Crime Watch

Not-So-Good Deed What should have been merely a touching example of a youngster helping out an elderly neighbor became the stuff of police reports last week. A 25-year-old woman jumped to the assistance of an 82-year-old man who was crossing a busy Upper West Side street last Thursday. By the time she had ferried the man to the safety of the sidewalk, however, she had also nipped into his pants pocket and nabbed $10, his ID and credit cards. The perp attempted to use the victim's credit card in a taxi a short time later, and the heartless thief remains on the loose. Crime Really Doesn't Pay Three teenage boys were walking home from school from school last week when three other boys approached them and demanded their money and wallets. When the trio of would-be victims refused and kept walking down Broadway, the thieving threesome followed and managed to grab $2 from one of the boys. Now all three are wanted for robbery, with less than a buck each to show for their misdeeds. Old Spice Crook A man was arrested at a local Duane Reade last week after attempting to abscond with a whopping 299 sticks of Old Spice deodorant. (Does anybody sweat that much?) The presumably odoriferous shoplifter also injured an employee who tried to stop him from leaving the store. Depraved Assault on a Child Police were alerted last week to the plight of an 8-year-old girl living in the Amsterdam Houses with suspicious injuries on her left hand. When they investigated, officers determined that the girl's mother had allegedly burned her hand with a fork as punishment for "taking her sister's tampons." The mother told cops that her daughter burned herself accidentally while ironing clothes, but her story didn't jive with the poor girl's injury and she was arrested on felonious assault charges. The case has been referred to the Special Victims Unit. Mucous-Free Shoplifter Last Tuesday at 9:45 a.m., an unknown man waltzed into a local CVS pharmacy and sauntered out with 40 stolen packs of Mucinex, an over-the-counter med meant to combat mucous and coughs. The total haul is worth $1,150, so the thief most likely intends either to get some crystal-clear nasal passages or make a hefty profit reselling the drug on the street. Bad Boyfriend A 37-year-old woman called the police after her live-in boyfriend took his alcoholic rage out on her. The woman reported that her drunken mate got angry and attempted to strangle her, then slammed her against a wall and held her there so she couldn't escape his grasp. He eventually let go and ran off, allowing the victim a chance to call for help. False Phone Friends When checking her most recent cell phone bill, a local woman noticed a few extraneous charges-namely that two iPhones had been purchased with her account and a stranger had been added as an "authorized user," enabling him to change her plan to accommodate the two new phone lines. Don't Tempt Thieves Most criminals can't resist an easy target, as a local man discovered last week when he placed his wallet on the inside window ledge of his ground-floor apartment on West 78th Street. An unknown person spotted it, and snagged the wallet, attempting four credit card purchases with the stolen loot.