Mathieu Lefevre's family and the NYPD had their day in court yesterday.

As the mother of slain cyclist Mathieu Lefevre sat stoically in the second row of the gallery, lawyers for the New York Police Department tried to explain to a judge why it has taken more than five months to comply with her Freedom of Information request information about how he died.

Questioned by Supreme Court Judge Peter Moulton, the Lefevre family's lawyer, Steve Vaccaro, laid out the history of the case. For weeks after Lefevre's death, the NYPD refused to provide the family with any information about its investigation into Lefevre's death -- in fact, it was more communicative with the truck driver who killed Lefevre, and with the press, who were told by officers soon after the crash that there was no criminality in Lefevre's death.

More >>

Dexter Miranda

Mathieu Lefevre

Six months to the day after Mathieu Lefevre was killed by a truck driver who ran over his bicycle in an East Williamsburg intersection, his family's lawsuit against the NYPD will be argued in New York Supreme Court this afternoon.

Judge Peter Moulton has denied a motion to allow Lefevre's mother, Erika, to testify, so today's hearing will consist only of lawyers' oral arguments.

More >>

Dexter Miranda

Will the case of Mathieu Lefevre make the NYPD reconsider how it treats fatal bike crashes?

Mathieu Lefevre was hardly the first cyclist killed on the streets of New York City, nor was the driver who ran him over the first to get a pass from the NYPD. Lefevre's family members weren't the first ones to be stonewalled as they tried to get details on how the police investigate fatal bike crashes.

But Lefevre's case is increasingly becoming a watershed moment in the long struggle of bicycle safety advocates to change how the police approach bicycle safety. The Lefevre family's lawsuit against the police department has already drawn media attention and prompted a City Council hearing. Now, an amicus brief from City Councilor Brad Lander and the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives is turning up the heat even more.

More >>

C.S. Muncy

Occupy Wall Street roared back to life yesterday, as protesters marched and attempted to re-occupy Zuccotti Park. They were met by police who closed the park and violently arrested occupiers. Head over to the account by the Voice's Nick Pinto, who was on the scene, along with photographer C.S. Muncy. In his piece, Pinto explains that "the day would become a sort of a condensed repetition of Occupy's history, as protesters marched, set up shop in Zuccotti Park, clashed with police, were arrested in significant numbers, and were ultimately re-evicted, as police forcefully dragged them from the public plaza and re-erected the barricades blocking off the park." As of 9:07 a.m. DCPI did not have a total number of arrests. [Runnin' Scared]

More >>

The slow trickle of evidence in Lefevre's death continues.

When Mathieu Lefevre was thrown from his bicycle and killed by a truck in Brooklyn last October, his case became Exhibit A for cycling advocates who have argued for years that bicyclists killed on the streets of New York almost never get justice from the police.

That complaint is finally reaching policy-makers. Lefevre's mother was one of many who testified at a City Council hearing on the issue last month. But from the beginning, the Lefevre family's quest has been about something even more fundamental than fair treatment of cyclists. They just want some basic transparency from the NYPD.

More >>

Putting on a seatbelt in a cab sometimes seems like the biggest effort in the world. Because, really, you're only going to be in the cab for five minutes, you don't know where that piece of fabric has been or whose neck it has touched and you also want to be able to lean forward when the meter goes on so you can turn off the Taxi TV the instant it starts to jabber away. However -- if those ads instated back in December (on the TVs, mind you) didn't send a motherly reminder to buckle up -- then maybe these New York Daily News stories today will. Daily News explains how people who don't put their seatbelts on in cabs are getting gruesome injuries after their faces slam into the plastic partitions in between riders and drivers. And there's a picture!

More >>

A U.S. soldier killed 16 Afghan civilians in their homes when he walked off base. Following the attack he turned himself in. The reports of the number of casualties have been varied. In addition to the at least 16 dead, five were wounded. The victims include girls aged 6 or younger. "We don't know why he killed people," a villager told the New York Times. In February, riots broke out in Afghanistan after Korans were burned at an U.S. military base. [MSNBC, CNN, NYT]

More >>

via @nysgo

A 26-year-old driver going the wrong-way on the FDR Drive was responsible for a crash that left two dead, Eyewitness News reported. The driver, in a Nissan Maxima, hit a Dodge Caravan driven by a 53-year-old man. The Caravan was going southbound -- the correct direction -- when the Nissan, coming northbound, hit. Both drivers were killed.

More >>

A New York Civil Court has decided today that Abraham Soldaner is responsible for the 2008 death of cyclist Rasha Shamoon.

Shamoon was killed on the corner of Delancey and Bowery on Aug. 5, 2008. More than 20 witnesses called 911 to report the accident, but cops didn't interview anyone, according to Michael Murphy, Transportation Alternatives' spokesman, who just got word of the decision.

"They had over 20 witnesses calling in about the crash and didn't try to interview any of them," Murphy told Runnin' Scared.

More >>

The NYPD's investigation of the death of a cyclist is still unraveling.

The saga of the NYPD's flawed investigation into the death of cyclist Mathieu Lefevre last fall was already full of stupefying examples of incompetence and apparent untruth.

It took a full two months for the NYPD to even go looking for video footage of the accident, and even then only at the prompting of Lefevre's family's lawyer, Steve Vaccaro.

That footage was finally provided to the family on January 20, along with official NYPD descriptions of what the videos contained. The videos and descriptions revealed that the police's prior statement --that Lefevre was killed after running a red light -- was untrue.

But that's not the end of it. Today the Lefevre family released some of the video footage, and there's a problem: the official descriptions of the footage don't match the contents of the videos at all.

More >>