More sickos are publicly pleasuring and exposing themselves on the streets of the Big Apple, crime statistics show — a nauseating development critics have chalked up to lax laws and a broken mental health system.
Reports of pervs fondling themselves out in the open soared 51% through June 30, up to 378 complaints from 251 during the same period in 2023, according to NYPD data.
Meanwhile cops issued 159 criminal summonses through June 30 citywide to New Yorkers whipping out their genitals — sometimes to urinate — a staggering 396% increase from the 32 tickets written in 2023, according to city data.
“There’s too much junk I don’t want to see,” Greenwich Village resident Brian Maloney told The Post.
Three weeks ago, a long-haired naked man fondled himself while sitting in a chair outside the Washington Square Diner in the pouring rain, according to footage Maloney shared with The Post.
Days later, a woman in his subway car decided to parade in front of commuters in her birthday suit, he said.
“We’re exhausted by it,” Maloney said. “We’re trying for help, we’re pleading with our electeds to help and basically getting ignored.”
At a July meeting for Manhattan’s Community Board 1, which covers the Financial District and Tribeca, residents raged over cops’ failure to respond to their complaints about a grime-covered serial masturbator with a Marine Corps tattoo on his back.
Capt. Joel Rosenthal, commanding officer of the First Precinct, warned the outraged locals that even if the police busted the him in the act, the twisted perv likely would be cut loose in no time.
“This is a desk appearance ticket and a non-bail eligible offense, so he will be out within two hours,” he said.
The push against incarceration, together with the city’s inability to hospitalize and effectively treat the severely mentally ill, has driven the surge in disturbing deviancy, according to Carolyn D. Gorman, a mental illness policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute.
“If we don’t enforce laws so individuals aren’t in jails or prisons, and they’re not receiving psychiatric treatment because the mental health system deprioritizes the mentally ill … these people are out on the street,” she said.
Additional reporting by Tina Moore.
