Cops are on the Cuomo beat.

NY Post

 The Albany Police Department has been formally notified about the allegation that Gov. Andrew Cuomo groped a female staffer in an incident that may amount to a crime, a source familiar with the matter said Thursday.

Cops haven’t launched an official probe but have “reached out to the victim’s attorney and offered up any other police assistance,” a police spokesman said.

“At this time, there has been no formal criminal complaint and there is no active criminal investigation,” spokesman Steve Smith said.

Cuomo’s acting counsel, Beth Garvey, acknowledged in a statement that state officials had referred the matter for possible criminal investigation.

“As a matter of state policy when allegations of physical contact are made, the agency informs the complainant that they should contact their local police department,” Garvey said.

NY Post  

The independent investigators spearheading the probe into sexual harassment allegations against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo have launched a fact-finding website.

High-profile attorneys Joon Kim and Anne Clark are asking anyone with information relating to the investigation to come forward.

Those with relevant information can contact the investigators at 212-225-3100 for voice messages, 518-545-0870 for texts or via email at independent.investigations@ag.ny.gov, the site says.

Mario's son is truly getting thrown under the bus here. Love wins.

Vito probe closed

From the NY Post:

State Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who was accused of groping young female staffers, is not expected to be charged criminally following a months-long investigation, The Post has learned.

Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, who is operating as a special prosecutor, is expected to announce today that his investigation didn’t find enough evidence to charge Lopez, sources told The Post.

The harassment allegations lodged by two Lopez staffers last summer led to the revelation that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver had quietly authorized a payment of $103,000 in taxpayer funds to settle previous allegations by two other women against Lopez.

The controversy rocked the state’s political hierarchy and sparked an investigation by the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics.

In February, the commission issued a scathing 58-page report to the Legislative Ethics Commission and Donovan, who asked the LEC not to release it until his investigation into the allegations was finished.

With Donovan’s probe complete, the LEC is expected to release the report as early as today. The report was so explicit in outlining how Silver’s staff handled the allegations that members of the LEC asked JCOPE to redact it.

From the Politicker:

Although Assemblyman Vito Lopez was cleared of criminal charges today, the same can not be said of a highly-revealing report from the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics–which concluded that Mr. Lopez fostered a shockingly sordid work environment in clear violation of official standards of conduct.

In the scathing 68-page report, Mr. Lopez–who was stripped of his powerful committee chairmanship and his position atop the Brooklyn Democratic Party after sexual harassment allegations first surfaced last year—engaged in such acts as hanging mistletoe in his district office and forcibly kissing a staffer, shoving his hand “all the way up” the inner thigh of another staffer and more. Mr. Lopez has insisted he’s done nothing wrong.

With minimal paraphrasing, Politicker has compiled some of the most shocking findings detailed in the JCOPE report...

NYC subway justice

From the NY Post:

It was the last stop for this subway creep.

An alleged subway groper was cuffed yesterday after fellow straphangers dragged him off an L train in Brooklyn and held him for cops, police said.

Victor Sigler, 30, of The Bronx, was arrested on a charge of forcible touching for allegedly grabbing a 35-year-old victim around the waist and feeling her buttocks as she got off a Queens-bound G train at the Lorimer Street subway stop at around 9:30 p.m., police said.

Sigler then allegedly ran and tried to board a Manhattan-bound L train — with his victim in hot pursuit — but was dragged out of the car and held on the platform by a pair of good Samaritans, in an act of street justice captured on video and posted to YouTube today.

As one of the straphanger heroes held Sigler on the platform, bystanders applauded as transit cops arrived and made the arrest.

The woman was not harmed.

Astoria groper caught?

From the Daily News:

A man suspected of being the bike-riding groper who has attacked six women in Queens was being questioned by police Tuesday night, cops said.

Police collared the man after they spotted him pedaling away from a screaming woman at Broadway and 31st St. in Astoria Tuesday morning, police said.

He was captured after he rode through a red light at the intersection, cops said.

The woman who screamed disappeared from the scene, so it was not clear if she was a victim.

Investigators believe the man is the pervert wanted for sexually assaulting six women since Sept. 15, police said. In each incident, the suspect rides up on a black bike and gropes the victim.

The person in custody was riding a similar bike, but it was wrapped in silver tape, a police source said.

Police were calling in the victims Tuesday night to see if any of them identified him.

Is Jackson Heights an epicenter of perversion?

From the Queens Chronicle:

“If you have breasts, you get hit on. That’s how this neighborhood is,” said Nicolle Loayza, 26. She was talking about Jackson Heights, where she was born and raised. A man accused of groping three women in the neighborhood on two different occasions is still at large.

On the heels of these reports and a spate of separate groping incidents reported in Astoria and the Upper East Side, council members Julissa Ferreras (D-Corona) and Danny Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) stood on the corner of 90th Street and Roosevelt Avenue today to pass out fliers with the police drawing of the Jackson Heights groper.

Yesterday, a different man, Jose Alfredo Perez Hernandez, was arrested for allegedly fondling several women on the Upper East Side, according to published reports. Hernandez is from Corona.

Ferreras said she decided to canvass Jackson Heights today both because of the incidents that occurred in her district and because of Hernandez. “Is this the place where people come to hide?” she asked of Corona.

While Dromm and Ferreras continued to pass out fliers, Loayza pointed to the spot across Roosevelt Avenue where she said men often wait just to look up women’s skirts when they climb the stairs to the 90th St. 7 train.

She described the time a man grabbed her crotch a few blocks away when she was just 12 years old, and said men often follow her home from the train, catcalling her along the way. However, she has never reported a single incident.

“I’ve learned to deal with it,” she said. “You just walk around the block and try to lose them.”

But Ferreras thinks this is precisely the problem.

“It’s not just about shrugging it off or avoiding a corner,” Ferreras said.

How about the fact that this behavior has for decades been considered acceptable in some of the vibrant, diverse cultures that call Jackson Heights home? I heard stories like this about Jackson Heights back in the 1980s.