Crime Watch

BY JERRY DANZIG

Hewitt Rue ItA local school may need to vet its employees more carefully. At 3 p.m. on Thursday, August 24, a 48-year-old woman employee of the Hewitt School on East 75th Street made unauthorized charges totaling $25,000 for her personal benefit using the school’s American Express business account, police said. The illegal activity was discovered after school personnel received a call from a detective in Pennsylvania advising them that the woman, who was not publicly identified, had an open warrant in that state for credit fraud.

Senior WincesAs a recent road rage arrest proved, one older man apparently hasn’t mellowed with age. At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, August 29, a 32-year-old male cabbie from the Bronx and a 61-year-old male motorist from Queens were involved in a car accident near Penn Station. The situation escalated when the cabbie followed the other driver up to Eighth Avenue and West 56th Street, where the two men got out of their cars and began to fight, according to police. The older man punched the cabbie, bloodying his nose. The cabbie called police, who caught to the older man on East 62nd Street. He was arrested on assault charges.

Man assaulted by bike-riding pairA man was sent to the hospital by two bike-riding men in the early morning of Thursday, August 24, police said. The man, 51, was walking on Second Avenue at East 96th Street about 4:50 a.m. heading for the Q train when the pair accosted him, one of them saying, “Gimme what you got!” They then punched and kicked the man, who was later taken to a nearby hospital for a fractured foot.

Down and OutCitibank had to rely on police to handle an aggressive panhandler. From 3:50 to 4:05 p.m. on Wednesday, August 30, a 37-year-old man for the Bronx was asking people for money in the ATM vestibule of the Citibank branch at 123 East 86th St. Eventually, a Citibank employee called police and asked them to take the panhandler away, as he was getting in the way of customers. Apparently, the same man had solicited customers at the same location many times before and had an active warrant for criminal trespass. On this occasion police arrived and arrested him on charges of aggressive panhandling.

Booster BustedBarney’s shut down a shoplifter armed with a “booster bag.” At 3:06 p.m. on Wednesday, August 30, a 44-year-old man entered Barney’s at 660 Madison Ave. and put three designer handbags into a so-called booster bag lined with aluminum foil to evade detection from store security devices. Despite the subterfuge, he was intercepted by store security personnel as he attempted to leave the store without paying for the merchandise, and arrested by police on charges of grand larceny, possession of burglar’s tools, and criminal possession of stolen property. The items he had attempted to take were a Goyard bag and two clutches worth a total of $4,830.