Larry Celona and Dan Mangan
The New York Post
NEW YORK — Bronx prosecutors last week dropped charges against two career crooks who’d just been caught on video allegedly boosting a Columbia University grad student’s purse — leaving NYPD cops infuriated, The Post has learned.
The officers are fuming that an apparently solid arrest ended with the pair of 51-year-old sticky-fingered Bronx women — who already have more than 44 shoplifting busts between them — back on the street “to prey on other victims,” a police source said.
Sources said the cops believe that the prosecutors were being “lazy” or overly concerned about wanting “to have the perfect case.”
But Bronx DA spokesman Steven Reed said the reason the case wasn’t prosecuted is simply because, in the end, the victim wouldn’t cooperate.
“We don’t have the evidence to go forward if the victim won’t cooperate,” he said.
“I don’t know why she didn’t cooperate,” he added.
Still, police sources said they found it strange that the victim suddenly wouldn’t help prosecute the case given that she was so grateful to cops after they nailed the alleged thieves.
The dispute comes on the heels of recent data showing The Bronx DA’s Office declines to pursue cases at a rate twice as high as the rest of the city.
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