Calling all cars — mailbox down!
In a scene that looked like an episode of “CSI: Staten Island,” cops launched a full-scale investigation at the home of Congressman Michael Grimm — after his mailbox was stolen, police sources said yesterday.
Investigators dusted for fingerprints and swabbed the purloined postbox’s stone base for skin cells that could provide DNA clues, police sources said.
The box was taken from Grimm’s home in the New Springville section of Staten Island sometime between Monday night and 8 a.m. Tuesday, while the freshman Republican congressman and former FBI undercover agent was in Washington.
The thief or thieves ripped out the white, rectangular mailbox — which had an engraved eagle on it — and carted it away along with its metal post, sources said.
Chris Graffagnino, a tenant in the two-story house, discovered the theft outside the Borman Avenue address on Tuesday and called cops.
“I thought somebody hid the thing on me,” Graffagnino told The Post, “like a prank or something. I can’t imagine why somebody would want a mailbox. It’s just stupid.”
Cops believe the box was empty at the time of the theft, since Graffagnino said he had retrieved the mail for the congressman at about 3 p.m. Monday.
Grimm’s mailbox was the only one taken in the neighborhood.
Many people on the congressman’s street are pointing the finger at unruly local youngsters.
“It’s got to be kids. Who else would it be?” said Frank Scorsese, 54, a mailman who has been working Grimm’s route for many years.
“Kids around here trash mailboxes all the time,” he said. “They rip them out of the ground. They bust them up with baseball bats. They think it’s funny.”
The mailbox theft comes as Grimm, a former darling of the Tea Party who had a falling-out with its supporters, is being plagued by questions about his fund- raising.
After a published report linked him to a shady Israeli fund-raiser, a political group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington yesterday called for the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate him.
Yesterday, Grimm “unequivocally” denied the fund-raising allegations.
He had no comment on the lost mailbox.