I Can’t Wait For The New NYC-TV Series “Operation Exposure”

This sting operation seems strangely satisfying to read about, mesmerizing like a bug zapper:

Subway gropers, beware — next time you cop a feel, you might be feeling a cop.

A baker’s dirty dozen has been busted for rubbing, grabbing and flashing women on crowded rush-hour trains in a new undercover sting dubbed Operation Exposure.

The 13 MetroCads didn’t realize their victims were undercover officers, police said, because the cops were posing as businesswomen.

“These four women were dressed as any other woman on the subway,” a source said.

The 13 suspects were charged with forcible touching or public lewdness, while a 14th was nabbed for grand larceny — all during the morning and evening rush hours of May 23 and 24, Transit Bureau Chief James Hall revealed yesterday.

“In a 36-hour period, we locked up 14 men,” Hall told the New York City Transit Riders Council.

“It’s not robbery, it’s not pickpocketing, but to me, this is a heavy quality-of-life crime.”

Operation Exposure was created in response to an increase in complaints by women, many of whom have fought back by snapping camera-phone pictures of the subway perverts and posting them online on blogs such as Hollaback.

The undercover cops rode the numbered lines in Manhattan during rush hours, sometimes spotting the gropers — and sometimes falling victim to them.

Lighthouse Lovers Soon Will Be Able To Crash The (Sea)Gate

The Coney Island Lighthouse in the ultra-exclusive — or at least gated — Seagate neighborhood will be opened for public tours for the first time ever:

Brooklyn’s oldest lighthouse could be opened to the public for the first time in its 116-year history, the Daily News has learned.

The Seagate Association signed a five-year lease on the 80-foot-tall lighthouse this month, ending a century-long ownership by the U.S. Coast Guard and a ban on public tours.

“There are millions of lighthouse lovers from all over the world who have heard about this lighthouse and would love to see it but have never had the chance,” said Seagate Association Treasurer Michael Breslof.

By next summer, the association could begin hosting tours of the Beach 46th St. tower and a nearby home, where light keeper Frank Schubert lived until his death in 2003.

The tours would cost about $5 and would include visits to Schubert’s home at the foot of the tower, which is known both as the Coney Island Lighthouse and Norton’s Point Lighthouse.

If You Can’t Beat Them, Publicly Rebuke Them Until They Eventually Submit To Your Demands

Stay away from technology lest it bites you in the ass:

Three weeks ago, [Evan] Guttman went on a quest to retrieve a friend’s lost cellphone, a quest that has now ended with the arrest of a 16-year-old on charges of possessing the missing gadget, a Sidekick model with a built-in camera that sells for as much as $350. But before the teenager was arrested, she was humiliated by Mr. Guttman in front of untold thousands of people on the Web, an updated version of the elaborate public shamings common in centuries past.

The tale began when Mr. Guttman’s best friend Ivanna left her cellphone in a taxicab, like thousands of others before her. After Ivanna got a new Sidekick, she logged on to her account — and was confronted by pictures of an unfamiliar young woman and her family, along with the young woman’s America Online screen name.

The 16-year-old, Sasha Gomez, of Corona, Queens, had been using the Sidekick to take pictures and send instant messages. She apparently did not know that the company that provided the phone’s service, T-Mobile, automatically backs up such information on its remote servers. So when Ivanna got back on, there was Sasha.

Using instant messages, Mr. Guttman tracked down Sasha and asked her to return it. “Basically, she told me to get lost,” Mr. Guttman recalled. “That was it.”

So he set up a no-frills Web page with a brief account of what happened, and posted the pictures of the girl and her family. Within hours of putting up the Web page, Mr. Guttman was fielding hundreds of e-mail messages from those nursing their own bitter memories of a lost cellphone, a BlackBerry or a digital camera that went unreturned.

There were links to the page on Digg and Gizmodo, two popular tech-oriented blogs, which helped drive more and more traffic. Eventually, hundreds of other Web sites posted links to his page. The hundreds of e-mail messages became thousands, from as far away as Africa and Asia. Mr. Guttman tried to answer them all, and barely slept. “A lot of people have been saying, ‘I lost my phone, I wish I did this,'” he said.

Some readers also began visiting Sasha’s MySpace page and bombarding her and her friends with e-mail messages. Others found her street address in Corona and drove by her family’s apartment building, taking videos or shouting out “thief” in front of her neighbors.

And over and over and over again, Mr. Guttman was supported by people along the way who seethed with resentment about their own lost (read: stolen) merchandise, helping this become the Rudy story of vigilante justice fantasies:

The girl’s family was not pleased by the attention, especially the random visitors to their street. Though Sasha and Mr. Pena did not respond to instant messages and e-mail messages, their mother, Ivelisse Gomez, confirmed that her son was serving in the Army and had been in trouble with his superior officers after some of the visitors to Mr. Guttman’s Web page called in to complain. She also said that Mr. Guttman’s Web site amounted to harassment and said the family might sue him.

“They told him to come pick it up,” said Ms. Gomez, speaking in the apartment of her building’s superintendent last Thursday. She said she had bought the phone for $50 on a subway platform in Queens and had given it to her daughter. “We said he could have it if he gave the money we paid for it,” she added.

. . .

Last Thursday, the story of the lost Sidekick began meandering toward a conclusion. The police arrested Sasha and charged her with possession of stolen property in the fifth degree, a misdemeanor. (The police have possession of the Sidekick and plan to return it to Ivanna.) Sasha was released, but was not available to comment. Her mother offered a parting remark.

“I never in my life thought a phone was going to cause me so many problems,” Ms. Gomez said.

Then again, you could also try not buying shit off the street!

Sure, It May Seem Insignificant To Some . . .

The State Legislature finally has fixed one of the last really lame blue laws — Sunday morning liquor sales:

The State Legislature opened the final week of its regular session by agreeing to toughen drunken-driving laws. But lawmakers also agreed to allow beer sales earlier on Sunday mornings.

Those two agreements came on a day in which the Legislature failed to resolve the largest issues that divide lawmakers, or their disagreements with Gov. George E. Pataki, including restoring several hundred million dollars’ worth of budget cuts to hospitals and nursing homes, the structure of a new office to fight Medicaid fraud, and the Legislature’s billion-dollar-a-year property tax rebate. In fact, the Republican-led Senate and the Democrat-led Assembly seem unable even to agree on what day to end the session, Thursday or Friday.

Instead, they focused on some of the less contentious bills on their agenda, reaching agreement on a requirement that child safety alarms be installed in pools and on the measure that would allow beer sales starting at 8 a.m. instead of noon on Sundays, ending one of the last vestiges of the so-called blue laws that limit alcohol sales on Sundays.

You Wrapped Up My Ring In What And Put It Where?

Please, someone buy this household a jewelry box:

Ron Goldstein found a diamond in the dump yesterday: His wife’s lost ring.

The Staten Island man, who accidentally tossed the 3.5-carat bauble in the trash, watched as sanitation workers poked through tons of garbage in the searing heat before recovering the ring he gave his wife 35 years ago.

“I was afraid to go home unless I found it,” said a relieved Goldstein.

The 63-year-old had tucked the ring in a napkin for safe keeping while his wife was in the hospital for a week before she returned home Sunday.

Somehow the napkin wound up in the garbage.

Yesterday morning, around 7 a.m., the Staten Island grandfather awoke in a sweat. The napkin was nowhere to be found.

He ran outside only to see a sanitation truck lumbering down the block and out of sight.

. . .

Heartbroken, he called the local Sanitation Department garage and an understanding supervisor arranged for Goldstein to follow the truck driven by Carlo Tanutco, 30, to a transfer station in Elizabeth, N.J.

“I put all my garbage in yellow ShopRite bags and those bags into a black garbage bag,” Goldstein told officials.

So the search began. Tanutco and fellow workers sorted through dozens of black garbage bags, piled more than 7 feet high.

The heat and smell was getting to him, Goldstein admitted, but he wasn’t leaving.

After just over an hour, some yellow bags suddenly appeared. Tanutco ripped them open, one by one, finally finding the napkin and in it, the diamond ring.

“He was a very happy man when he found the ring,” Tanutco said.

“It was meant to be found,” Goldstein recalled. “It was like God giving me another shot.”