Biker: Cop pulled gun
A confrontation between an off-duty police officer driving on Bleecker St. near Sixth Ave. and a bicycle rider Saturday night Oct. 16 was being investigated, according to the Daily News and the bicycle rider, who spoke to The Villager on Wednesday.
Ryan Stepka, 36, the cyclist, said the officer, Joe Carrasco, 29, of the 28th Precinct in Central Harlem, nearly hit him twice around 11 p.m. Saturday night. Stepka said he got off his bike to talk to the driver, who pulled a gun and threatened to shoot him. Stepka said he then followed the Volkswagen and alerted uniformed police officers who stopped the car with their guns drawn.
When Carrasco showed his badge, the officers put up their guns. Carrasco told investigators that he did not pull a gun but displayed his badge during an argument with Stepka over the matter. Stepka told The Villager on Wednesday that he learned that Carrasco has been placed on modified duty.
“When I was in the Sixth Precinct station on Sunday morning with my lawyer, they asked me if I had been drinking or using drugs,” Stepka said. “Then the guy’s girlfriend, who is a city cop, came in and his brother, a state trooper, came in and told them his name. It was the first time that I knew the guy’s last name,” he added.
Stepka, a Lower East Side resident, said that he told a police Internal Affairs investigator on Wednesday that he discovered a street surveillance camera on Sixth Ave. at W. Third St. that might have recorded the incident.
Burglary arrests
Two suspects in the series of Chelsea residential burglaries in September were arrested last week in Boston, Mass., police at the 10th Precinct said.
Tentatively identified as Eddie Tavares and Joseph McRae, the two men have not been identified definitely as suspects in all seven burglaries believed to be part of the pattern. But the link of one of the men to the Sept. 19 burglaries at 425 and 427 W. 21st St. is more certain. The two suspects have not yet been extradited to New York and further information was not available by press time.
Mugger couple
Police arrested a man and a woman for attempted robbery around 11:40 p.m. Fri., Oct. 15, of a couple on the northeast corner of Christopher St. and Seventh Ave. South. The suspects, Carson Hall, 22, and his female accomplice, Jamie Miller, 24, got out of a cab at the location and attacked the victims, police said. Miller grabbed the woman’s bag, which contained $3,000 in cash, while Hall punched the victim. Police were on hand to arrest Hall and Miller on grand larceny charges.
Monster rage
A man, 46, told police shortly after midnight Sun., Oct. 17, that he was in the basement of Monster bar, 80 Grove St., dancing when he accidentally bumped into another patron, who hit him in the jaw and the neck with a glass from the bar. Police arrested Dadland Maye, 35, and charged him with first- and second-degree assault.
Attempted bag snatch
A woman, 26, was at a table in Gaslight, the club at 39 Ninth Ave., just before 3 a.m., Sat., Oct. 16, when another woman who had been at a table behind her, approached the victim, but turned and walked away when a police officer stopped at the victim’s table, according to police reports. The officer asked the victim if she had a bag and when the victim couldn’t find it, the officer followed the suspect, stopped her outside the club and discovered she had the victim’s bag under her coat. The officer charged Sadibon Fall, 27, with grand larceny.
Thompson burglaries
A Thompson St. resident told police she heard a noise in her bedroom at 7:15 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 14, while she was in the kitchen. When she went to check it out she discovered a man trying to enter from a fire escape window, police said. The burglar, described as a slender white man wearing a red baseball cap and a blue, hooded sweatshirt, fled when she screamed. Two days earlier, a resident of a nearby Thompson St. apartment returned home from work at about 4:30 p.m. and discovered that two laptop computers had been stolen while he was out.
Tryst gone wrong
A Chelsea man told police he picked up a man dressed as a woman in the West Village at 4:50 a.m. Sat., Oct. 16, and they walked to W. 15th St. where they engaged in sex. After the act, they argued and the transvestite hit the victim with a bottle of perfume, inflicting cuts on the head, and fled toward Seventh Ave. The victim, 30, was taken to Bellevue Hospital where he was treated and released.
Mid-snack mugging
A girl, 16, was walking west on Broome St. toward Thompson St. while drinking soup from a takeout container around 9:10 p.m. Sat., Oct. 16, when two girls described as being a little older than the victim stopped her, pulled her hair, grabbed her bag and fled north on Thompson St. The bag had $10 in cash and the victim’s BlackBerry.
Scalpel is clipped
A man who locked his bicycle with a cable lock to a No Parking sign pole at the southwest corner of Prince and Mercer Sts. at 1:35 p.m. Sat., Oct. 16, returned at 5 p.m. to find the lock had been cut and the cycle stolen. The victim, 26, valued his Cannondale Scalpel mountain bike at $2,500.
Albert Amateau
