Results tagged “transitbureau”

A man who repeated assaulted women on subway trains was arrested yesterday. The Daily News reports that while Freddie Johnson has a 57-page rap sheet and was only out of jail for 15 days (for prior sexual offenses--he was even wearing his electronic monitoring anklet!), he still decided to molest a Hunter College freshman on the 6 train.

Rafael Cruz, whose beating on an A train at the hands - and feet - of a group of teenag girls was captured on video, will press charges with the police. Sources tell the Daily News that Cruz "filed a formal complaint with the NYPD Transit Bureau" last night. As some people wondered if the video was fake, one man, Kevin Belvin, recognized his daughter Kierra Brown as one of the girls seen in the...

If you find something of value on the subway, be wary. It could be the NYPD trying to catch you in their "Lucky Bag" sting. Yet another report has surfaced of someone arrested by the NYPD. This February, Aquarius Cheers (best name ever?) was arrested for picking up a bag of electronics that was on a subway. Cheers and his partner, Kia Graves, saw an abandoned Verizon bag, picked it up, and, despite seeing a police officer nearby, boarded an arriving train, leading to his arrest.

To be an undercover cop! The NYPD conducted a special sting - "Operation Exposure" - to find subway pervs and over the two week period, over 13 people were arrested for "rubbing, grabbing and flashing women." The NYPD Transit Bureau chief said subway pervery is "a heavy quality of life crime," and that riders were thankful when the men were arrested. A team of four female undercover officers were "dressed as any other woman on the subway" and nabbed jerks for "forcible touching" and "public lewdness." (There was also a grand larceny arrest.) One woman said, "It happens a lot but women don't tell anyone. It's about time they did something about it because there's a lot of perverts around." Word. And the Post has the best lede: "Subway gropers, beware - next time you cop a feel, you might be feeling a cop."

We imagine Steve Jobs knows about this: The NYPD is offering to etch an ID number on your iPod so it'll be easier for you to get it back if (God forbid!) it gets lost or stolen. The Daily New reports that NYPD has registered 2100 units so far, with NYPD Transit Bureau crime prevention commanding officer Sergeant William Buckley explaining:

Overall crime is down in the subways, but for iPods and cell phones, unfortunately it's up.

Continue reading "ID Your iPod, PSP, Treo, and More!"

A reader emailed us Monday afternoon, noting that there were at least twenty police cars and tons of officers outside of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, but the NYPD wasn't saying anything - did Gothamist know what was happening? Short of hacking into a police scanner, Gothamist came up empty... until we heard that a high-ranking police officer had accidentally shot himself in the stomach. The commanding officer for Transit Bureau 3, Captain William Roge, was changing his guns in his office at the 145th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue stop, removing his .38 for a 9mm, and somehow, the .38 went off. The NY Times reports that it was hard to hear the shots over the subways, but when other officers heard, it seemed like "dozens of police officers" were on the scene.

According to the Daily News, the NYPD may be considering disbanding the street anti-graffiti and vandalism unit that was created during the Giuliani administration. Why? The NYPD is looking into maximizing the efficiency of the different police squads; the anti-graffiti cops would be folded into the Transit Bureau vandals squad. However, the DN reports that some police officers are concerned they are going to be chasing "crooks who steal copper wires from subway stations" versus spray paint-toting "hoodlums." No changes have been finalized - it's simply at the discussion level. Gothamist finds this an interesting look at how manpower is deployed on the NYPD. Could shifting the number of cops on the transit vandals beat help prevent subway crime? Probably...which makes us wonder if transit cops will be chasing photobloggers taking pictures on the subway as well as calling in photobloggers to give up the goods on graf they capture around the city.