Crime rates may be continuing to fall, but crimes committed by women seem to be experiencing a surge in popularity, if a few recent incidents are any indication.
On April 26 two females, both age 29, hailed a cab and provided an East 85th Street address as their destination. However, upon their arrival, they didn’t pay their fare, request a receipt and check for their personal belongings. Instead, they announced a stick-up.
“Give me your money,” the driver claims one of the robbers told him, “I have a gun.”
Perhaps it’s because women have never pursued this game as aggressively as men, but after the cabby relinquished his cash, the ladies did something which could only be described as dumb. Rather than vanish into the night or duck into the subway (as a more seasoned crook might have done), they fled into the building, where one of them had an apartment. It was there that the police found and arrested them. They were charged with robbery.
Mother’s Day
In another incident involving two females (though by all appearances a far more adept pair than the two in the previous item), a couple of lady crooks visited Manfredi, a jewelry store at 702 Madison Avenue, on April 23.
One advantage that women who pursue a life of crime enjoy over men is that they’re far less likely to arouse the suspicions of those security guards who have become as much a fixture at Madison Avenue’s better boutiques as five-figure price tags.
On this occasion, Manfredi’s security guard apparently welcomed the ladies into the store around noon. The suspects, both described as around 20 years old and diminutive-one of them was about 5-foot-2, the other 5-foot-3-stated they wanted to buy a bracelet or a ring for their mother. As a sales associate showed them a selection of items, the two produced guns and ordered the staff into the bathroom.
Then, displaying impressive composure, the ladies ordered the guard to get the store’s surveillance tape for them and also to gather jewelry from the display cases and the safe.
Their bounty included a dozen watches priced between $3,800 and $4,900, two rings worth over $25,000 each, and numerous other precious adornments. (Their mom will undoubtedly have trouble making up her mind.)
The perps gathered the baubles into a bag and fled in a white Honda Accord driven by-who else?-a third female. An evidence-collection team responded to the scene and the cops canvassed the area, but with negative results.
Locker-Room Larceny
Thefts from gym locker rooms are so common these days it’s a wonder anybody leaves behind anything besides their hair clips and roll-on deodorant when they depart for the treadmills. What does seem to be a rare occurrence is for one of the thieves to actually get caught, as a female suspect did at the Trump Park Avenue hotel gym on May 9.
A 32-year-old client emerged from the bathroom at 5:40 p.m. and discovered another woman with her hand in the victim’s locker and, in her hand, the victim’s wallet.
“Excuse me,” the victim stated. (Though one suspects her tone was one of irritation, disbelief or barely hidden sarcasm, the resulting police report didn’t attempt to describe her delivery.)
In any case, the locker robber didn’t confess or apologize. Rather, she asked coolly, “Is this your stuff?”
“Yes,” said the victim and grabbed her wallet back.
The crook, proving that the culture of victimization in which we live has gone too far, apparently started to commiserate, explaining that just such an incident had once happened to her. If she expected the complainant to feel sorry for her, however, she had another thing coming. The victim promptly reported the attempted theft to the gym staff, and the suspect, a 44-year-old Bronx resident, was stopped before she could flee and was held until the police arrived.
It’s All Fun and Games …
Ever wonder how the kitchen staff spends its time at the Upper East Side’s finer restaurants after the last guest leaves? At some of the city’s more chichi establishments, apparently, it’s not by eating the leftovers or drinking the dregs from high-rolling investment bankers’ glasses of Château d’Yquem. Rather, it’s entertaining themselves with the cutlery, as a couple of employees were doing at the Atlantic Grill at 1341 Third Avenue on May 8, until something went terribly wrong.
The police responded to the restaurant at around 1:35 a.m. after receiving a 911 call of a “heavy bleeder” at the location. When they arrived, the victim, a 16-year-old West End Avenue resident, told them he’d incurred his injury after falling on a knife.
What the cops discovered after investigating the matter further was that he’d fallen on his sword, so to speak, but not on his knife. The stab wound he’d received to his right arm that was causing the mess wasn’t an accident at all. He’d gotten the injury, he eventually confessed, after a co-worker got angry while they were playing a game with a knife and converted the game piece into a weapon. The victim underwent surgery at New York Presbyterian Hospital, and his assailant was arrested for assault.
Ralph Gardner may be reached at rgard135@aol.com.
