To Fill A Pothole Deferred

Mister Softee operators breathed a sigh of relief when plans for the Jingle Enforcement Mechanism were abandoned in favor of something more useful:

The city’s newest team of inspectors won’t write tickets or issue fines. They won’t harass landlords over leaky pipes or ensure that builders follow safety codes. The target of this team will be the city itself.

Yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled the Street Conditions Observation Unit, Scout for short, at a news conference in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

The sole mission of the 15-member team is to patrol the streets in small three-wheeled vehicles looking for maddening little problems like potholes, clogged catch basins, damaged bus shelters and unsightly graffiti. The inspectors will also be on the lookout for more substantial problems, like homeless people in need of aid, the mayor said.

The program is the latest evolution of 311, the city’s popular customer service line, which gives residents access to all city services and allows them to record complaints by dialing one phone number.

Each inspector will be armed with a BlackBerry with global-positioning software to allow him to record observations and locations automatically in the 311 system, which will then notify the appropriate city agency.

“We’ve taken the first step, where it’s easy for you to report problems,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “But you shouldn’t have to do that. We love to have you do it, but it’s government’s responsibility to find the problems and fix them, not to sit there and say, ‘Duh, we didn’t know.’

“That’s not what good government is all about.”

Hump Buster

Every once in a while it’s good to remember why you probably shouldn’t be picking up hookers:

A hefty hooker threw a hussy fit yesterday when she was collared for trying to pick up an undercover cop on a Staten Island street corner, threatening to bite him and give him AIDS because he was white, sources said.

Then when officers took her to the 120th Precinct station house, she continued her rampage, allegedly jumping on a wooden bench and crushing it.

Omenebele Young, 32 — who is 5-foot-4 and 250 pounds — had been strutting her ample stuff at the corner of Harbor Road and Richmond Terrace in the Mariners Harbor section just before 4 a.m., authorities said.

Young approached an undercover cop and allegedly flashed her breasts. When the cop tried to cuff her, Young, who is black, allegedly scratched and pinched him, then screamed, “I’ll bite y’all and give you AIDS! I’ll go to jail for the rest of my life just to kill a white cop!”

Forget The Stench, Plant Your Face In The Trench!

Now that it’s happened not once but twice, the MTA should create a public service campaign to educate riders about how best to survive a fall from the subway platform:

A Brooklyn man narrowly escaped death yesterday when he fell onto the subway tracks in midtown Manhattan but managed to scurry to safety as the train roared into the station.

Scraped and bloody, his arms covered with dirt, Paul Torres, 46, was carried out of the 34th St. station about 10:40 a.m. by police officers and firefighters who pulled him from under the stopped train.

Later, wearing a neck brace and awaiting further treatment in the Bellevue Hospital emergency room, a dazed Torres said it was “unbelievable” that he was even alive.

Torres said he couldn’t recall how he fell off the southbound platform of the station and into the path of a No. 2 train, but he confirmed in one word how happy he was to be alive. “Yes,” he said, his head still bleeding from the incident.

As in a thrilling subway rescue two months ago, Torres positioned his body between the tracks, allowing space for the train to pass overhead.

Alternative slogan: “If You’ve Got A Small Enough Ass, Get Between Those Tracks.”

In The Venn Diagram Of Deviancy, “Comic Book Guy” Increasingly Overlapping With “Sicko” And “Perv”

Everybody loves exposing pervs on the subway, but Police Commissioner Ray Kelly urges caution, noting that some pervs may not take kindly to the act:

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly recently issued a statement warning straphangers to use extreme caution when trying to catch subway flashers on cell phone cameras. Kelly acknowledged that such photos have assisted investigators in bringing the flashers to justice-but warned those snapping the sickos to consider they may be putting themselves in danger by doing so.

Kelly reminded the sharpshooters to think about how the flasher might react when he realizes he’s been caught in the act.

Kelly’s remarks on the particularly satisfying form of vigilante justice come after a particularly pervy perv was caught in the act on the 7 train*:

The same individual who exposed himself to a 15-year-old in March is alleged to have flashed a second woman on the same No. 7 line on May 5. Both times the pervert’s victims snapped cell phone pictures of him.

Cops released both images to the press, asking for the public’s help in catching the serial flasher.

Police said the latest victim, a 22-year-old Queens woman, was riding the No. 7 with a friend and her mother when she spotted the pervert-exposed and peering at her over his sunglasses.

When the woman snapped photos of him, the man tried to cover his face with an Archie comic book, police said. After she was certain she had a clear photo, the woman tried to embarrass the man by shouting to other straphangers that he was exposing himself, police said. The man quickly exited the train.

*Isn’t May 5 like six months ago? Who cares when you have Archie!

Killed By Rudeness

This never should be done, no matter how inconsiderate your fellow passengers are being by not moving all the way into the car:

A man trying to board a crowded C train between cars was crushed to death last night when the train started moving and he became wedged against the platform, police said.

“It was an accident,” said a sobbing witness, Kristina Kremer, at the 14th St. station in Manhattan. “It wasn’t intentional. He was trying to get on the train. He was like, ‘Oh, my God!'”

The packed subway pulled in about 8 p.m., and the victim tried to climb over a gate between the first and second cars, police at the scene said.

When the uptown train started to pull out, the man became stuck between the platform and the train and was dragged about 50 feet, leaving a gruesome trail of blood along the train’s second car.