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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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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In an unusual public push-back at Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, the city's police officers union ran an ad in today's Daily News, attacking the department for pressuring officers to hit quotas and then punishing them if their tickets are tossed from traffic court.

"Don't blame the cop," the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association ad says. "Blame NYPD management, for the pressure to write summonses and the pressure to convict motorists."

"They are still sending Internal Affairs sergeants to harass our guys at traffic court," explains PBA spokesman Al O'Leary. "They are pressing our guys to write summonses, and hitting them with three days lost vacation, costing them $900, if they don't dot an i and cross a t. Our members are furious."

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Aside from pushing and shoving and a relatively paltry 50 arrests, the May Day protests yesterday were largely peaceful. The credit for that should go to the police officers assigned yesterday to the protests throughout lower Manhattan.

The cops held it together even though many of them had to work ridiculous hours and face verbal abuse from some protesters. Ordered to bring helmets and batons, cops started arriving before midnight on Tuesday and some worked up to 24 hours, a lot of it standing on posts hour after hour, which is mind numbing work.

"I was worried about violence, I don't want to get hurt, nobody wants to get hurt," one police officer tells the Voice. "But it went pretty smoothly all things considered. It was pretty peaceful."

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We learned last night that a federal judge has granted class certification to a lawsuit which claims the NYPD's quota policy is unconstitutional and results in summonses and stop and frisks being done without probable cause.

The lawsuit, which could turn into a fairly big problem for Mayor Bloomberg, relies heavily on tape recordings of police supervisors ordering officers to hit specific monthly summons numbers--all of which was first reported in the Village Voice's award winning "NYPD Tapes" series.

The decision allows the lawsuit, filed by 22 New Yorkers, to move forward, and to in essence speak for all city folks similarly aggrieved.

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A top executive at the investment bank JP Morgan Chase has special access to police headquarters, the Voice has learned. The mystery is why.

Most of us regular folks have to go through a ridiculous security screening process just to get into 1 Police Plaza (a public building, by the way), including showing ID and being vetted first at the blockhouse outside, and then again inside, submitting to two metal detector sweeps, and justifying one's presence.

But sources tell the Voice that Richard Breunich, a managing director with the bank who splits his time between the city and Punta Gorda, Fla., has "special entry status" at police headquarters. His picture was posted recently with that label in the headquarters security office.

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From the department of fairly big deals, the Police Department has finally agreed to allow the Civilian Complaint Review Board to prosecute all police officers against whom a complaint has been substantiated.

The agreement among City Hall, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and the CCRB comes following well over a decade of debate, and NYPD stubborn resistance to allowing outside agencies into its often opaque disciplinary system.

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Later this morning, civil liberties advocates will announce a new challenge to the controversial NYPD program of patrolling the hallways of thousands of privately-owned buildings.

Private owners enroll in the program, known as Operation Clean Halls, which has swelled in Manhattan alone to at least 3,895 buildings. The program envisioned as a way for police to deter crime on private property has been the target of complaints about civil rights violations and false arrests for trespassing.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, Bronx Defenders, and LatinoJustice PRLDEF are backing the effort. A press conference is scheduled for 11 a.m. at the NYCLU offices at 125 Broad Street.

A Queens police sergeant, Robert Borrelli, has added his voice to other cops who say crime is being systematically downgraded throughout the NYPD. Borrelli says that he tried to report this downgrading by two commanders in a Far Rockaway precinct, but was transferred for his efforts. He also claims he got the runaround from the Internal Affairs Bureau, natch.

In this, he joins Police Officer Adrian Schoolcraft formerly of the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn and Adil Polanco of the 41th Precinct in the Bronx in experiencing NYPD retaliation for trying to report manipulation of crime reports in what has become one of the biggest scandals of Mayor Bloomberg's administration.

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