WOMAN SAYS COP REFUSED TO TAKE PERV COMPLAINT

Author: admin

13 Aug

A lazy Harlem cop is in hot water after telling a woman subway rider — who had photographed a man masturbating in front of her on a train — that she should take her complaint elsewhere, authorities said today.

The incident occurred on a northbound No. 3 train at 3:45 p.m. Friday, when the suspect boarded at 42nd Street, took a seat across from the woman and began to pleasure himself, police said.

The woman took a photo of the man with her cell phone camera before he left the train at 96th Street and Broadway.

But when she tried to lodge a complaint at the 32nd Precinct stationhouse on W. 135th Street, a uniformed officer told her it wasn’t a police matter. She said she was told to go through the city’s 311 number for reporting problems.

But “public lewdness” is a police matter: It’s a misdemeanor that results in hundreds of arrests reach year.

Police released the photo and asked the public’s help in catching the suspect. Officials also said the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating how the woman was treated.

The woman’s plight recalled the anguish of another subway rider, Thao Nguyen, who photographed a flasher on a train and later brought her appeal for tougher penalties for perverts to the City Council.

In August 2005 Nguyen, then 22, was aboard an uptown R train when a man boarded the train, unzipped and began massaging himself.

“I couldn’t believe this guy had the audacity to do something like this in the middle of the day,” she recalled. “So I took out my cell phone and turned on the camera.” Next >>