ALBANY — State Police warned state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) about Sen. Kevin Parker’s temper just days before the Brooklyn Democrat flew into a rage and attacked a Post photographer.
Troopers raised the red flag on Parker on May 4 after the short-fused senator got out of his car at an entrance to a parking garage beneath the state Capitol complex and angrily confronted a security guard.
Parker, who identified himself as a state senator, was fuming over a security gate that was down at an hour he had expected it to be raised, said Capt. Henry de Vries.
Troopers who watched the dustup unfold from their nearby post came over to observe. They decided not to arrest Parker but thought the incident was serious enough to notify Smith’s office.
“We recognized that he was displeased with the process in place and we brought the matter to the attention of the Senate majority leader so it could be resolved,” de Vries said.
Parker’s parking tantrum came four days before his arrest Friday night on a felony criminal-mischief charge for attacking a Post photographer.
Parker chased down the photographer, who was covering a story about a foreclosure on the senator’s house, and ripped an interior door panel out of his car.
The four-term senator yesterday predicted he would be cleared of the charges and downplayed the parking-garage incident as he returned to the Senate chamber for the first time since his arrest.
“You had a security guard who raised his voice to me, that I thought was inappropriate, and I let him know it was inappropriate,” Parker told The Post. “That was the beginning and the end of it.”
In 2005, Parker was ordered to take an anger-management course after he was charged with punching a traffic agent.
In September, an aide accused him of pushing her during an argument at his campaign headquarters.
Smith said a top aide talked to Parker about the parking-garage incident, but he felt “it didn’t sound like it rose to any level that requires any action.”
Additional reporting by Chuck Bennett