Officer Buttinsky

Another lazy post-Labor Day evergreen generated from the NYPD public relations department:

With nearly twice as many officers as the FBI, the NYPD has overhauled its mission since the destruction of the twin towers.

It now works on the premise that the city must fend for itself in the war against terrorism even if that means taking on responsibilities traditionally handled by the feds.

“What we are trying to do to a certain extent is forecast and predict and prepare ourselves for eventualities that may occur,” Kelly said.

“The operating premise is, get us any bit of information that can help better protect New York. We were not getting that information.”

The NYPD intelligence division — run by a former CIA spymaster, David Cohen — is the first of its kind in the country. It now has detectives permanently stationed at nine foreign posts, including Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon, France, as well as London, Israel, Singapore, Madrid, the Dominican Republic and Amman, Jordan.

“We have the troops on the ground,” Kelly said.

The commissioner noted that the intelligence division and counterterrorism bureau have helped prevent at least four attempts by terrorists to attack the city since 9/11, including a plot to smuggle weapons into the city by a Pakistani-born New Yorker.

. . .

Following the lead of many other countries, he armed elite cops with machine guns and rolled out the NYPD’s imposing Hercules teams to safeguard city landmarks, financial centers and transit hubs in 2002.

Emphasis added because — honestly — doesn’t anyone else find it weird that a local police force seems like it’s conducting counterterrorism operations? It sounds like CTU*!

What’s more, some are unhappy with the overly aggressive NYPD:

There is a difference, too, in how information is shared, with American law enforcement officials typically communicating much more fully with the news media and other agencies than their British counterparts do.

In one case in particular, last year after the London bombings when New York police officers traveled there to pitch in, the different working style created tension. British police and intelligence officials complained to the F.B.I., C.I.A. and State Department after the New York officers, used to speaking more openly, gave interviews to the press in London and sent information on to their headquarters in New York, where officials then held a news conference with some details about the investigation, according to one senior American official involved in the relationship with British agencies.

I don’t want to be a wet blanket — Jack Bauer on the streets of New York! I love 24! — but it’s probably just a matter of time before something bad happens.

*And I don’t think a real “CTU” is legal in the U.S. as things are now . . .

Now The Pit Bulls And Rottweilers On The Other Hand, They’re Just Asking For It

The city’s first order-of-protection for a pet has been issued following a recent change in the law. Mildly offensive Post quasi-homophobia added for your reading pleasure:

A jilted gay man turned into the wicked bitch of the west and beat up his ex-boyfriend’s tiny bichon frise, prompting the city’s first-ever order of protection for a dog.

Fredrick Fontanez, 20, now must stay 100 yards away from the pooch Bibi and have no contact with the dog, Judge Alex Zigman ordered in Queens Criminal Court yesterday.

ASPCA officials say that on July 20, Fontanez was dog-sitting for his boyfriend, Derek Lopez, at the latter’s house on 149th Avenue in Howard Beach, when the two had a fight over the phone at about 6 p.m.

Lopez allegedly told Fontanez, who lives in The Bronx, to be out of his house by the time he got home from work.

Sometime later, neighbors report hearing blood-curdling yelps and howls from the apartment where Fontanez, who is 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, was alone with 5-year-old Bibi, a cute, 15-pound, white powder puff of a dog.

“I heard him kick the dog. You know when a dog yelps, you know something is not right,” said neighbor Miguel Colon, 38. “I know when a dog is being hurt.”

Fontanez left when Lopez got home — and Colon told him what he had heard. Lopez was shocked when he saw the pup.

“A few minutes later, he knocks on my door and says, ‘Yo, look at this,’ He’s got the welts, he’s got black and blues,” said Colon, an animal lover. “It was black and blue over his spine, maybe four inches from his tail. You could see he was shivering, see it in his face.

“You know that’s not cool — that’s not cool. Because that dog can’t defend itself,” he said. “The guy should go pick on some of the pit bulls or Rottweilers around here.”

After an investigation by the ASPCA, Fontanez was arrested Wednesday. He was arraigned early yesterday and released with no bail on orders to stay away from Lopez and his canine best friend.

The extension of orders of protection to animals was signed into law just late last month by Gov. Pataki.

“This is precisely why my legislation is so necessary,” said Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, who co-sponsored the fur-friendly bill. Abusing a loved one’s pet “is a way of saying ‘You’re next.’ It’s a warning.”

Hipsters Are Part Of A Cult

The Post adds some details to the “hipster bank robbers” from yesterday:

Joe Kirby, 23, and his sister, Shemini, 20, told friends that they spent their formative years being psychologically abused in a “cult” in the Catskills community of Monticello, where their mother and another brother live.

“I don’t know him to be a bad person. I don’t know him to be a thief or anything like that. I just know he has a serious drug problem,” said a pal.

The friend of Joe Kirby said the alleged bank robber referred to the strange “hyper-religious” group he grew up in only as “the community” — and said it kept him in line by doling out punishments like being locked in a closet or forced to stand naked in front of a group of adults.

“It was a very Jim Jones, hyper-religious kind of thing,” the friend said. “Joey used to call it a cult. He was raised in it; he was abused in it. Just extreme situations . . . nothing sexual, just humiliation.”

Joe and Shemini Kirby escaped when they were adolescents and were put into foster care, the pal said.

He said when they were teenagers, Joe started coming to New York City to go clubbing and got involved in the underground drug scene.

Then, when he had to pay for his expensive habit, Kirby hit rock bottom.

“For the last 18 months to two years, he has been working as a male prostitute, selling himself, sometimes for a very low amount of cash, to support his drug addiction,” the friend lamented.

. . .

Prosecutors said the sister served as a lookout during one of the heists and pretended she had a gun in another.

She also “had knowledge of her brother’s [computer] research to rob the bank,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Jordan Arnold said in court last night.

“She Googled bank robbery.”

I Don’t Care If The Post’s Idea Of “Hipster” Involves “Stylish Black Stretch Pants,” I Want You To Keep Gawkers Away From This

The last thing we need right now is to glorify white people like this:

A pair of hipster-looking bank bandits — who turned out to be a brother-sister robbery team — were busted yesterday for three heists in Manhattan, sources said.

Joe Kirby, 23, who is homeless and his sister Shemini, 20, who lives in The Bronx, are suspected of knocking over an Independence Bank branch on East 86th on Aug. 6. Details of the other two robberies, which also took place this month, were not immediately available.

The robbers cut a distinctive style when they were caught on surveillance cameras during the Independence robbery.

Kirby was clad in green cargo shorts, a gray T-shirt and a green hat. He was wearing trendy metal-framed sunglasses.

His sister, who served as lookout, wore stylish black stretch pants, a gray T-shirt with a leaf emblem and rubber flip-flops. She carried a small white purse, cops said.

Kirby passed a note and the duo allegedly made off with $2,470.

They were both arrested in Manhattan last night and charged with three counts of robbery and possession of stolen property.

On the other hand, there’s an opportunity for a Fox series here — and three makes it a trend — called “When Well-Educated White People Do Naughty Things.” Cases one and two are Peter Braunstein and Julia Diaco.

Traffic Cops Really Need Something Better To Do

A priest gets a ticket for double parking while trying to administer last rites:

A Brooklyn priest got slapped with a $115 parking ticket after he rushed into a hospital to administer last rites to a dying woman, the Daily News has learned.

But even after the Rev. Cletus Forson pleaded his case to a traffic judge, the city refused to throw the summons out.

“If the sanctity of the law won’t bend for the needs of a dying person, I feel really sad,” Forson said yesterday.

“It disturbs me as a priest and as a human being,” added the priest, who has served at St. Andrew the Apostle Church on Ridge Blvd. in Bay Ridge for nearly three years.

Forson got hit with the ticket July 26 about 9:30 p.m. for parking in a No Standing Anytime zone in front of Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park.

The 42-year-old Catholic priest, who is originally from Ghana, said he knew the spot was technically illegal but felt he couldn’t risk wasting time continuing to look for a better spot.

He had just received a call from a panicked parishioner desperate to find a priest to administer last rites to her elderly mother. Forson, who was sick in bed with the flu at the time, said he even checked in with a nurse before leaving and was told there was no time to spare.

“I couldn’t get any parking,” said Forson. “It is my obligation to get there and administer to the needs of the sick.”

Forson placed his official clergy parking permit on the dashboard — which reads “Clergy on Call” — and said he was inside for less than 20 minutes.

“It’s not about the money,” said Forson. “It creates the feeling that if somebody is sick, nobody should go. I don’t think that’s right.”

Forson appealed the ticket, but Administrative Law Judge Michael Ciaravino refused to back down.

“Respondent’s claim that vehicle was parked while he, as a pastor, was attending to a patient at a hospital is not a valid defense to the violation,” wrote Ciaravino in the July 28 decision. “Guilty.”

The only thing better would have been if an ambulance pulled up and got a ticket for being double parked.