Police Blotter

Not for real

This poster, recently spotted at numerous Downtown locations, may be misleading some residents who don’t know that it was not issued by the New York Police Department or other law enforcement agencies, but is a promotion for the fictional TV drama “Prison Break.”

Murder suspect

Edwin Ramos, 26, arrested Aug. 29 for the murder the previous week of Martin Barreto, a former Rudy Giuliani aide, in Barreto’s E. 10th St. apartment, is being held pending an Oct. 6 arraignment in State Supreme Court, according to the office of District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.

Barreto, whose naked body was found in his bed on Aug. 21, had picked up Ramos, who was homeless, in the street and brought his to his apartment near University Pl. for sex, according to reports. But the two eventually got into a dispute, which turned violent, according to law enforcement officials.

Police said Ramos had stolen a cell phone, a laptop computer and a backpack before fleeing the crime scene. He was traced by the cell phone to an employment agency where detectives arrested him after a brief chase.

Barreto, 48, a native of Nicaragua, was a former journalist and partner in a public relations agency at the time of his death.

Filmmaker victim

Dwayne Buckle, who was attacked and stabbed on the night of Aug. 16 by a group of young women outside the IFC theater on Sixth Ave. in the Village, had been selling DVD’s of “Minority,” a film he had just made, he told The Villager this week.

Buckle, who was in St. Vincent’s Hospital for two weeks and underwent surgery as a result of the attack, said an item in The Villager of Aug. 30 incorrectly said he had been selling bootleg DVD’s. The Villager apologizes for the error.

Buckle said he had been visiting a friend on Kenmare St. to show the DVD of his film and then came to the IFC Theater, where independent films are featured, to distribute copies that he had made of his own film. He said he was about to take an E train at the Sixth Ave. station to his home in Queens when he said, “Hi, how are you doing,” to one of the young women. The incident started. Buckle said, when one woman in the group took exception to the greeting.

All seven women were charged with second-degree attempted murder as well as gang assault and weapons possession. Bail for each defendant was set at $50,000 or a bond of $150,000 pending their Oct. 6 arraignment.

Boat burns

A private pleasure boat from Liberty Harbor Yacht Club in Weehawken, N.J., caught fire in the Hudson River at about 8:30 p.m. Labor Day Mon. Sept. 4, police said. A police hover launch picked up the nine people aboard and brought them to safety to the Christopher St. Pier on the Village waterfront. A fireboat towed the burning 38-foot boat to the same pier, where land-based firefighters extinguished the blaze, according to the Fire Department. A man answering the phone at the Liberty Harbor Yacht Club on Tuesday acknowledged that the boat was berthed at the club, but he declined to provide further information.

Police and F.D.N.Y. crews had taken charge of the situation by the time a Coast Guard launch arrived, according to a Coast Guard spokesperson.

Supermarket hit

One or more thieves smashed the front window and entered the Gristedes supermarket on Sheridan Square over the Labor Day weekend, according to store employees, who said the store management had not yet determined what had been stolen.

Wash. Sq. ruckuses

A distraught man wielding a stick menaced people in Washington Square Park on the morning of Sept. 5 until Sixth Precinct police apprehended him around 11:45 a.m. and took him to Bellevue Hospital for observation, said Deputy Inspector Theresa Shortell, the precinct’s commanding officer.

On Sat. Aug. 2 police were called about a fight between rival youths at the chess tables at the southwest corner of Washington Square Park, but the incident was over and the crowd had dispersed by the time police arrived.

Albert Amateau