Cops say they have nabbed the teenage terrors responsible for at least six muggings in Brooklyn Heights.
Police in the neighborhood’s 84th Precinct said this week that the underage thugs — two 13-year-olds and a 15-year-old — were apprehended at around 7 pm on April 25 as they surrounded their sixth victim, an 18-year-old, on Livingston Street near Court Street.
Captain Mark DiPaolo said that cops had targeted the three troublemakers before they jumped their unsuspecting victim.
“Our plainclothes officers were patrolling the area when they observed the three teens,” DiPaolo said. “We were watching their actions, and when they were about to do the robbery, we swooped in.”
Investigators have linked the thieves to six other robberies that they allegedly committed in recent weeks, the Brooklyn Heights Blog reported yesterday.
DiPaolo said from the start that he was “pretty confident” that the teenagers would be nabbed. Once a crime pattern was observed, DiPaolo deployed officers — in uniform and plain clothes — to patrol the muggers’ hunting grounds, which centered around Sidney Place.
“It was just a small group of people. It was just a matter of tracking them down,” he said.
The prior cases all had a similar narrative: in each case, the victim was surrounded and threatened for money in the hours between 5 and 9 pm.
The reign of terror began in March, DiPaolo said, when four to five teens surrounded a 16-year old on Court Street and a 16-year old on Joralemon Street in two separate incidents. One of the victims suffered a broken jaw, DiPaolo said.
The alleged attackers then began to target older victims. On April 4, three thugs surrounded and threatened a 38-year-old man on Sidney Place near Joralemon Street until he gave up his iPhone, an iPod and cash.
— with Gary Buiso
