the first time, last year more officers were killed by suspects than by car accidents. Why are more officers losing their lives on the job? Maria Haberfeld, chair of the Department of Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice says that while it's hard to pinpoint any one factor behind these numbers, there are some trends that emerge when the statistics are examined closely.

Did the Trayvon Martin shooting reveal a systemic failure on the part of the Sanford Police? We speak with John Rudolf, criminal Justice reporter for the Huffington Post and Calvin Donaldson, whose son was shot and killed in Sanford on October 2011.