NOW ‘POST’ BAIL: Members of the Brooklyn gang members posted pics of their capers on Facebook.
NOW ‘POST’ BAIL: Cop Michael Rodrigues “friended” Brooklyn gang members on Facebook, where the dummies even posted pics of their capers (above). (
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Status update: Busted!
Fourteen members of a Brooklyn gang ended up in handcuffs after idiots in their ranks accepted Facebook “friend” requests from a cop who was tipped off to their year-long Crown Heights burglary wave, authorities said yesterday.
“They signed off on their messages with LOL — laughing out loud,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said. “Well, there was a person who was laughing out loud. That was Police Officer Michael Rodrigues of the 77th Precinct.”
The anti-crime officer friended several alleged members of the Brower Boys gang through the social-networking site, then quietly kept an eye on posts where they recklessly crowed that it was “break-in day on the avenue.”
“He was able to track their next moves,” Kelly said.
The Facebook posts, Rodrigues said, “were basically about going out to make money.”
“They were members of the Brower gang, sometimes just saying how the gang was more than a gang — it was family,” Rodrigues said of the usual Facebook chatter among gang members.
Police wouldn’t divulge what handle Rodrigues used as his Facebook name.
Breaking through the gang’s coded online chatter, cops were then able to set up surveillance of the thieves stepping out onto fire escapes and up to rooftops to make their escape. “The Brower Boys became brazen with their criminal activity,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.
In one police surveillance video from March, alleged gang member Olurabu “Sleepy” Henry can be seen in broad daylight as he carries a backpack out a window and onto a rooftop, where cops were waiting for him — having been alerted through the Facebook posts.
The wave of more than a dozen break-ins terrorized Crown Heights residents from April 2011 to this March, authorities said, with the bandits swiping laptops, cameras and cellphones from apartments while tenants weren’t home.
“A burglary is not rocket science,” Kelly said. “The Brower boys targeted people who moved into the neighborhood recently, they looked for open windows and they rang doorbells to see if someone was home.”
Two of the break-ins turned violent, authorities said.
In one, Derrin “Spazz” Dyson, 18; Dezhaun “DayDay” Samuels, 18; Christopher “Weezle” Scott, 17; and a 13-year-old boy are accused of tying up a man and a woman during a robbery and sexually assaulting the 22-year-old female.
In another, Terry “Greedy” Walley, 18, allegedly shot the resident of one home — then suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a struggle with the victim.
A few of the dopes, like an 18-year-old known as “Pretty Boy Sleepy,” took to Facebook to pose for photos with guns, Kelly said.
“Some of them found the instant celebrity of social media irresistible,” the commissioner said.
They even argued online over a laptop and who would get the proceeds of a burglary, Kelly said.