LMFAO! FORGET THE RATS! IT'S THE PERV'S YOU GOTTA WORRY ABOUT ON THE NYC TRAINS!

Forget about rats. There's a lower form of creature in the subways: perverts who prey on women and girls.
On average, there are about 600 reported incidents of riders being groped, flashed, grinded or similarly assaulted in the subway every year, according to the police.

But NYPD brass and advocates say that's just a fraction of the misdemeanor sex crimes taking place on trains. In reality, the number of incidents annually is probably in the thousands, some say.

"Oftentimes when people are being harassed, they're scared, they're not thinking, 'Let me find a police officer,'" said Emily May, an R train rider and co-founder of the anti-harassment advocacy group Hollaback! "They're thinking, 'Let me get out of this situation.'"

Police "strongly suspect this is a highly underreported crime," former NYPD Transit Bureau Chief James Hall has said. "In my mind, it's the No. 1 quality-of-life offense on the subway."

The NYPD has some undercover officers on the lookout for perverts, but the size of the subway force has shrunk due to budget cuts, just like the number of aboveground cops. Over the last three years, police have averaged 450 arrests for misdemeanor sex crimes, according to NYPD stats.

Many creeps who are busted have been around the seedy subway block before. Approximately 15% have been handcuffed previously for similarly loathsome behavior, a police spokesman said.

The stakes are supposed to be high for these repeat offenders. A suspect who is arrested - and has two prior misdemeanor-sex crime convictions within a decade - can be indicted for Persistent Sexual Abuse. That's a big-league felony with a sentence of up to four years in state prison.

But since 2006, there have been just 16 cases in the city - one in Queens and 15 in Manhattan - in which the Persistent Sexual Abuse felony was the top charge in an indictment or a preindictment document called a Supreme Court Information, according to statistics provided by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.

One possible reason there aren't more repeat-offender felony cases is because defendants are allowed to plead to violations - lesser crimes than misdemeanors - and avoid getting a third conviction within a decade, one law enforcement official speculated.

One top prosecutor said the Persistent Sexual Abuse statute itself is flawed and needs to be fixed in Albany.

If a defendant pleads guilty to two misdemeanors during one court appearance, for example, it only counts as one conviction, or strike, against him, the prosecutor said.

Regardless of the reasons, the city needs to wage an all-out war against these two-legged rodents.


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