Police have released a new sketch of the man who is suspected of raping one woman and targeting four others in Park Slope, Sunset Park, and Bay Ridge Brooklyn. According to the Daily News, this latest rendering comes from the description of a woman who narrowly broke free from him after he attacked her at Prospect and Sixth Avenues on August 26th.
After police failed to act on a horrifying surveillance video that captured the suspect's first attack in Park Slope, thus allowing him to roam free and reportedly attack four other women, residents living in the 72nd Precinct's South Slope area feel that this recent sketch and the efforts being made now to disseminate it represent an abject failure on the part of the NYPD. "It's too little, too late," the founding member of the Concerned Citizens of Greenwood Heights tells the Brooklyn Paper. "The police only seem to come out when newspaper or TV stations make a fuss. If there was more of a presence overall, we would have less of these incidents."
Police also thought they had their man when they caught Brooklyn livery driver William Geraldo on a Dunkin' Donuts security tape shortly before the suspect followed his victim home from the restaurant and raped her in her Sunset Park vestibule. But Geraldo—who was arraigned on his wedding day—has maintained his innocence all along and was not identified by any of the other victims. When the suspect struck again while he was in custody, authorities moved to drop the case (he now faces deportation hearings).
"We're constantly looking for the perpetrator and we try to keep the pressure on," the Community Affairs Officer tells the paper. The time for "pressure" is over. Five victims and a terrorized community is enough.
