Drones ready to fly (photo: Caroline Rubinstein-Willis/Mayoral Photography Office)

A new proposed rule by the NYPD could pave the way for private drone flights over much of New York City, opening a new frontier for anything from high-altitude advertising to spying.

Today, private drone flights are allowed in only a handful of areas on the outskirts of the city, tightly regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and NYPD to ensure safe and unfettered airspace in the nation's

Mayor Adams & Speaker Adams announce a budget agreement, June 2022 (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

As the July 1 deadline looms for New York City’s budget for the 2024 fiscal year, Mayor Eric Adams and the New York City Council must resolve major differences over what will be a roughly $110 billion spending plan.

This year’s budget also closely coincides with this month’s primary elections, which has many City Council members on the ballot and may be delaying a final agreement until just before the start of the new fiscal year.

Among the series of disputes between the two sides of

Mayor Adams and NYPD officials (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

This week'sreport from the Office of the Inspector General of the NYPD (OIG), pointed out numerous irregularities in how the NYPD manages their Criminal Group or “gang” Database (CGD). While these irregularities in procedure confirm

Corporation Counsel Sylvia Hinds-Radix (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

With the NYPD costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars every year in lawsuit settlements over misconduct claims, City Council members on Wednesday questioned the city’s Law Department about its approach to defending the police department and whether the city could benefit from being less combative when taken to court for police misconduct.

A Legal Aid Society ...

A crime briefing at 1 Police Plaza (photo: Benny Polatseck/Mayoral Photography Office)

When thousands of New Yorkers went to see Drake at the Apollo last weekend, the last thing they wanted was to see the NYPD recording them, butthat’s just what happened on Saturday as they emerged from the historic theater into the view of officers’

Mayor Adams with NYPD officials (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

In his first nearly twelve months in office, Mayor Eric Adams has shown no signs of moving on a major campaign promise to publish a list of police officers the NYPD is watching for violent or otherwise unseemly behavior.

The promise was one of the more striking commitments the would-be mayor made to boost accountability within the ranks of the police force, a department of 34,000 uniformed officers. It was also one of the more tangible pledges Adams made to demonstrate his commitment to balancing police reform with

Mayor Adams on the subway (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography office)

In the first 11 months of the year, the NYPD removed 1,300 people suffering symptoms of mental illness from the city's transit system, often against their will. The city is unable or unwilling to say what happened to them next.

"Dealing with people who have mental health illnesses must be a focus of any plan moving forward," Mayor Eric Adams said at an October 22 announcement of a new subway safety campaign with Governor Kathy Hochul, dubbed Cops,

A gun seizure (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

When talking about gun violence in northeastern states like New York, elected and law enforcement officials often say that guns arrive via the “Iron Pipeline,” short-hand for the I-95 corridor where firearms smuggled from southern states with laxer gun laws to the northeast.

But the reality is much more complex, according to John B. DeVito, Special Agent in Charge of the New York office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

During remarks Thursday at a conference hosted by City & State New York,

A street renaming (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

New York City is experiencing multiple overlapping public safety crises. The city has crisis levels of homelessness, record levels of drug overdoses, ongoing COVID-19 challenges, and widespread concerns about evictions, wage theft, climate change, and more — but the city agencies doing the most significant hiring are police and corrections.

We need new investments in producing safe, healthy, and economically secure communities that will also create thousands of new jobs for New York City residents. We propose the creation of a New

Mayor Adams at the scene of a deadly Bronx fire (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

Mayor Eric Adams had a hectic and tragic first month in office, responding to several devastating deadly incidents, establishing a new tone out of City Hall, and overseeing a shaky transition beset by questions about several appointments and punctuated by praise for others.

In the wake of a Bronx fire that killed at least 17 New Yorkers, the murder of a teenage cashier during a robbery in Harlem, a deadly subway pushing in Times Square, an 11-month-old baby

A vigil for police officers Rivera and Mora (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

Mayor Adams' Blueprint to End Gun Violence, just released with much fanfare, represents, regrettably, an old-wine-in-a-new-bottle agenda overly-reliant on punitive law enforcement tactics. The mayor seeks to roll back bail reform and criminalize more young people, and will return to our streets the notorious plainclothes NYPD units responsible for the deaths of Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and others. These measures would do nothing to prevent the shocking kind of tragic incident that

City Council Member Adrienne Adams (photo: John McCarten/City Council)

The New York Police Department needs a major culture shift, according to City Council Member Adrienne Adams, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Council’s public safety committee, and incoming Mayor Eric Adams can lead the way.

Speaking at length on a recent episode of the Max Politics podcast from Gotham Gazette, Adams outlined key takeaways from a series of oversight hearings she has chaired and

NYPD Commissioner Shea & Mayor de Blasio (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

We’re seeing history rewritten before our eyes, the heartbreaking death toll of 2020 turned into another political talking point. This time, it’s not COVID-19 fatalities, but the grotesque murders and other violent crimes that impacted so many last year. But while those crimes are all too painfully real, the narrative around this once-in-a-lifetime crime spike is completely fake, and it’s an insult to the memory of those we lost.

Even before

City Council Member Adrienne Adams (photo: Emil Cohen/City Council)

October 26, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: City Council Member Adrienne Adams on NYPD Oversight & More

City Council Member Adrienne Adams, a Queens Democrat, joined the show to discuss her work chairing the Council's public safety committee, including recent NYPD oversight hearings, her bid to become the next Speaker of the City Council, and more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter ...

 Tiffany Cabán, left, and Felicia Kalan

As in many other races in New York City this election cycle, public safety is the defining issue in the general election in Queens’ City Council District 22, where a rising leftist political star who wants to abolish prisons and the police is facing a Republican pitching a far more conserative approach and ‘common sense’ moderation in the overwhelmingly Democratic district.

The major party nominees are Tiffany Cabán, a democratic socialist and former public defender who won the Democratic

NYPD counterterrorism (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

The tragic impacts of the September 11 attacks stretch far beyond the nearly three thousand people who lost their lives that day 20 years ago. 

Over the last two decades, government forces have trampled on civil rights and liberties in the name of 9/11. Deeply entrenched aspects of our society like the ubiquitous surveillance state that follows us wherever we go, the military mission creep that’s infected our domestic law enforcement, and the unbridled police power that

De Blasio and the NYPD (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

Even though cutting NYPD funding has become a popular position among many candidates running for mayor, City Council, and other offices this year, the city’s current leadership seems unlikely to embrace any significant cuts to the police department in the upcoming budget amid a sustained increase in gun violence and a glut of federal funding.

“The voters of this city overwhelmingly, I'm convinced, want a balance. They want reform. They want non-discriminatory policing. They want respectful

NYPD (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

As a City Council Member and Chair of the Council’s Public Safety Committee, I understand that people need to feel safe, particularly in their homes. One aspect of this safety is an assurance that authorities will not haphazardly burst in. This is enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which grants everyone freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. That means there must be probable cause to raid a home.

However, the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies seem to think

NYPD recruits (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography)

An officer slams a driver on the hood of a car during a traffic stop, then punches the driver’s sister twice in the face, and escapes punishment. Another officer draws his gun on an 11- and a 13-year-old playing in a city park, and sees the charges against him dismissed without trial. A lieutenant ...

NYPD (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)

On April 26, Mayor de Blasio presented his executive budget plan for the city’s next fiscal year, FY22, which begins July 1. In it, he included slight increases to the NYPD’s budget. This comes on the heels of the largest civil rights movement in a generation demanding reinvestments and the heartbreaking murders of Adam Toledo and Daunte Wright. If I were in the City

NYPD officers (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

The conviction of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd provides some comfort to all of us that no one is above the law.

Patrick Lynch of the Police Benevolent Association (PBA), the union representing front-line New York City police officers, said it clearly. “What Derek Chauvin did that day was not policing,” Lynch said after the verdict was announced. “It was murder.”

The verdict has re-energized a debate, nationally and here in New York City,

NYPD leaders (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

The early 1990s trial of the Los Angeles police officers accused of assaulting Rodney King was the first major police trial involving videotape evidence of the police actions. King had led the police on a high-speed car chase subsequent to being suspected of driving while intoxicated. The approximately 13-minute video showed police officers repeatedly kicking and striking King with batons.  

The trial of the four accused officers ended on April 29, 1992 with an

Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Shea (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

Update, March 5, 2021: Shortly after the publication of this story and after having declined to comment for the story over multiple days, the de Blasio administration on Friday released the first of a three-part draft plan with 36 proposals. "The plan will now move through a public comment period where it will undergo further revision based on the feedback of the public and through a process with

NYPD (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)

As a business leader, a Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, and a Black man, I know what it means to have multiple identities. While I may be Mr. McGuire in the boardroom, every time I change into a sweatsuit to run or play basketball, I know that I’m first and foremost a six-foot-four, two-hundred-something-pound Black man. 

I am also the father of an 8-year-old son who I fear one day could be the next Tamir or Trayvon. My wife Crystal and

The Mayor and PC Shea (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

Last month, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against the City and the NYPD “to end the pervasive use of excessive force and false arrests by the NYPD against New Yorkers in suppressing overwhelmingly peaceful protests.” The suit was in response to the NYPD’s use of force at last summer’s racial justice protests. The complaint alleges multiple examples of excessive force, and presents a detailed critique of the NYPD’s handling of both the summer protests