[Tom Joad]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/ny...hing.html?_r=0

Cases of police impersonations have kept the real police busy in recent months. In February, two men who were arrested after a strong-arm robbery in Spanish Harlem in Manhattan turned out to be members of the auxiliary police — unarmed volunteers — posing as officers. They beat and handcuffed a deliveryman from a Chinese restaurant and took his money, the police said.

In October, a woman walking to a store for cigarettes in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, was stopped by a man in a car who beckoned her inside, saying he knew where to get some. She did, and he spoke into a hand-held radio, using police jargon, the police said. He pulled over and demanded sex, saying he would arrest her if she did not comply, the police said. She did, and later escaped. Officers arrested a man identified as Walter Barnes, 47, of Flatlands, Brooklyn, charging him with rape and police impersonation.

Another man, identified as Francisco Rivera, 29, of Jamaica, Queens, was arrested twice for raping or assaulting women in motel rooms after identifying himself as a police officer, in October and November, the police said.

Yet another man was impersonating a police officer outside Kennedy International Airport in Queens for a week in February, hailing livery cabs and, once inside, claiming to be an officer and waving a gun, demanding money. The police said he got away with cellphones and hundreds of dollars in cash.

He remains at large. So does a team of two men committing at least six robberies in Queens, pulling up in a black car or van, with one of the men getting out and searching passers-by and then stealing their wallets. A video from a surveillance camera showed one of the robberies, with the suspect, bald and holding a flashlight, calmly patting down the victim.