Do You Like Me For My: Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect [Please Check Box!]

“If you have been stopped and were not involved in any criminal activity the NYPD regrets any inconvenience”:

The NYPD has begun handing out informational cards to pedestrians they stop, question and frisk, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Thursday.

Cops in sections of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx have given those people 4 X 2 1/2-inch white cards that explain a so-called stop, question and frisk encounter.

“We know that the whole stopping and question procedure is a difficult one for us,” Kelly told reporters at Police Headquarters.

“People are, at the very least, losing time, and we’re taking time away from them. We’re hoping to . . . give people a little more information about what the procedure is and why it’s being done.”

. . .

The two-sided card cites common reasons for stops, such as carrying what appears to be a weapon, sights or sounds that suggest criminal activities, or reports of suspicious behavior.

The Bloomberg Legacy Examined

The mayor’s aggressive approach to gun control reaps results:

In 2008, even as gun killings fell, the number of killings committed with knives or other “cutting instruments” rose 50 percent in New York City, the Police Department said: to 125 from 83. Some other large cities saw no such increase last year, and police officials and experts are at a loss to explain what is either a new trend or a spike.

“It is hard to say with certainty what accounts for the increase,” said Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the New York Police Department.

It was possible, but hard to document, Mr. Browne said, that measures like undercover gun-trafficking investigations and interrogations, in which people arrested for lower level crimes are asked to provide information on gun cases, had led to the rise in knife killings and the drop in gun slayings.

In 2008, 292 people were shot to death in New York, down from 347 the year before, continuing a longtime slide in deaths by firearms.

Over all, homicides of all kinds rose slightly last year, to 523 from 496 in 2007, which was a 45-year low. So far in 2009, about a quarter of killings in the city have been committed with knives or other cutting instruments, about the same percentage as in 2008. But the overall homicide rate is down: 97 through April 16, the Police Department said, compared with 135 in the same period in 2008.

“We may have made it harder for killers to get their hands on guns,” said Mr. Browne. “Knives are still easily and legally acquired.”

Is that really the coordinated message?

Let Me Strap You Into The Restaulounge So We Can Waterboard You

But in the end, threatening to torture your landlord can only get you so far:

Manhattan prosecutors described yesterday how two Greenwich Village restaurateurs allegedly set the stage for extortion this past January — kidnapping their landlord’s agent, taking him to a nearby apartment, and showing him some hardware decidedly not meant for a home-improvement project, they said.

The unidentified victim took one look at the tarp and the wicker chair on it — alongside a table full of sinister-seeming tools — and agreed to forgive $250,000 in back rent, prosecutors said.

“They showed him a chair, placed on top of a tarp with a table holding pliers, a hammer, a screwdriver, and a candle,” said prosecutor James Meadows. “A burning candle.”

It hadn’t helped that one of the suspects, Vasileios Giamagas, 35, bragged he was a former mercenary and an accomplished killer who’d slain his own brother.

“He told the managing agent that he was in the Chechen army and had blown up a building with more than 80 people in it,” said Eric Seidel, chief of the DA’s rackets bureau.

Giamagas, an illegal alien from Greece, and co-defendant Ekkehart Schwartz, a 70-year-old German architect here on a green card, had fallen behind on their rent at their never-opened bar and nightclub, Restaulounge-Bar De’Vill, at 68 W. 3rd St.

Charlton Heston Smiles From Heaven

Wow, it goes from beleaguered dog owner to full-blown Charles Bronson in just five paragraphs:

She never had a chance.

A vicious pit bull belonging to Japanese hip-hop star DJ Honda made mincemeat of a fluffy Yorkshire terrier owned by a celebrity facialist when the pooches squared off on the Lower East Side.

The brutal attack — which left the smaller dog needing her face sewn back together — is part of a pattern of bullying by the musician’s three nasty canines, residents said yesterday.

The pit bull, Boss, was walking off his leash on Orchard Street the evening of April 3 when he pounced on Christine Chin’s 12-pound pooch, Bebe.

“My pet was almost shredded to pieces,” Chin said. “I feel so bullied and so helpless. I said to my husband, ‘Should we get a gun now?'”

But unless you’re a celebrity I think it’s supposed to be kind of difficult to get permission to carry a weapon around with you.

Leading Economic Indicators: Grifters!

Oh my god, it’s like Bill the Butcher will be standing around the corner! Grifters are back:

You’ll never see them coming.

A handful of clever grifters have been scamming unsuspecting passersby in midtown with just a pair of broken glasses, cops warn.

The con artists bump into their mark, flash a pair of prebroken glasses to the ground and then begin angrily demanding cash to pay for the “smashed” specs.

The scam has become so widespread that cops from Manhattan’s Midtown North Precinct put out flyers with the photos of some of the worst scammers — known as “fraudulent accosting recidivists” — for the sheer number of times they have run their schemes.

“The scam is an oldie but a goodie. The victims get flustered and sometimes turn over the cash just to get the suspect to shut up and leave them alone,” a police source said.

Nair (Naim) Jabbar had two pairs of broken eyeglasses in a bag when cops arrested him last month. The ex-con bumped into his latest victim on W. 53rd St. and Fifth Ave., court records show.

“You broke my glasses! You own me $125!” Jabbar, 41, yelled.

But when his victim asked him to come back to his office to figure out a solution, Jabbar slunk off, court papers said.

Jabbar’s 29-year-old lookout, Jshawn Lewis, had $1,478 in cash in his pockets, police said.

Jabbar, who had just been charged in December with an eyeglass scam, was sentenced to 90 days in jail for this last hustle. He gets out April 18.