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The office of “soft-on-crime” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg allegedly reduced charges for a brazen career crook who stole cash from an unsuspecting woman on the Upper East Side, only to be quickly nabbed by cops who saw the whole thing.
Claude Myers, 54, had 46 prior arrests on his rap sheet and was on parole when he was caught by the NYPD Thursday, sources said.
“Next time I won’t do it right in front of you,” Myers told the arresting officers, according to a source.
Myers was initially facing several charges, including grand larceny — for removing the property from a person — but the DA’s office downgraded the case to simple petty larceny, the sources said.
“This is yet another case where we do our job and take a recidivist off the street – identifying the grand larceny of an innocent, hard-working New Yorker, and they see the crime as it is occurring, witnessing it, and it is knocked down to a petit larceny,” said a Manhattan cop. “And that means that this person will be back out on the street to potentially harm more innocent victims.”
The Manhattan DA’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The episode unfolded shortly before 5 p.m. when a group of NYPD Transit Borough Public Safety Team officers spotted a man unzipping a woman’s backpack and removing property on the street at East 63rd and Third Avenue, the sources said.
One officer approached the unsuspecting victim — a 61-year-old area housekeeper — and told her what cops saw. When she checked her backpack, she realized $60 was missing, the sources said.
“I never realized that happened. I was in disbelief,” the victim, Lilia De Rojas, a Park Avenue housekeeper who lives in White Plains, told The Post.
She was dropping off dry cleaning on her way to Grand Central Station when it happened.
“He keep doing it because he is in today, out tomorrow. Back and forth all the time, he don’t really care. It’s easy for him,” she said of Myers, adding, “maybe the new Mayor can try to keep these things from happening.”
De Rojas gave high marks to the police, who were “very nice” and treated her “very, very well.”
While one officer was talking to De Rojas, the others caught up to Myers, who was smoking marijuana on a bench in a nearby park and arrested him, the sources said.
Myers, who is on parole for identity theft, allegedly admitted to the crime, telling investigators he “saw an opportunity and took it,” the police sources added.
Myers’ rap sheet includes a robbery arrest with physical injury in 2013 and five grand larceny arrests in 2018; he was released on parole Nov. 30, the police sources said.
“He’s [Myers] been locked up numerous times for grand larceny,” the NYPD confirmed.
Last month, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office came under fire after it allegedly “intentionally omitted all facts” about a violent theft in a Chelsea store — including key information about an alleged weapon used during the crime — leading to a mere shoplifting charge and the release of an “assault and robbery recidivist,” according to an NYPD union, sources, and court documents.
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