Metro

DNA clue in Brooklyn Bridge flag mystery

Someone forgot to wear gloves.

The intruders who beat NYPD anti-terror patrols to plant white flags atop the Brooklyn Bridge thought they were crafty by covering the lights with aluminum pans, but they left DNA evidence behind on some of the zip-ties, sources told The Post on Thursday.

Now cops are hoping to capitalize on the misstep and find a match in their database.

Investigators are also scouring social media, pulling phone logs and running hundreds of license plates, police sources said. They are tracking down all calls made from the bridge around the time the flags were replaced early Tuesday.

They obtained the online handles of at least two of the suspects and are going through computers records for their proper names, the sources said.

Roughly 1,800 cars crossed the bridge within an hour of the time the vandals covered lights on the first tower at 3:29 a.m. — and cops are running every one of those license plates, police sources said.

Paul Martinka
Many of the city’s best and brightest investigators were yanked from elite divisions to work the case.

Investigators were pulled from homicide, counterterrorism, intel and transit to hunt down the infiltrators, who went unnoticed as they climbed atop the bridge’s 276-foot towers on Tuesday, police sources said.

Detectives from Manhattan’s Sixth, Seventh, Ninth and 10th precincts were also assigned to the investigation, which has included reviewing footage from nearby subway stations, Pace University and areas of the bridge itself, police sources said.

In one of the most stunning security breaches in the city’s history, four or five intruders — likely working in two teams — climbed hundreds of feet on the bridge’s narrow main suspension cables to reach the top of the towers, police sources said.

To stay undetected, they zip-tied aluminum lasagna pans over the floodlights aimed at the flags — blacking out the Brooklyn side at 3:29 a.m. and the Manhattan tower 13 minutes later, police sources said.

The humiliating breach came two years after flags were stolen from the same towers by thieves who have still not been caught.