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.

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!

A Cautionary Tale

The one thing that just can’t happen when you self-righteously call for a study is that it refutes everything you were trying to prove:

For generations of Staten Islanders, it has been conventional wisdom that borough residents don’t get their fair share of public transit for all the money they pay in fares and tolls.

Researchers in the city Independent Budget Office may have turned that assumption on its head, finding in a recent study that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority subsidizes Island commuters at a rate higher than passengers anywhere else in the city.

Whether by local or express bus or by train, the analysis, requested by two local lawmakers, determined that when Islanders swipe their MetroCards, their fares cover a substantially smaller portion of the real cost of their rides.

Transit observers played down the report and the borough’s $110 plus million annual subsidy, saying that the level of per-person subsidies belie a struggling transit system in need of even greater resources.

Still, they acknowledge that the report did not turn up fresh evidence that more MTA funding is warranted here.

“It doesn’t give us the ammunition we were seeking to make the case,” said Councilman James Oddo (R-Mid Island/Brooklyn) who called for the study with Assemblyman Vincent Ignizio (R-South Shore).

Rough Crowd 1984, Rough Crowd 2006

Long ago, Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood succeeded in permanently closing a pool facility that had become a dilapidated magnet for a rough crowd. This summer that same pool will be used for rock concerts in order to raise awareness and money for its hopeful reopening:

A run-down public swimming pool that’s been empty for more than 20 years is making a splash again this summer — as a concert venue to help spur interest in its renovation.

The McCarren Pool opened in Greenpoint in 1936 and was closed in 1984 after the community board complained it had become a nuisance.

Over the next two decades, it became a target for graffiti vandals.

Last September, the Parks Department allowed the outdoor pool to reopen as a dance-performance space in an effort to call attention to the venue — and this summer, several concerts produced by Live Nation will hopefully do the same, said Parks Department spokesman Philip Abramson.

There’s no budget money for the pool’s renovation, estimated at more than $40 million, and having popular bands play there is a good way to raise funds, Abramson said.

But Phyllis Yampolsky, head of a group looking to revamp the pool and its grounds into a “multi-use, all-year-round facility,” doesn’t think so.

She said the community does not need giant rock concerts.

See also: McCarren Pool.

Make Way For The Methadone Clinic!

Florence Fabricant notes that European Union, the East Village “gastropub” that was denied a liquor license back in March, has closed.