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The New York Civil Liberties Union say that these statistics confirm their suspicions about “over-policing.”

Read more at NYDailyNews.com

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The FBI concluded that Pimentel “didn’t have the predisposition or the ability to do anything on his own,” one of the officials said.

The officials were not authorized to speak about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity. The FBI’s New York office declined to comment Monday.

New York authorities said Pimentel is an “al-Qaida sympathizer” motivated by terrorist propaganda and resentment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said police had to move quickly to arrest Pimentel on Saturday because he was ready to carry out his plan.

He also talked of bombing a police station in Bayonne, N.J., Kelly said.

“He was in fact putting this bomb together,” Kelly said. “He was drilling holes and it would have been not appropriate for us to let him walk out the door with that bomb.”

The 27-year-old suspect was being held after his arraignment Sunday on terrorism-related charges.

His lawyer Joseph Zablocki said his client’s behavior leading up to the arrest was not that of a conspirator trying to conceal some violent scheme. Zablocki said Pimentel was public about his activities and was not trying to hide anything.

“I don’t believe that this case is nearly as strong as the people believe,” Zablocki said. “He (Pimentel) has this very public online profile. … This is not the way you go about committing a terrorist attack.”

New York City authorities said that the FBI was involved in the case but did not specifically say it declined to pursue the charges.

Kelly said the NYPD worked very closely with federal authorities on the case.

“We just believed that we couldn’t let it go any further,” he said. “We had to act.”

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The man, John Hopkins, has been charged with rape, assault and unlawful imprisonment and was being held on $350,000 bail, prosecutors said Tuesday. It wasn’t clear who was representing him. Legal Aid was listed as his defense but he apparently has not yet been assigned an attorney.

The allegations, detailed in court documents, paint a picture of torture. Officers found the 27-year-old woman Saturday in the studio apartment in the fetal position, shaking, on the bed. A rope was bolted near the bed where he tied her to rape her, she said. Handcuffs she said were used to shackle her to the radiator were found nearby. By the bed, officers found a bag with a ball-gag, whip and a rope.

The woman was taken to a hospital with rectal hemorrhaging and bruising. Authorities withheld her name because of the nature of her complaint.

Authorities were called to the apartment Saturday after the woman’s mother contacted authorities in Wisconsin. The woman apparently had broken free that day and contacted her mother, saying she was going to kill herself because she couldn’t bear to be locked up anymore, police said. It’s not clear why she didn’t call 911 herself. Police arrived and found both the man and woman in the apartment.

The woman told police she met Hopkins online, and he bought her a one-way ticket to New York City on Feb. 4. He met her at the airport, and the two took a taxi to his apartment in the East Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Once inside, according to court documents, he told her she was going to be his slave. Hopkins forced her to call him “master” and let her leave only to go to work, the documents said. She had a job as a chef at a restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and she left at least once but for some reason returned, authorities said, though it’s not clear why. When she did, she was handcuffed again. During the eight days, she was blindfolded, gagged and repeatedly raped and forced to perform oral sex, according to court documents.

It’s not clear how long Hopkins had been living at the four-story red brick building. Messages left with Hopkins’ neighbors weren’t returned, and calls to possible relatives went unanswered.

Hopkins was arrested in 2004 for misdemeanor assault in a domestic violence incident, but the case was dropped. It’s not clear what he was advertising on Craigslist or whether the woman had any idea what she was signing up for when she stepped off the plane. He was due in court Friday.

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Maksim Gelman had a bloodied kitchen knife when he was taken into police custody at about 9 a.m. Saturday after a nightlong manhunt, police said.

“It’s so horrendous and bizarre. We have no reason to know why he did this,” said police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who held up a photo of the knife that he said Gelman had used to slash a subway rider on the head and neck before he was apprehended. The man survived.

“I don’t recall seeing anything like this,” said Kelly, who has spent decades working for the New York Police Department.

He said charges were pending against Gelman.

The stabbing spree started just after 5 a.m. Friday, when police say Gelman fatally knifed his stepfather, Aleksandr Kuznetsov, at their apartment in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay neighborhood. Gelman had gotten into a fight with his mother after she refused to allow him to use her Lexus, and Kuznetsov intervened and was attacked, Kelly said.

Police found the 54-year-old man’s body at his home in the predominantly Eastern European immigrant neighborhood. The Ukrainian-born Gelman and his mother became naturalized U.S. citizens in 2004 or 2005, Kelly said.

At about 10:30 a.m., several blocks away, Gelman entered the home of his ex-girlfriend and used a kitchen knife to fatally stab her mother, 56-year-old Anna Bulchenko, Kelly said. When 20-year-old Yelena Bulchenko arrived home at about 4 p.m., she found her mother dead in a pool of blood and called 911, police said.

Gelman apparently was still in the house, chasing Bulchenko as she fled outside and stabbing her 11 times as she died, Kelly said.

He then sped away in the Lexus to Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood, rear-ending a Pontiac. The driver confronted Gelman and was stabbed three times in the chest but survived and was in stable condition, Kelly said.

Gelman drove off in the Pontiac, hitting 62-year-old pedestrian Stephen Tanenbaum, who died of his injuries, police said. He later abandoned the car, engine running, in the driveway of a private house in Midwood, not far from a freight railroad line “Gelman frequented as a graffiti artist,” Kelly said.

Gelman was not seen again until just before 1 a.m. Saturday, when he confronted a livery cab driver in the Crown Heights area and stabbed him, Kelly said. Shortly after, he approached a couple in a Nissan, stabbing the man multiple times in the hand before hijacking the car, police said. Both men survived.

Just after 8 a.m. Saturday, passengers on a southbound No. 1 train in upper Manhattan noticed that a man on the train matched photos of Gelman they had seen in newspapers.

One passenger on the train got off at West 96th Street, approached officers on the platform and told them that a man fitting Gelman’s description knocked a newspaper out of her hand, saying, “Do you believe what they’re writing about me?” Kelly said.

Gelman jumped off the train at the West 34th Street station, crossed the tracks and hopped on a northbound No. 3 train, where he stabbed a passenger, the commissioner said.

Officers were in the driver’s compartment of the train after hearing reports that Gelman might be on board. Gelman made his way up to the driver’s door and pounded on it, “claiming that he was the police,” Kelly said.

One of the officers threw open the door and wrestled Gelman to the ground, knocking the knife from his hand, Kelly said.

He was taken into custody from the train at Times Square. None of Gelman’s relatives could be reached for comment Saturday.

“I saw a stream of people coming from the front of the train. They looked upset. They had white faces,” Hyun Jo of East Orange, N.J., told the New York Post. “The conductor announced they ‘found the guy who killed four people yesterday.’ I saw the blood in the other car when they let us off. It was crazy.”

Kelly described Gelman as an unemployed drug user with 10 previous arrests – mostly linked to graffiti and drugs.

The commissioner said the suspect’s statements to police were “pretty incoherent” – including one in which he stated that “she had to die.” Kelly said he wasn’t sure if that was a reference to the ex-girlfriend or someone else.

A longtime friend of Yelena Bulchenko, Angela Akopyan, said the first time she heard of Gelman was Friday. “I never heard of him prior to yesterday. Ever in my life,” she said.

She described Bulchenko as “always happy.” “She was just a really good person to be around,” Akopyan said.

Bulchenko worked as a receptionist at a dental office in Brooklyn, and had attended Kingsborough Community College, she said. The last time Akopyan saw her was Tuesday, when a group of friends got together at an Applebee’s. “It was the first time we saw each other in the past two weeks. We were making plans for the weekend like we always do,” Akopyan said. “And then it never happened.”

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But Joy White says she understands why her daughter, who lives in Atlanta, would want to continue her relationship with the people who raised her. She says that’s all her daughter knows.

Ann Pettway of Raleigh, North Carolina, is being held without bail on charges she kidnapped Carlina in 1987. The FBI says Pettway took the newborn after her own efforts at childbearing failed.

“I was getting in when he hit the gas and my jacket got caught in the door,” he said yesterday. “I was screaming at him to stop, but he would not stop. I struggled and struggled until I finally pulled free.”

Horton said the cab roared off before he could snag the license plate number.

“I’m a black guy yes, but I have a job, I have a college degree, I live in a nice area in Bushwick,” said Horton, 23.

“This is racial profiling and it’s sickening. It’s ridiculous trying to find a cab that will take you where you want to go if you’re a black man.”

Read entire article at NYdailynews.com

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“The court imposes an indeterminate sentence of 20-years to life,” the judge ruled.

Horace Moore takes with him to prison the compelling image of city bus drivers holding up bus transfer cards.

VIDEO:

It was a white ticket that somehow fueled Moore’s murderous rage and deadly stabbing of on-duty bus driver, Edwin Thomas.

“20-years is petty, you know, I’m not getting my brother back, over a transfer?” said Wallace Thomas, the victim’s brother.

It was December of 2008 when Moore hopped aboard Thomas’ B46 bus in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Thomas refused to give the ex-con a free bus transfer, which prompted Moore’s fit of fury which started with a verbal assault, followed by a punch, and ended with knife plunged into the driver’s chest.

The sentence of 20-years in prison left many of Thomas’ union colleagues visibly upset and emotionally distraught.

Read entire article at ABClocal.com

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Twenty-year-old Bryan Feeley fell onto the tracks and was hit by the train early Thursday. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

Police say he robbed a 32-year-old man of $150 in cash in the Tribeca section of lower Manhattan. The victim followed him, watched him go into the subway and called police.

Officers saw the suspect on a train platform and told him to not to move. But he tried to jump between two subway cars while the train was moving and fell between the cars onto the tracks.

Police say the same suspect was thought to be responsible for a second attempted knifepoint robbery.

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Though its roots are in Trinidad and Tobago, the West Indian American Day Carnival Parade has always been an all-inclusive Caribbean affair, and this year, Haiti’s going to get some special attention, according to carnival spokeswoman Jean Alexander.

Under the theme “Bridging Cultures,” the 43rd annual festivities will include a benefit concert on Thursday for survivors of Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake. The Thursday show kicks off the annual five-day event, which culminates with the massive carnival parade on Labor Day, Sept. 6, along Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway.

Text continues after Pictures of the week gallery…

The parade of costume and music and floats begins at noon at Schenectady Ave. and Eastern Parkway. WIADCA President Yolanda Lezama-Clark cuts a ribbon to start the procession, which travels down the parkway to Grand Army Plaza.

The “Caribbean Peoples Unite For Haiti” concert stars calypsonian David Rudder, soca singer Kevin Lyttle, dance hall star Serani, kompa music band Carimi and other performers. Showtime is 7 p.m. Admission is $30 and $35 at the door.

Read entire article at NYdailynews.com

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He broke both his legs and police said he was in critical condition.

The car’s owner, Guy McCormack, of Old Bridge, N.J., told the New York Daily News he was convinced that rosary beads he kept inside the Dodge saved Magill’s life. “Here’s what saved him!” McCormack said as he took them from the car.

‘Pray for my son’

Magill’s father, Thomas Magill Sr., asked friends to “pray for my son” in a text message, the Daily News said. “He’s stable now. We can only hope he’ll be okay,” Magill Sr. said, according to the Daily News.

Police were investigating why Magill jumped from the building.

“He came down feet first at like 100 mph,” witness Andrew Petrocelli, 47, a maintenance worker, told the Daily News. “That’s a miracle if I’ve ever seen one. He should be a goner. It was like that movie ‘Unbreakable.’ That was this guy: unbreakable.”

“He had his hands up in the air, like flailing. Just when he’s about to land, there was a boom and glass flying all over,” he added. “The car saved his life. He landed in there like a stunt man. It was amazing.”

Text continues after Pictures of the Week gallery:

The Daily News quoted a neighbor of Magill, Francine Denardo, as saying he was “an amazing kid.” “He seemed so happy. He seemed so joyful,” she said.

Magill is not the only New Yorker to survive a high-rise fall.

Window washer Alcides Moreno fell 47 stories from the roof of a skyscraper in December 2007, and lived.

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NEW YORK – A free concert by pop band Hanson and up-and-coming Canadian rapper Drake was canceled Tuesday after twice as many people as anticipated showed up and many became unruly, police said.

The show started at about 6 p.m. with an opening act at Pier 17 on Manhattan’s South Street Seaport, a popular summer locale for concerts. Hanson, the Tulsa, Okla., brothers behind the 1997 hit “Mmmbop,” and headliner Drake, whose album “Thank Me Later” debuted Tuesday, were to appear on stage soon after.

Organizers were anticipating about 10,0000 people but nearly 20,000 showed up, police said. Many people climbed roofs and started throwing bottles, as concertgoers smashed together toward the stage, police said.

Witness Tamika Johnson told the Daily News newspaper: “People in the front started leaving because they were getting crushed.”

The concert organizers asked the New York Police Department for help dispersing the crowds around 7 p.m., police spokesman Paul Browne said. Two people were arrested on minor charges; six suffered minor injuries, police said.

The concert was part of the “Sounds Like Paper” series presented by Paper magazine, an independent magazine focusing on arts, culture and music. The magazine apologized on its website: “Wow, the crowd was much larger than we anticipated, and unfortunately the show was canceled. But we will make it up to you guys!”

The magazine posted several updates on Twitter during the night: “It’s a total madhouse — in a good way” and “get off the roof!”

Telephone calls by The Associated Press to representatives for Drake and Hanson weren’t immediately returned Tuesday night.

A spokesman for Drake, whose album features Kanye West and Alicia Keys and debuted to positive reviews, told the Daily News the rapper was disappointed the NYPD dispersed the crowds before he could perform.

Hanson’s “Mmmbop,” from the trio of brothers’ album “Middle of Nowhere,” was one of the biggest debut singles of all time.

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Governor Paterson’s claims of racist mistreatment by the media seem to have fallen on deaf ears in New York and beyond.

The New York Times reports that David Dinkins, New York’s first black mayor, “took issue with the Governor’s comments,” saying that Paterson should “definitely… get off the racist thing.”

Meanwhile a vacationing President Obama distanced himself from Paterson’s comments about him as spokesman Bill Burton said Monday: “In terms of media coverage of the President, he thinks that there are a lot of people who agree with him in the media, there are a lot [of] people who disagree with him in the media, and there are a lot of folks who play it straight.”

Click here to read more.

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A driver who had been fighting with his wife in the parking lot of a Chuck E. Cheese cut a path of destruction through The Bronx yesterday, ramming cars and killing a father — who died pushing his 6-year-old boy to safety, cops said.

Mark St. Pierre, 36, of The Bronx, injured 13 people in a 20-block demolition derby before cops arrested him, po lice said.

The bizarre violence started at the children’s pizza restaurant on Gun Hill Road near Ely Avenue in Baychester at about 5:45 p.m.

St. Pierre got into a 2008 Infiniti and sped west on Gun Hill Road, a witness said.

Click here for the full report.

From NYTimes.com:

Unemployment among blacks in New York City has increased much faster than for whites, and the gap appears to be widening at an accelerating pace, new studies of jobless data have found.

While unemployment rose steadily for white New Yorkers from the first quarter of 2008 through the first three months of this year, the number of unemployed blacks in the city rose four times as fast, according to a report to be released on Monday by the city comptroller’s office. By the end of March, there were about 80,000 more unemployed blacks than whites, according to the report, even though there are roughly 1.5 million more whites than blacks here.

Click here for full story.

A woman found dead in a skyscraper where a cleaning woman had vanished days earlier was bound and gagged and had a gold crucifix taped to her mouth, police said Sunday.

Police searching for the missing cleaning woman at a building near the World Trade Center site found the body on Saturday after discovering blood leaking from a ventilation shaft, top police spokesman Paul Browne said.

The body hadn’t been identified, but police presumed it was that of Eridania Rodriguez, who hasn’t been seen since her work shift Tuesday at the 26-story Manhattan tower. Rodriguez’ street clothes and other belongings were found in her locker, and video surveillance didn’t show her leaving the building.

An autopsy Sunday determined the dead woman, found in a 12th-floor air-conditioning duct, was asphyxiated by tape applied to her head and face, medical examiner’s office spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said.

The woman’s hands were tied behind her back, and her feet and mouth were bound, Browne said. The crucifix was dangling by the woman’s mouth, Browne said, but it was unclear whether the necklace had been caught underneath the tape.

“We haven’t determined whether the crucifix ended up there incidentally or intentionally,” he said.

The woman was wearing a work shirt and sweatpants and had suffered a head wound, Browne said. Her shoes were found elsewhere in the air-conditioning duct, he said.

Rodriguez, 46, was the sister of professional bodybuilder Victor Martinez. She was a native of the Dominican Republic who lived in upper Manhattan and was married with several children.

She made her last appearance on security videotape entering an elevator at the skyscraper about 7 p.m. Tuesday. Her cleaning cart was found on the eighth floor.

Rodriguez worked on some vacant floors in the 400,000-square-foot building, and relatives said the emptiness had unsettled her and them.

The atmosphere “is like a creepy place, empty — you know you’re working in a place there’s nobody but you,” brother-in-law Rafael Dicent said Sunday.

He and others in the family went to the building to look for Rodriguez shortly after her disappearance.

Investigators traveled Friday to a Pennsylvania landfill where the building’s garbage is taken to see if Rodriguez’ body had been dumped with the trash.

The building, at 2 Rector St., is a few blocks from the World Trade Center site. Like many others near ground zero, it was upgraded with enhanced security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Cameras cover every exit, and guards staff the lobby 24 hours a day.

Among the building’s tenants are Daniel Libeskind, the architect who created the master plan to redevelop the 16-acre trade center site.

Some had traveled from as far as Atlanta, others brought their young children to witness the broadcast live from the crossroads of the world, bidding the king of pop one last farewell.

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Hundreds including Rev. Al Sharpton and film director Spike Lee gathered at the Apollo Monday afternoon to honor deceased pop king Michael Jackson.

Calling Jackson a “genius” and an “innovator” Sharpton led the crowd in a moment of silence at exactly 5:26 p.m., the east coast time Jackson was declared dead last week Thursday.

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: APOLLO THEATER HOSTS TRIBUTE TO THE KING OF POP

Lee, who directed both music videos for Jackson’s song “They Don’t Really Care About Us”– one set in Brazil, the other in prison–partied with the celebratory crowd.

Lee danced and took pictures of the hundreds who filled the historic Harlem theater, some of whom had waited five hours just to get into the venue.

Fans came carrying posters, wearing Jackson t-shirts, white gloves and black fedoras. They left behind bouquets of flowers, stuffed animals, and handwritten notes that covered the lower part of the Apollo stage.

It was in August 1967 on that same stage that nine-year-old Jackson performed alongside his four older brothers. Known then as the Jackson Brothers, they won the Apollo’s signature show “Amateur Night.”

Today in honor of Jackson the Harlem theatre will host a tribute to Jackson during tonight’s Amateur night scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m.

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From DailyNews.com:

Rents can be jacked up as much as 3% on one-year leases and 6% on two-year leases starting Oct. 1, according to new city guidelines adopted after a raucous meeting Tuesday.

As is often the case, neither tenants nor landlords left the final vote of the Rent Guidelines Board – which oversees about a million rent-regulated city dwellings – completely happy.

“It’s not unexpected – it’s what they do every year. It’s a farce,” said Manhattan tenant Jeannette Burns, 64, of the vote to allow rent hikes.

When I was a kid, I was a Dr. J fan. This made me, by proxy, a Philadelphia 76ers fan. Now, being from Nyack, New York one would have expected that I’d be a Knicks fan. The fact was that I had liked the Knicks back when I could barely walk and they were still winning titles behind Walt “Clyde” Frazier, but I had liked The Doc even then, when he was soaring through the air for the New York Nets of Long Island.

I was also a bit of a San Francisco 49ers fan, being absolutely in love, as I was, with their running back, the little remembered Wendell Tyler. When a gang of us would get together and play “kill the carrier”, it was Tyler’s herky-jerk jukes and fakes that’d I’d imitate, often fumbling (as he did) just for authenticity.

I was a Mets fan too but this was just because an older man that I respected said that he was and I really didn’t give a damn about baseball.

Now I’m all Mets, Knicks, and Jets. How did this happen? Going away to college.

This complete sociopathic bozo from Philly named Shawn Houston (then and always a friend, even now a Facebook friend) started giving me the business one day after the New York Giants lost to his hometown Eagles.

The conversation went like this:
Him: You see what my Eagles did to your Giants yesterday?
Me: I’m not a Giants f…
Him: Your team just couldn’t stop Cunningham.
Me: I’m not…
Him: The Giants suck!
Me: I…
Him: New York sucks!
Me: Hey!

So when I meet somebody today and they’re, let’s say, a lifelong Harlem resident and their favorite teams are, for instance, the Pittsburgh Steelers the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Red Sox, I know immediately that they’ve never been away from New York long enough to have to defend it.

A plainclothes policeman who drew his gun while chasing someone he had found rummaging through his car was shot and killed by a fellow officer who was driving by and saw the pursuit, the police commissioner said.

Commissioner Raymond Kelly said 25-year-old Omar J. Edwards died after being shot late Thursday within blocks of the Harlem police station where he worked.

Edwards had just finished his shift around 10:30 p.m. when he headed to his car and saw that the driver’s-side window had been smashed and a man was going through the vehicle, Kelly said.

Edwards struggled with the man, who got away from him by slipping out of his sweater, Kelly said. Edwards chased the man up two streets with his gun drawn, he said.

A sergeant and two plainclothes officers in an unmarked police car saw the pursuit and made a U-turn to follow the men, Kelly said. One of the officers jumped out of the car and fired six times, hitting Edwards twice — once in the arm and once in the chest, he said.

Kelly said Edwards did not fire his weapon. He died at the Harlem Hospital Center about an hour after the shooting.

It was unclear whether the officers identified themselves. The name of the officer who fired the shots has not been released, but Kelly said he had worked at the NYPD for four years.

“While we don’t know all the details of what happened tonight, this is a tragedy. Rest assured that we will find out exactly what happened here, and we will learn from it so it doesn’t happen again,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference from the hospital.

Kelly said Edwards had been on the force for two years and worked in the housing bureau. He was recently married and had two young children.

The shooter was white and Edwards was black, a fact that could raise questions about police use of deadly force in a minority community.

In the past three years in the New York City area, there have been two other cases of off-duty policemen being shot and killed by other officers.

In 2008, a black, off-duty Mount Vernon police officer was killed by a Westchester County policeman while holding a gun on an assault suspect in suburban White Plains. A grand jury found the victim had failed to identify himself as an officer. County officers — one white, one black and two Hispanic — were cleared of wrongdoing by a grand jury.

In 2006, a New York City police officer, Eric Hernandez, was shot and killed by an on-duty patrolman who was responding to an attack at a White Castle in the Bronx.

Four men arrested after planting what they thought were explosives near a synagogue and community center and plotting to shoot down a military plane were bent on carrying out a holy war against America, authorities said Thursday.

The suspects were arrested Wednesday night, shortly after planting a 37-pound mock explosive device in the trunk of a car outside the Riverdale Temple and two mock bombs in the backseat of a car outside the Jewish Center, a few blocks away, authorities said.

Police blocked their escape with an 18-wheel truck, smashing their tinted SUV windows and while apprehending the unarmed suspects.

At a news conference outside the Bronx temple, Police CommissionerRaymond Kelly quoted one of the men as saying, “If Jews were killed in this attack … that would be all right.”

James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, all of Newburgh, were charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

“They stated that they wanted to commit Jihad,” Kelly said. “They were disturbed about what happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that Muslims were being killed.”

An official told The Associated Press that three of the men are converts to Islam. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss details of the investigation. Three of the defendants are U.S. citizens and one is of Haitian descent, officials said.

Payen occasionally attended a Newburgh mosque. His statements on Islam often had to be corrected, according to Assistant Imam Hamin Rashada, who met Payen through a program that helps prisoners re-enter society.

The defendants are due in federal court Thursday in suburban White Plains.

Acting U.S. Attorney Lev L. Dassin said the defendants planned to detonate a car with plastic explosives to destroy the temple and Jewish center.

They also planned to shoot Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles at planes at the Air National Guard base inNewburgh, about 70 miles north of New York City.

The FBI and other agencies monitored the men and provided an inactive missile and inert C-4 to an informant for the defendants.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Kelly met privately with congregants Thursday inside the Riverdale Temple.

“The shock and being floored was followed by relief,” David Winter, executive director of the Riverdale Jewish Center, said afterward.

Bloomberg warned against stereotypes, emphasizing that the temple is open to people of all faiths, including a Muslim girl who sometimes prays there.

Kelly said the temple may have been chosen because of “convenience” — it is near a highway. He said the suspects had scouted the location twice before.

Kelly said the uniformed officers who flooded the neighborhood were there to improve residents’ “comfort level,” even though “No one was at risk. This was a very tightly controlled operation.”

“It’s a little scary being so close to home, but you have to just move on sometimes,” said Maria Patuhas, 18, a senior at the Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy, across the street from the temple.

Officials told The Associated Press the arrests came after a nearly yearlong undercover operation that began in Newburgh.

“This latest attempt to attack our freedoms shows that the homeland security threats against New York City are sadly all too real and underscores why we must remain vigilant in our efforts to prevent terrorism,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement. The mayor is expected to appear at Riverdale Jewish Center morning services with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

The defendants, in their efforts to acquire weapons, dealt with an informant acting under law enforcement supervision, authorities said. The FBI and other agencies monitored the men and provided an inactive missile and inert C-4 to the informant for the defendants, a federal complaint said.

In June 2008, the informant met Cromitie in Newburgh and Cromitie complained that his parents had lived inAfghanistan and he was upset about the war there and that many Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. military forces, officials said.

Cromitie also expressed an interest in doing “something to America,” they said in the complaint.

In October 2008, the informant began meeting with the defendants at a Newburgh house equipped with concealed video and audio equipment, the complaint said.

Beginning in April 2009, the four men selected the synagogue and the community center they intended to hit, it said. They also conducted surveillance of military planes at the Air National Guard Base, it said.

Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, issued a statement praising law enforcers ”for their efforts in helping to prevent any harm to either Jewish institutions or to our nation’s military.”

“We repeat the American Muslim community’s repudiation of bias-motivated crimes and of anyone who would falsely claim religious justification for violent actions,” the statement said.

Rep. Peter King, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, was briefed on the case following the arrests.

“This was a long, well-planned investigation, and it shows how real the threat is from homegrown terrorists,” said King, of New York.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said if there can be any good news out of this case it’s that “the group was relatively unsophisticated, penetrated early and not connected to any outside group.”

“The shocking plan to blow up a Jewish house of prayer with what the jihadist terrorists thought were C-4 explosives is dramatic proof that the dangers from such fanaticism have not passed and that American Jewsmust maintain their vigilance,” said a statement released by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group.

The defendants were jailed Wednesday night and couldn’t be contacted for comment. The FBI didn’t immediately return a telephone message seeking information on whether the men had lawyers.

The Somali teenager accused of participating in the hostage-taking of an American ship captain was on his first pirating mission, his father said early Tuesday.

Abdiqadir Muse (AHB’-dih-KAH’-dir moo-SAY’) told The Associated Press that his son had been outside the family’s home in Galka’yo (GOCK’-ahl-ya) town in Somalia when armed pirates came to get him.

His son, Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse (AHB’-dih-WAH’-lee AHB’-dih-KAH’-dir moo-SAY’), left with the pirates about a week and a half before he surrendered to the U.S. Navy and ship captain Richard Phillips was rescued on April 12, he said.

Muse said by telephone through an interpreter with the Minneapolis-based Somali Justice Advocacy Center that the pirates lied to his son, telling him they were going to get money. The family is penniless, he said.

“He just went with them without knowing what he was getting into,” Muse said.

He gave his son’s age as 16, which the boy’s mother had previously said. A law enforcement official said he is at least 18, meaning prosecutors will not have to take extra legal steps to try him in a U.S. court.

Muse called his son a good boy and a “very well-disciplined young kid.” He had been going to an Islamic school at the time he left with the pirates, Muse said.

The teenager is in custody in New York awaiting a Tuesday court hearing where he is expected to face piracy and hostage-taking charges.

Federal authorities are warning law enforcement personnel of a possible terror plot against the New York City subway and train systems during the holiday season, and police are beefing up security in preparation.

An internal memo obtained by The Associated Press says the FBI has received a “plausible but unsubstantiated” report that al-Qaida terrorists in late September may have discussed attacking the subway system.

A person briefed on the matter, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the intelligence-gathering work, said the threat may also be directed at the passenger rail lines running through New York, such as Amtrak and the Long Island Rail Road, which are particularly busy with Thanksgiving holiday travelers.

A U.S. counterterror official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do so publicly, said senior government officials have been briefed because the FBI very recently received credible information about possible attacks over the holiday season, and authorities are particularly concerned about this long holiday weekend.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko confirmed only that his agency and the Homeland Security Department issued a bulletin Tuesday night to state and local authorities, and the information is being reviewed.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said the warning was issued as a routine matter, but added that there may be an increased police presence in New York and other large cities.

The internal bulletin says al-Qaida terrorists “in late September may have discussed targeting transit systems in and around New York City. These discussions reportedly involved the use of suicide bombers or explosives placed on subway/passenger rail systems,” according to the document.

“We have no specific details to confirm that this plot has developed beyond aspirational planning, but we are issuing this warning out of concern that such an attack could possibly be conducted during the forthcoming holiday season,” according to the warning dated Tuesday.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said they have received an unsubstantiated report and as a result have “deployed additional resources in the mass transit system.”

While federal agencies regularly issue all sorts of advisory warnings, the language of this one is particularly blunt.

Intelligence and homeland security officials are working with local authorities to try to corroborate the information “and will continue to investigate every possible lead,” the memo says.

Rep. Peter King, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, said authorities “have very real specifics as to who it is and where the conversation took place and who conducted it.”

“It certainly involves suicide bombing attacks on the mass transit system in and around New York and it’s plausible, but there’s no evidence yet that it’s in the process of being carried out,” King said.

Knocke, the DHS spokesman, said the warning was issued “out of an abundance of caution going into this holiday season.”

No changes are being made to the nation’s threat level, or for transit systems at this time, he said.

“However, transit passengers in larger metropolitan areas like New York may see an increased security presence in the coming days,” Knocke said.

The increased personnel could include uniformed and plainclothes “behavior detection” officers, federal air marshals, canine teams, and security inspectors, Knocke said.