‘Drive faster!’
A cab driver told police that two women who had hailed him around 3:30 p.m. Sun., May 20, at Varick and Vandam Sts. began yelling that he wasn’t going fast enough. One woman grabbed the rate card and tore it up and the other grabbed his iPhone when he was about to call police. The suspects fled the cab at Spring St. and drove off in a black Lincoln that was parked nearby.
PATH pickers
Police arrested four suspects in the PATH station at Christopher and Hudson Sts. around 2:40 a.m. Sat., May 19, and charged them with stealing a cell phone and a wallet from the back pocket of an unsuspecting victim. Tomas Geiger, 21; Akeem Dixon, 18; Kareem Williams, 20; and Christopher Newman, 19, were charged with larceny.
PATHetic attempt
Challenged by a transit worker at the subway station at W. Fourth St. and Sixth Ave. at 1:30 a.m. Thurs., May 17, for walking through the gate without paying a fare, Jerry Francois, 48, said he was a police officer. He was charged with impersonating an officer in addition to fare-beating.
Armed fare-beaters
Transit police arrested two men who entered the subway station at 14th St. and Sixth Ave. with one swipe around 4 a.m. Sun., May 20. A search of the suspects, Corey Petterson, of Elizabethtown, N.C., and Tyrin Gayle, of Newburgh, N.Y., turned up two loaded handguns and a bulletproof vest, police said.
Cell-phone snatch
A suspect grabbed a cell phone from a sidewalk cafe table on Second Ave. between Fifth and Sixth Sts. where two women were sitting around 7:30 p.m. May 20. The women yelled as the suspect fled through the Sunday evening crowd, their cries alerting a bystander who tripped the suspect, a witness said. Several people held the thief until police arrived to charge him with larceny.
Swipes in Soho
Two men walked into the Mulberry store at 134 Spring St. around. 4 p.m. Wed., May 16, and put two women’s black leather jackets, with a total value of $3,780, into bags and fled without paying, police said.
A Brooklyn woman who was eating at Lucky Strike bistro, 59 Grand St. between West Broadway and Wooster Sts., around 2:30 p.m. Tues., May 15, discovered that someone had stolen her wallet, with her $850 paycheck and various credit and bank cards, from her bag. She learned later that unauthorized MetroCard purchases had been made with her bank card.
Capsis slaps cop!
George Capsis, 84, was charged with slapping a police officer at 5:45 p.m. Thurs., May 17, “while in an apparent highly agitated state,” at the corner of Bleecker and Leroy Sts. and continued to struggle while being arrested, according to a Sixth Precinct police report.
Capsis, who publishes WestView newspaper, wrote his version of the incident in an e-mail to several people the following morning. He said he became irritated when a van, which turned out to be a police vehicle, pulled into the bike lane in front of him while he was on his bike. After saying, “Police shouldn’t break the law,” Capsis described an escalating scenario in which two cops pinned him to the van and ordered him to dismount his bike.
In the e-mail, he said he couldn’t move, and that amid “the political deceptions, the arrogance of monied power, an irresistible rush of hate welled up and I slapped him.” Capsis said one officer punched him and he struggled while another tried to cuff him. More cops came, took Capsis to the precinct and then to Beth Israel’s emergency room.
Capsis is free on his own recognizance and is due in court Mon., June 25.
At Community Board 2’s Waterfront Committee meeting Monday night he was sporting a large red welt under his left eye.
Stairway struggle
A man, 30, was bringing a woman home to her second-floor apartment at 6 W. 14th St. around 5 a.m. Tues., May 15, when a suspect stopped him on the stairs, pushed the woman into the apartment and slammed the door shut, police said. The suspect then struggled with the visitor and hit him on the head with a bottle. Three officers arrived on the scene and began climbing the stairs to arrest the suspect, who hit one cop, sending all three tumbling down the stairs. The suspect, Robert Hoffman, was arrested and charged with assaulting the visitor and the officers. Police did not say what Hoffman’s relation to the woman was.
Standard ‘bottle service’
Police arrested John Doe, 23, around 12:46 a.m. Fri., May 18, and charged him with aggravated assault for hitting a victim, 24, in the back of the head with a bottle in the Standard Grill, 848 Washington St.
Game over
Police arrested Aaron Joseph, 24, and Survaughn St. John, 25, around 5:10 p.m. Thurs., May 17, for trying to use forged credit cards at GameStop, 687 Broadway. The suspects were in possession of “numerous forged and altered credit and debit cards,” police said.
Fall kills hard hat
Adrien Zamora, 28, was working on a scaffold on the facade of 450 Broome St. around 5 p.m. Thurs., May 17, when he slipped and fell to his death on a sidewalk bridge three stories below, police said. Brasal Construction Corp. is the contractor on the building facade, according to the Department of Buildings. In January a complaint was filed against another contractor at the site, Steel Industries, after a wrench fell eight stories, injuring a pedestrian.
— Albert Amateau
