New Year’s Eve is a popular time for partiers to practice their hedonistic art, but it also proved to be a good time for criminals to get to work.
At least five crimes — including an assault, two break-ins, a purse-snatching, and a car theft — all occurred in Park Slope in the hours just before or just after the ball dropped in Times Square. Here’s a roundup:
• Two thugs used a possibly fictitious bump on the street as a pretext for beating up a man on Fifth Avenue hours after the new year began.
The 33-year-old beating victim told cops that he was walking near the corner of 11th Street at around 3:40 am on Jan. 1 when a 22-year-old man came over and said, “Why’d you bump me?” before punching him in the head with a foreign object. A second perp, also 22, stood watch, cops said.
The injured man was taken to New York Methodist Hospital on nearby Seventh Avenue.
• A Seventh Avenue resident got the fright of her life when she entered her living room and found herself face to face with a would-be thief seconds after the new year started.
The 54-year-old woman told cops that she walked into the living room at 12:01 am — while Dick Clark was still saying “Happy New Year!” — and found the 5-foot-6, 180-pound man standing there.
“I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” the would-be thief said — and then did just that, exiting the home, which is between Lincoln and Berkeley places, the way he came in: through the window.
• A Long Island woman ringing in the new year at a Second Street restaurant had her bag stolen when she used the bathroom about an hour after the new year began.
The 28-year-old told police that she was in the restaurant, a popular place for Cajun pizza and really good margaritas between Seventh and Eighth avenues, at around 1 am when she went to the bathroom. When she returned, her handbag was missing — along with her credit cards, $200, a Blackberry, an asthma inhaler and a cellphone charger.
• A thief swiped a laptop from an apartment on Berkeley Place between Seventh and Eighth avenues on Dec. 31 — thanks to a front door that can be opened with just a credit card, the victim told cops.
• A man who parked his Jeep Wrangler on Sixth Avenue near St. Johns Place at 8:15 am on Dec. 31 returned nine hours later to find that it had been stolen.
Bank bust
A bandit who fled a Seventh Avenue bank on Dec. 31 with close to $2,000 was caught two days later, cops said.
Police say the 45-year-old man entered the Astoria Federal Savings branch at President Street at around 2:15 pm and handed the teller a rude note.
The teller handed over $1,940.
But two days later, he was arrested when he was at the Schermerhorn Street courthouse in Downtown Brooklyn on an unrelated criminal matter, cops said.
House party
A man who gave his keys to a friend so he could stay at his Sixth Street house ended up unwittingly hosting a bunch of teenagers after the keys fell into the wrong hands, cops said.
The vacationer, 51, gave the friend the keys on Dec. 28. But shortly afterwards, someone swiped the keys from the friend. When the man came back from vacation on Jan. 2, he noticed that his apartment had been used by teens “for parties over a period of two days,” according to the police report.
Worse, the kids were bad party guests, stealing $650, gift cards, a Sony PlayStation game, DVDs, a camcorder, a Nintendo system, 50 pills and “assorted food, beer and wine from the apartment, which is between Fifth and Sixth avenues.
The total value of the rude haul was $1,850, cops said.
Mint condition
An 11th Street coin collector had eight valuable silver dollars stolen from his basement on Dec. 31, cops said.
The 69-year-old victim told police that eight Morgan silver dollars — a coin that was in regular circulation between 1878 and 1904 and has become popular with collectors — were taken from the basement of the building, which is between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West, sometime between 8 am and 7 pm.
