The drunk, off-duty cop accused in the brutal rape of a defenseless schoolteacher in upper Manhattan is being investigated for other unsolved sex attacks during his three years on the force, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday.
“We’ve picked out some that have the potential to be the same individual,” the city’s top cop said about disgraced Officer Michael Peña, 27, who is being held at Rikers in lieu of $1 million bond after being charged in a sickening sex attack last Friday.
Kelly huddled with psychologists to ask if that attack suggested a pattern and said, “They believe it certainly is possible.”
Cops are eyeing the pudgy creep in the brazen June 10 sex attack on a 28-year-old woman in Inwood Park because he bears “a striking resemblance” to a police sketch of the suspect, a law-enforcement source said.
And cops also are trying to determine if Peña is connected to other attacks in upper Manhattan and The Bronx. In the 34th Precinct alone, there have been 14 rapes this year, compared with 11 in all of 2010, the source added.
DNA evidence collected in some of the cases is being analyzed to see if there’s a match to Peña’s, the source said.
In the Inwood Park incident, a Hispanic man approached the victim about 8:40 p.m. near Dyckman Avenue and the Henry Hudson Parkway and chatted her up. He then assaulted her before pedaling off on a bike.
On Friday morning, a sloshed Peña lumbered up to the 25-year-old teacher on an Inwood street as she was headed to work in the South Bronx, cops said.
He asked the woman for directions to the No. 1 train before allegedly attacking her.
Peña was charged with rape and criminal sexual act. The NYPD suspended him without pay.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona