In a case that probably should have gotten more attention than it did, federal prosecutors took down a major prescription drug trafficking organization this week, indicting Jose Garcia Acosta and 13 other people for selling millions of dollars of the dangerously addictive painkiller oxycodone.

The drug ring sold the pills around 156th Street and Broadway and even transported pills and sold them in New England, where they fetch a high black market price. How extensive was the operation? Charging about $16 per pill, Acosta allegedly made $1 million a month off the sales. His car had more 3,100 pills in it when he was pulled over and arrested on Sunday. Other searches recovered another 6,000 pills.

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Is there a problem with the arrest in the Etan Patz case? So wonders New York Times Columnist Jim Dwyer in today's newspaper.

Dwyer suggests that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg were awfully quick to convict suspect Pedro Hernandez, before the full investigation was done. Quoting law enforcement sources, he points out that there is not much corroborating information beyond Hernandez's statement to police.

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Federal prosecutors filed a civil fraud case this week against SEEDCO, which ran two job placement centers under contract with the city, for taking million of dollars in government funding without providing much service.

The SEEDCO lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan names seven former managers with the non-profit in the scheme, and makes clear that the fraud was part of the fabric of an organization that had been favored by the Bloomberg organization.

"SEEDCO was supposed to provide valuable job placement assistance that was underwritten by the federal government to New Yorkers in need," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said. "Instead, as alleged, the defendants went to great lengths to manufacture non-existent job-placements to protect their federal contracts and inflate their compensation."

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In the wake of a Village Voice report on violence at a troubled city jail, city and state child welfare authorities should investigate whether adolescents are being abused there, a former high ranking Correction Department official says.

"I'm not just talking about the Administration for Children's Service, but the state Office of Children and Families, too," says Edward Gavin, who served key roles in both Correction and ACS and now runs his own private investigation firm. "It's inadequate guardianship, it's child abuse and neglect, inasmuch as it's an unsafe condition for children, and it's medical neglect, if they aren't being given medical attention in a timely manner, which is being alleged."

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And the reaction to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's series of moves to address criticism of the NYPD's stop and frisk program? Well, the New York Civil Liberties Union doesn't seem too impressed, calling it a "desperate public relations attempt."

"The mayor and commissioner need to give up the spin and recognize that the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program is fundamentally broken," NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman. "The NYPD is out of control, and the culture and practices of the Department need a full-scale overhaul so that the fundamental rights of all New Yorkers are respected and all communities can trust and respect the police."

More on Kelly's fixes after the jump.

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Police Commissioner Ray Kelly today issued two new department orders which could sharply effect the way police execute the stop and frisk program.

The orders come a day after a federal judge broadened a class action lawsuit filed to force the department to discontinue its stop and frisk campaign. The decision allows hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to seek legal recourse if they believe they were unlawfully stopped.

In her decision, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin was critical of the police, writing that she was disturbed by the Bloomberg administration's "deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers' most fundamental constitutional rights." She also said that the city had a "cavalier attitude," and that "suspicionless stop should never occur."

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Reacting to the last week's Voice's cover story on violence in the city jails, the correction officers union president, Norman Seabrook, criticized the stewardship of jails commissioner Dora Schriro.

In an interview at his downtown Manhattan office, Seabrook says Schriro's leadership is responsible for a rise in the number of his members sent to hospitals with injuries caused by inmates--including 96 officers so far this year--and a decline in morale among officers. He also said she has cut too many staff posts.

"My officers continue to be brutalized by inmates," Seabrook says. "Unfortunately, correction officers are out of sight and out of mind. If I was commissioner tomorrow, I would fire just about every manager in the department."

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Another teen inmate was seriously injured over the weekend in the Robert N. Davoren Center, where teenagers are housed.

Correction officials confirm that Aunray Stanford, 18, was injured in a struggle with correction officers and taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. He subsequently released and returned to Rikers Island.

The officials did not specify Stanford's injuries, citing policy, but a correction source said he sustained a fractured skull in the incident.

RNDC is the same jail that was the subject of a Village Voice article published last Wednesday about violence at Rikers. In the article, correction sources said violence fueled by a culture of intimidation under the noses of correction officers continues.

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Two senior correction officers were convicted today by a Bronx jury for falsifying a fight report and ordering 14 recruits to cover up the incident back in 2006, authorities said.

The jury deliberated for less than three hours in convicting former assistant deputy warden Gail Lewis and current serving captain Sherman Graham of several counts of falsifying documents.

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Mayor Bloomberg must have quite a sense of humor for saying today that the NYPD "does not have quotas," in response to the PBA ad published in this morning's Daily News.

He must be joking to take that position after what's happened over the past two years: the dozen or so police officers who have publicly disclosed the existence of quotas, the class action lawsuit by New Yorkers against quotas, the recent legislation that has passed on quotas, and the tape recordings, published in the Voice, of police supervisors pressuring cops and actually quoting specific numbers of summonses and stop and frisks that each officer is required to hit.

And yet, there he was, pretending that elephant in the corner does not exist. "You know it's always an issue," the mayor declared this morning. "Does the Police Department measure productivity? Of course they do. They're supposed to do that. They have a responsibility to do that."

"We do not have quotas," he added. "My recollection is quotas per say are illegal, so we certainly don't have them."

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