TERROR IN CENTRAL PARK

By JESSICA GRAHAM
A woman mauled by a band of hoodlums on a Central Park sex-attack spree said she clawed her way out of the crowd as her frenzied attackers tore at her clothes and cheered, "Go! Go! Go!"
"I bit, scratched, chewed and screamed," said Manhattan resident Anne Peyton Bryant, who may have been the first victim in a wave of assaults after the Puerto Rican Day parade.

"I've never felt so terrified in my life. I couldn't see anything but the faces around me and the water. I couldn't even see the sky above me," she told The Post.

Bryant, 29, said even worse than the attack was the response of cops who ignored her after she reported the incident and warned them others were in danger. The terror unfolded just after 6 p.m., when Bryant was finishing her daily loop around the park on rollerblades, accompanied by a male friend on a bike. She came upon a large crowd blocking the exit on Sixth Avenue, a heavy smell of marijuana hanging in the air. A group of men closed in, drenching her with beer and water. "I still wasn't afraid. I figured it was a hot day and they were just playing and having fun," she said.

She realized it wasn't a game when the men pulled her down. They also attacked her friend, hitting him on the head and trying to steal his bicycle.

"I thought they might have a knife or a gun," she said. "I couldn't tell how many people were grabbing me." Bryant - the marketing chief for a dot-com who moonlights as an aerobics instructor - used all of her strength to fight the band off, kicking with her rollerblades. Curling into a fetal position, she was able to keep her shorts up around the top of her thighs.

"They were all screaming, 'Go! Go! Go!' It was being encouraged," said Bryant. "I think the whole crowd was enjoying it."

Finally, she heard a stranger emerge from the crowd and say: "This is too much."

"He said, 'Hold on to me, baby,' and I did. He and another man pulled me out of there."

She thanked the men and went in search of the police, but all of the officers that she approached told Bryant - who was crying, soaking wet and covered in dirt - there wasn't much they could do.

She said none of them radioed other cops on the parade detail about the roaming thugs.

"Oh wow," one officer, in a scooter at the edge of the park, told her when he heard her account.

Bryant said she approached another officer in front of the Plaza Hotel.

"I was attacked. Something bad is going to happen over there," she told him, motioning to the area where she was assaulted. "It's out of control. They tried to pull my pants down. You need to radio some officers to move into that area, it's out of control."

He suggested she talk to other cops sitting on the steps of FAO Schwarz. She said those officers told her to bring her complaint to the Central Park precinct, but she was afraid to go back into the park.

Instead, she said, she skated to the 17th Precinct, where an officer told her: "You've been sexually assaulted. You should come back tomorrow when you've calmed down."

NYPD spokeswoman Marilyn Mode said the department is investigating police handling of the incident.

For Bryant - who came to New York from Virginia six years ago - the police response was more disturbing than the assault.

"I wanted the police to do something, to go and make my city safe. But they just stood there," she said.

"I will never be able to embrace New York the way I did before. I love the park. I love parades. But it will never be the same."

POLICE: THUGS VIDEOTAPED THEIR RAMPAGE

By MURRAY WEISS, LARRY CELONA, JESSICA GRAHAM, DAVID SEIFMAN, IKIMULISA SOCKWELL-MASON and TRACY CONNOR
The wilding thugs who molested five women around Central Park after the Puerto Rican Day Parade videotaped their sickening rampage, one of the victims told police.
The footage would be valuable evidence for investigators, who charged two suspects with sexual assault but are looking to nab at least a dozen more participants in the Sunday night attacks.

The marauders roamed across the southern end of the park for more than half an hour - soaking women with water, stripping off their clothes and groping, violating and robbing them. "They were just out there to go wild," one investigator said.

The men came to the parade to look for women, police said. Shortly after 6 p.m., armed with water pistols and a video camera, they started ambushing their victims. Manhattan executive Anne Peyton Bryant, 29, told The Post she was skating out of the park when a gang pulled her to the ground, dragged her across the pavement and tried to pull off her shorts.

"It was the worst experience of my life - to be a woman attacked in broad daylight in a nice area of New York," said Bryant, who fought off her assailants.

Two Long Island teenagers who came into the city to see the parade and meet friends in the park were set upon by the band at Sixth Avenue and Central Park South. One of the girls told police she was splashed with water and then felt someone grabbing her shirt and another person yanking her bra strap, investigators said. The next thing she knew, her shirt was off and one of the men was grabbing her breasts and buttocks, while another suspect videotaped the attack.

The next victim was a 28-year-old Frenchwoman in New York on her honeymoon. Some of the hoodlums restrained her husband while the others robbed and stripped her. "They literally shredded the clothes off the woman," an investigator said of the tourist, who was left standing naked when the attackers moved on.

The crew's most frightening attack came minutes later when they corralled three young British women at 59th Street and the park's Center Drive. After ripping off the clothes of an 18-year-old, several of the men molested her while others kept her pals away, police said.

Cops responding to a 911 call took the British trio around the park. They spotted some of the men milling around, and eight of them were hauled in for questioning.

The women, however, could identify only two suspects: David Row, 24, of Hempstead, L.I., and Tremayne Bane, 23, of Brooklyn. Both were charged with robbery and sexual abuse. They admitted they were in the park but denied taking part in the attacks

Detectives were appealing for anyone who was in the park and saw the attacks to come forward. They also hoped to get amateur video - such as that shown on WNBC last night - from witnesses.

News of the assaults left park-goers uneasy.

"What's really scary is that there were people around and they didn't help," said German tourist Annika Schulze, 17. A group of Irish tourists visiting the park said they were returning to their hotel rooms after hearing details of the attacks. "It definitely makes you nervous," said Barbara Kavanaugh, 23.

Mayor Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir were on the defensive about the sex frenzy, part of a burst of violence over the unseasonably hot weekend.

"Policemen aren't everywhere. We have 41,000 police officers, and they can't be everywhere at every point," said Giuliani, who offered crime statistics to show the city is safe as ever. "It's unrealistic to assume that police officers can be everywhere at every time, particularly when they are dealing with a parade."

Safir told reporters that crime in Central Park is down "significantly" this year to the lowest level in 35 years. "Crime is down in Central Park. Patrols are not down in Central Park. But the truth is that if I put 10,000 cops in Central Park, we couldn't cover every single area of Central P

PATROLMEN: WE'RE IN A CATCH-22

By LARRY CELONA and ERIC LENKOWITZ
Frustrated cops say the Central Park mayhem shows they're caught in a Catch-22 every day - damned if they do and damned if they don't take action.
"Last week we were criticized for being the most aggressive police force. Now we're being criticized for being the most passive," one Manhattan cop vented.

Another said "we get beat down for action we take and for action we don't take. That's not very fair."

A 15-year veteran added: "It's a witch hunt. It's the same old story. Whenever something goes wrong, always blame the cops."

Police are under fire on two levels - for failing to stop the mass attacks on women after the Puerto Rican Day Parade and for rebuffing victims who tried to report the incident. The way parades are staffed is a prescription for disaster, officers said, pointing out that cops are deployed without radios and told to take a hands-off approach to revelers. The accusations boggled the mind of one officer who was on parade duty.

"I can't believe that any cops witnessed a woman getting attacked or even looked the other way when a woman came over after she said she was attacked," he said. Another cop, patrolling the outskirts of the park, said: "I just can't believe an officer would ignore a cry for help. If that happened, he should be punished severely."

Some cops were genuinely embarrassed that some of their colleagues may have misjudged and mishandled the chaos.

WILL LOW MORALE MEAN HIGH CRIME?

By DANIEL JEFFREYS

MORALE in the NYPD is falling fast, and some cops fear crime rates may rise as a result.
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission's formal release Friday of a report alleging racial profiling by the department is just the latest blow to an already sinking morale, veterans say.

"It is hard to take much more of this abuse," says Jake, a five-year undercover officer. "The NYPD has been undermined. We are becoming a less effective force."

Some of the city's most experienced cops say the report, combined with criticism of the NYPD in the wake of the Central Park wilding attacks, is creating an atmosphere in which cops will become gun-shy and recruitment will suffer.

Jake, whose real name is being withheld, is one of several seasoned police officers interviewed since the June 11 wilding attacks and the publication of the commission's critique, which implied the NYPD can no longer police itself.

The officers say the intense level of criticism, which most cops think is politically motivated, has helped push morale into a free fall.

"It was already plummeting," says Nick (not his real name), a detective in a Bronx precinct. "Now I'd say cops are at their most despondent for a decade. We don't get paid enough to tolerate all this political nonsense." NICK and his colleagues say Mayor Giuliani's response to the Central Park attacks only made morale problems more pronounced. They criticize the way the mayor flip-flopped, first dismissing the attacks as excessive high spirits and then launching a "witch hunt" for cops who might not have responded quickly enough. "The mayor's witch hunt has helped reinforce a negative public image of the NYPD," says a Midtown robbery-squad detective.

"The truth is, officers have been warning for years that the Puerto Rican Parade could get out of hand. They should be looking for the bosses who messed up the planning, not the guys on the street."

Still, those interviewed said the diminished morale caused by the report and the Central Park scandal would soon improve - if those were the only issues.

Instead, they claim a dozen different factors have contributed to some of the worst motivation problems since the 1980s. These cops say the 13 percent surge in New York's murder rate in the first quarter of 2000 has been caused partly by an especially sharp drop in job satisfaction among elite undercover officers, who are allegedly becoming gun shy.

"The main cause of depression is the political and media explosions that followed the Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond shootings," says a senior lieutenant with several years experience in special operations.

"It's like we won a few battles on crime, and now we're being told to put our weapons away because we might hurt the enemy's feelings."

This lieutenant says the Diallo-Dorismond fallout has left many cops backpedaling, trying to avoid situations that could become explosive.

"Two years ago, I went after everything," says Paul (not his real name), a detective who was in the Street Crime Unit until October and has since worked a plainclothes beat in Manhattan North.

"Now, after Diallo, I try to stay out of a call that could get me hung up. When I saw how the Diallo guys were treated even after their acquittals, it made me sick."

PAUL says the biggest fear for undercover officers is to be in a jam like the undercover narcotics detectives who shot Patrick Dorismond during a struggle in March.

"You make one mistake and you get ripped from obscurity," says Paul. "Even if the shooting is righteous, your face gets on the front page of the newspaper and your life is over."

Paul says he has seen too many of his fellow officers follow procedure and then get fried.

"Face it, the NYPD leaves it up to the individual officer to decide the level of force," he says.

"We are told to use the necessary means to oppose the danger, but now every time I'm in a tight corner, I got to think about how to protect my life and stay out of some citizen's beef.

"It's is going to make my response time slower. I think some of those cops who might have been reluctant to act in Central Park were confused about how much force would be politically acceptable."

Paul and his partners believe morale in the NYPD's elite undercover units, which have had the most success in cutting crime, is sinking to levels that could threaten the safety of all New Yorkers.

"When I joined the force, there were always a few guys who would say the job sucks," Paul says. "Now, almost everyone says that. You can see the fear all over the place. We can't do the job properly if the public sneers every time one of us says he is a cop. We put up with the danger and the low pay, but the abuse is getting a little too much."

Manny (not his real name) worked with Paul at the SCU for two years after a three-year stint in the buy-and-bust unit of narcotics. He is a Hispanic officer who now works in a predominantly black neighborhood.

Manny says many cops are suffering from what he calls "motivational distress" - meaning they have become far more cautious and are now just going through the motions.

"A while back, I would step up to a group of guys if I suspected them of selling guns or drugs without thinking about it," he says. "Now, I have been turning away. I think that's what some of the guys around Central Park thought. They didn't want be another victim of some bull- - - - racial-harassment allegation."

THE aggressive pursuit of drug dealers and illegal arms sales has been the backbone of the NYPD's fight against crime and a key factor behind the success of Giuliani's drive to cut the city's homicide rate.

The commission's report suggests Giuliani's tactics have led to an unfair concentration on minorities, which in turn can lead to tragedies such as the Diallo shooting. The unarmed African immigrant was shot at 41 times in February 1999 by cops who were looking for a rapist.

Working cops fear the report will lead them to be reined back with orders to be less aggressive. But with less aggression and with a new generation of criminals emerging who seem more vicious, officers warn of severe risks ahead.

"The perps know we have back-pedaled," says Manny. "It has made them a lot more bold, and I believe the guns are going to start seeping back. People forget there was a time decent people were afraid to walk the streets. If cops stop being aggressive, that fear is going to come right back."

"Kids like those in [Central] Park know the cops have stopped being so hard on them. Those wildings were caused by a new disrespect for law and order," says Paul.

"The city has to decide if they want political correctness or tough law enforcement. Sometimes you can't have both."

Officials in the NYPD acknowledge there is a problem but deny it has reached any kind of crisis proportions.

"There are legitimate concerns among police officers in the current environment," says Chief Thomas Fahey, commanding officer of the NYPD's public information unit. "But nobody can say the mayor and the police commissioner have not supported police officers 100 percent."

A key factor in the morale crisis has been a belief that many officers who get involved in bad situations, such as the four acquitted in the Diallo case, are then pilloried for doing their jobs.

"The Diallo guys were found innocent, but still they could get a federal rap or a civil suit," says Manny. "How do you think that's going to make me feel when I see a situation where I know my intervention could make somebody pull a gun? I don't want to end up as the stooge guy in some [Bruce] Springsteen song."

THERE'S another aspect of the developing morale crisis. Many prominent law-enforcement families have become increasingly anxious about their offspring joining the NYPD, especially if they have ambitions to work undercover, where promotions are most rapid.

One recently retired 32-year veteran of the job who rose to be a senior officer has just seen his son join a Manhattan precinct. The son was one of those policing Central Park during the Puerto Rican Day Parade. The son's response to the tide of criticism has been an increased sense of despondency.

"Based on what I hear from my son, there is terribly low morale," he says. "Young officers are walking on eggshells."

Senior NYPD officials say there is nothing new about the current situation, and that the police force has been a scapegoat several times in the past. They say that, for a while, the department was left alone to reduce some staggeringly high crime figures, but now that the bad guys are mostly in jail, it is open season on cops again.

"We are aware there is a problem with morale," says Fahey. "But it's all relative. In 1990, we had 41 officers shot dead out of a force of 32,000. Last year, just 11 died on the job, out of a force of 41,000."

CORRECTION (6/20/00 - page 2) A story in yesterday's Post incorrectly quoted Deputy Chief Thomas Fahey, commanding officer of the NYPD's public information unit. What Fahey meant to say was that in 1990, police shot and killed 41 civilians; in 1999, police shot and killed 11 civilians.

WILDING SUSPECTS ARE ROUNDED UP

By MARIA ALVAREZ, LARRY CELONA, JESSICA GRAHAM, MARIA MALAVE, ADAM MILLER, ED ROBINSON, DAVID SEIFMAN, MURRAY WEISS, and TRACY CONNOR


Four more suspects in the Central Park wilding were arrested yesterday as cops released photos of more wanted men and identified the alleged ringleader of the sex-attack spree that shocked the city.
Progress in the investigation came as the number of women who came forward to say they'd been attacked hit 32 and authorities revealed the assaults started far earlier and took place over a larger area than originally thought.

"It was absolute, total savagery," Assistant Chief William Taylor said. "They attacked these ladies for no reason - throwing water on them and ripping their clothes."

A parade of victims has viewed graphic videotapes of the mayhem that erupted after Sunday's Puerto Rican Day Parade and identified their assailants.

The four men nabbed yesterday include a paroled drug dealer, a pastor's son, an aspiring model and a high-school student - most of whom said they were victims of mistaken identity. Police singled out Manuel Vargas, 18, of The Bronx, who was still at large last night, as the chief culprit.

"He seemed to have orchestrated a lot of the activity that was going on or at least was the main player," Taylor said, adding that several victims picked out Vargas' face.

The other suspects, who were charged with sexual abuse, are:

* John Taylor, 24, of Far Rockaway, who told his mother "I'm sorry to put you through this" when detectives showed up to arrest him based on a tip.

"He would never hurt women. He would never do anything to anybody," the mother, Patricia Taylor, said. "They used my son's picture to cover the police."

Childhood friend Jennifer Reyes, 24, said she was at the parade with Taylor, a part-time model who cuts hair at his rented barber's chair in a local dry-cleaners.

"I know for a fact John did not do what he was accused of," Reyes said.

"We were throwing water. I didn't witness nobody getting clothes ripped off. I did see a huddle, but they were all in tight and it was difficult to see. There were a lot of guys out there."

* Manuel Nunez, 18, of The Bronx, who broke down in tears and told his mother, "Mommy, I have a problem," after his picture was released by cops.

The mother, Maria Nunez, said the Taft HS junior was leaving the parade with his pal, accused ringleader Vargas, when he spotted the commotion and gave his shirt to a girl who had her clothes stripped.

"If you look at the video, you see my son trying to stop the guys from attacking the girls," she said, pleading for the woman who took her son's shirt to come forward.

"My son is never in trouble, never in a fight. He doesn't hang. All he likes to do is play basketball. He's a very quiet guy. My son is innocent."

* Isaias Lozano, 19, of Queens, whose distraught fiancée said the charges are ridiculous.

"He's the son of a pastor. He goes to church every Sunday. He's never been in trouble," said the young woman, who did not want her name printed.

Her sister, Edith Mackay, blasted police: "The cops are just looking for a needle in a haystack. He baby-sits for my 3-year-old son and my niece. He wouldn't go around molesting girls."

Lozano, a Richmond Hill HS graduate, works at a Coconuts record store and for AT&T and was planning to attend John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

"I know that Isaias is innocent," said his father, who has the same name. "He was just celebrating the Puerto Rican Day Parade with friends and he just happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time."

* Steven Burt, 31, who went to his parole officer and said: "My friends are gonna turn me in so I'm surrendering."

The Jersey City man was released from prison in May after getting a five-year sentence for drug sales, New Jersey parole officials said. He also has an arrest for domestic violence.

Two other men - David Rowe and Tremayne Bain - were arrested shortly after Sunday's chaos and accused of sexually assaulting a British tourist.

Their lawyers predicted the disturbing footage at the core of the case will clear their clients.

"Warner Wolf says, ‘Let's go to the videotape.' That's what I'll say in court," said David Kapner, Rowe's lawyer. "We'll go through the video frame by frame and tell jurors: ‘Look he's not here.'"

The NYPD said yesterday the attacks began at 2:30 p.m., when a woman was ambushed at 82nd Street and Fifth Avenue. Most of the attacks, however, happened after 5:30 p.m. near Central Park South.

Police Commissioner Howard Safir admitted police brass - who were dressed down at a Wednesday meeting by Chief of Department Joseph Dunn - messed up.

But Mayor Giuliani was on the defensive again, saying the "overwhelming majority" of officers did their jobs. "Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the men who were involved in these attacks," he said.

WHERE WERE THE POLICE AS THUGS RAN WILD?

I am appalled at what happened in Central Park after the Puerto Rican Day Parade ("I've never been so afraid," June 13).
Why didn't the police do their job? When someone came to them and cried for help after being attacked, they should have investigated.

I don't blame the victim for feeling like she has been betrayed by our boys in blue.
David Hannes <BRP>Great Neck

How, in a park that is full of people on a Sunday afternoon, was nobody able to help these poor women? It is absolutely disgusting that something like this should happen without somebody intervening. New Yorkers need to take more control over their city and become more involved. And the police need to be better trained.
Claire O'Brien
Yonkers

Where's the outrage? Where are the celebrities, the community leaders, the women's groups? How come no one is writing songs? Seven innocent women are attacked in broad daylight in Central Park in the greatest city in the world and all we hear is how the police didn't do their job. Excuse me, but what about a little public outrage?
Deborah Bitar
Manhattan

What is with Howard Safir and his lame comment to the effect that if there had 10,000 cops in Central Park, we couldn't have prevented what was going on? Is this how far things have deteriorated? Has the fear of backlash from the minority community paralyzed the police force?
Jamie O'Brien
Manhattan

From my vantage point out West, I'm surprised New Yorkers still have police officers to report anything to. Small wonder the woman savaged in the park after the Puerto Rican Day Parade couldn't get any response from the police officers she encountered. None of them wanted to be the next one indicted on trumped-up charges simply to give Hillary Clinton a leg-up in the Senate race.
T. E. Taylor
Phoenix, Ariz.

In all nationalities there are bad apples. I am proud to be Puerto Rican. I am sorry that people had a bad experience, but I resent generalized remarks about Puerto Ricans.
Angela R. Vazquez-Cunningham
The Bronx

For months the police of this city were bombarded and bashed until they were black and blue. We are paying for it now but realistically, who could blame them for taking a passive stance? Crime is back, and it will get worse because the ungrateful people of this city bit the hand that fed them - and believe me, those hands won't be bitten any more.
Patrick Abbruzzi
Staten Island

The mayor and the police commissioner must be idiots to allow the NYPD to just sit there while these women were assaulted, even after being told about what was going on.
Bob Causey
Goose Creek, S.C.

A pack of vermin terrorizes innocent people in Central Park, the murder rate in The Bronx is up 11 percent, crime is edging up in Midtown and beggars are still in the subways. Where is our crime-busting Mayor Giuliani?
Alphonso Montgomery
Queens

As a proud New Yorker, the mixture of shame and anger that welled up inside me while reading Anne Peyton Bryant's account of her attack was as intense as any I can remember. But what really frightens and infuriates me is the obfuscation on the part of Mayor Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir. Isn't Giuliani the man who established quality of life as a cornerstone of his administration? If our wives, mothers, sisters, daughters and friends lose the right to walk in Central Park without fear of being set upon by drunken louts, then New York and New Yorkers are proud no more.
Jim Cooper
Manhattan

The apathy of the officers whom Ms. Bryant went to for help after being groped and assaulted by a gang is just as repugnant as the vermin who cruelly attacked her and six other people. Police officers all over the city, as well as Mr. Safir, need to give some deep thought to Sunday's attacks.
Diane Pagen
Manhattan

Although I was disgusted by the Central Park attacks, they might wake up some of the people who support the disarming of law-abiding citizens. If the public could carry guns, the thugs would be afraid and deterred from attacking.
Carston Seales
Marion, Mich.

I'm deeply saddened and angered at what happened to Anne Peyton Bryant, but what really bothers me is what happened to her after the incident. Why didn't even one of the officers she approached offer any help? Is it not their job to help people in distress? What a shame.
Barry Chin
Rego Park

I was born and raised in New York and my father was a New York policeman. I was horrified by this assault by cretins. My father would have been shocked that the police acted so callously toward a young woman who endured this deplorable attack. This is a disgrace and I sincerely hope these officers are drummed off the force.
Kathy Chapman
Joshua Tree, Calif.

I note that the police avoided lawsuits and charges of racial bigotry over the weekend by simply ignoring citizens being attacked by gangs in Central Park. Is this the kind of police protection the city has demonstrated it wants? You asked for it, you got it.
William J. Harper
Locust, N.C.

The apparent low-key approach practiced by the Police Department this past Sunday at the Puerto Rican Day Parade shows why tough policing is the proper policy course. Even more disturbing is the lack of condemnation of these crimes by Puerto Rican public officials.
Stanley Gnoza
Staten Island

As a lifelong New Yorker, it comes as no surprise to me to hear what happened to those women at the Puerto Rican Day Parade. This type of behavior has been the norm for a long time. Thank God this time someone caught it on tape. The NYPD usually does nothing, but who can blame them? I'm sure the media would brand them racists if they took action.
Stewart M. Lara
Manhattan

I have had it with the NYPD. They complain about a song that a musician writes, while women are being sexually assaulted by a drunken mob. When asked for help they did nothing. What are we paying them for? Men seem to have no respect for women and neither do the police.
Cathy Haig Bonjukian
Manhattan

The return of wilding in Central Park - this time in broad daylight - brings up an important issue. The city may seriously have to review whether it is in the public's best interest to shut down more than 40 blocks on Fifth Avenue only to have Puerto Rican Day parade-goers act like hooligans, harassing and assaulting innocent people.
Neil Freilich
Brooklyn

Starting at midnight before the Puerto Rican Day Parade, hundreds of cops were deployed all night long in clumps along Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue and all the streets from Rockefeller Center to 90th. These officers had nothing to do overnight, and would be better employed in Central Park on the day of the parade. The same waste of manpower occurs overnight before every major parade.
E. S. Rickards
Manhattan

Commissioner Safir says that if he "put 10,000 cops in Central Park we couldn't cover every single area." Central Park is 843 acres in area. If you put 10,000 cops in Central Park, no person would be more than 60 feet from any cop anywhere in the park, even counting the lakes. In fact if there were 400 cops in Central Park, you could still be within 300 feet of a cop.
Charles Curry
Fresh Meadows

I guess what happened in Central Park on Sunday really shows how wrong John Rocker was about New York.
Marty Perry
Hicksville

VIDEOTAPE HAS CHANGED SHARPTON'S POINT OF VIEW

By ANDREA PEYSER
Ashanna Cover (left) and Josina Lawrence, alleged victims of the Central Park wildings, join the Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Herbert Daughtry at a prayer vigil in the park. Sharpton wasn't quite as quick to condemn the Central Park Jogger's attackers 10 years ago. -

TEN years ago. Same park. Similar crime.
A very different reverend.

July 2, 1990. Al Sharpton delivered these words outside the trial of three youths who tackled, raped and savagely beat the woman forever known as the "Central Park Jogger":

"Those boys aren't guilty for what happened to the jogger," Sharpton said. "This is just like the old Scottsboro Boys case.

"What happened to her was ugly, but one crime doesn't excuse the other." This was Sharpton in Central Park on Sunday, June 18, 2000, speaking about the sexual melee that followed the Puerto Rican Day Parade: "We need to really deal with the fact that some of our young men think it's acceptable, even fun, to engage in the sort of behavior that we saw here."

You may chalk up Sharpton's dramatic change in attitude - his previous zeal to excuse young sex criminals versus his current acknowledgment that rape is, well, a bad thing - to maturity. But many of us have no doubt that the answer is simpler. In fact, Sharpton's motivation for defending violated females, black, white and Hispanic, over rampaging hoodlums, might be summed up in a single word: Videotape. For those with a cloudy memory of civil-rights history, the "Scottsboro Boys" refers to nine black youths charged with raping two white girls in Scottsboro, Ala., in 1931. In a trial widely considered racially unfair - one of the alleged victims recanted her story - all nine were convicted. Eight were sentenced to death. The ninth, a 13-year-old, drew life in prison. Within a few years, all the cases were overturned or the defendants paroled. In a single phrase, Sharpton compared three youths who left a woman naked, bloody and brain-damaged in a public park, with nine historic symbols of innocence.

Comparing the jogger's attackers - predatory, conscience-free males - to the railroaded youths of Scottsboro is grossly irresponsible. And patently untrue.

He has never apologized.

Why is Al Sharpton, who wants badly to be the voice of his people, suddenly so interested in women? In the past, the highest-profile case involving a female to which Sharpton has lent his name is that of Tawana Brawley, who was demonstrated to be lying when she accused white law-enforcement officials of raping her.

Virtually every case Sharpton has championed involved a white individual, group or system said to be trampling on the rights of a black person. Usually, a black male. Now, Central Park presents a dicey situation for the crusading Rev: The young men accused of terrorizing women, dousing them with water, ripping off their clothes, sexually abusing them to chants of "Go!" are men of color.

Most - but not all - of the female victims are minorities, too. Which side do you chose? One law-enforcement official I spoke with was blunt in his assessment:

"The police are really very lucky there was videotape. Otherwise, Sharpton would be out there, screaming that they're just rounding up minority males."

Today, the talk of the town is police morale - Were the cops afraid to move in on minorities to halt the violence? Al Sharpton wants to shame a white system - the police - for the crimes in Central Park. Perhaps he should look into his own heart. Al Sharpton has made a career defending people, not on the basis of innocence. But because of the color of their skin. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of the Central Park Jogger, who first fought off her attackers, then endured suggestions that the men who permanently altered her life were as innocent as nine boys who once lived in segregated Alabama.

So Al Sharpton has taken an unheard-of step - criticizing black males, as well as police, for the crimes against women. He has scheduled a series of men-only rallies meant to discourage misogyny. To which my law-enforcement source chuckled: "Instead of rallying with all these men, maybe the best thing he could do is send them home to spend time with their kids."

How about it, Rev?

FOURTH VICTIM SUES OVER
NIGHTMARE IN MASHERS' MAELSTROM

By MAGGIE HABERMAN and JESSICA GRAHAM

A woman who stuck it to Central Park wilders with the staff of her Puerto Rican flag is joining a parade of lawsuits claiming cops failed to intercede in Sunday's sex-grope attacks.
Jasmine Gonzalez, 25, of Brooklyn held a news conference yesterday to announce she plans a $7 million suit against the NYPD. Gonzalez displayed the blood-stained Puerto Rican flag she used to fend off a man who tried to rip off her shirt. "I had no choice but to do that to keep some strange hands from touching me," she said. Gonzalez's lawyer, Jay Schweitzman, said he would give cops the bloodied flag - from which it might be possible to recover DNA evidence - if they contact him.

Also planning a lawsuit is Anne Peyton Bryant, who says cops ignored her pleas for help after she broke free from the sex-crazed mob. "I'm filing this lawsuit because I feel it will make a difference in the way police treat people," Bryant told The Post.

Two New Jersey women have also announced their plans to sue for $5 million apiece.

Gonzalez said she was "humiliated" when the crowd tried to grope her at about 6 p.m. last Sunday, as the Puerto Rican Day Parade and celebration was winding down. "They were animals. There were no men in the park," she said, breaking into tears.

Gonzalez said she and her friends "had to fight our way out" of the park. "We had blood all over us," she said.

The group approached four cops at Central Park South and Sixth Avenue - who told them they shouldn't have been in the park in the first place, Gonzalez said. Farther down Sixth Avenue, Gonzalez found a group of about 50 uni<HO>formed cops - who, she claims, laughed when she said women were being attacked.

Bryant's lawyer is Susan Karten, who won a $3 million judgment for the family of Anthony Baez of The Bronx, who was killed by a cop in 1994

NYPD SPARKS FLAP OVER CENTRAL PARK 911 CALLS

By LARRY CELONA, MURRAY WEISS and LAURA ITALIANO
Cop brass have tried to shift some blame for last week's wildings on to a lack of 911 calls - but operators fielded eight such calls from horrified good Samaritans, sources said yesterday.
"In this day and age, why did no one call 911 from a cell phone?" Deputy Police Commissioner Marilyn Mode had asked a full four days after the Central Park attacks - just as criticism of police inaction began to peak.

"We know there were cell phones [out there] because the suspects were stealing them," Mode told reporters who asked why cops allowed things to escalate as unruly crowds from the Puerto Rican Day Parade began to pack the park's southern end.

Police Commissioner Howard Safir continued that theme in a televised interview Tuesday. "We had not one 911 call on this," Safir said.

But eight calls were made to 911 operators at the height of the attacks - between 6 and 6:30 p.m. as the melee progressed into an all-out sexual feeding frenzy, with terrified women surrounded, thrown to the ground, stripped and violated. Sources said some of the calls for help actually were from cell phones - and reported women being under attack. Mode last night acknowledged that 911 calls came in, but said none came in before cops were already being dispatched to the trouble scenes.

Meanwhile, an investigation continues in full swing into the wilding, in which 53 women have reported themselves victims - some simply jostled and doused with water, but many stripped, fondled, violated with fingers and water bottles, and, as prosecutors have said, left in fear for their lives.

So far, 20 men and boys have been arrested - their ages ranging from 16 to 32, and all but a few held in lieu of bails ranging up to $60,000.

Most of the suspects are from New York City, but others are from New Jersey and Long Island. Another suspect is expected to surrender today from Connecticut. The NYPD is working with law enforcement from as far away as Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts in locating suspects.

The NYPD yesterday released video stills of two new suspects, raising to 14 the number cops say is still at large. In identifying suspects, police have relied on some 26 amateur videos taken during the attacks. Closer inspection of the videos has already resulted in four people being released without charges.

Also yesterday, three more wilding suspects were indicted in the second day of Manhattan grand jury action on the attacks, and a second suspect was released without prosecutors even trying for an indictment - at least for now. Freed pending further action was Mark Daniels, 23, of Irvington, N.J., who spent a week in jail because he couldn't make $20,000 bail. "I hated it," Daniels, accused of groping a woman, said of jail. "Everybody's story is so sad." All cops have on Daniels is a video clip showing him sitting on a rock, insisted his lawyer, Eric Kleiner.

Indicted were Julio Delacruz, 22, of Bergen County, N.J., accused of grabbing a woman's buttocks; Trevor Britton, 29, of Brooklyn, accused of aiding in the attacks and robbing a victim's purse; and Isaiah Forbes, 18, accused of groping a woman.

The grand jury's action brings the number of indictments to eight, with action pending on 12 more suspects.



FINEST FOUGHT OFF WILD MOB TO RESCUE NAKED VICTIM

By MURRAY WEISS
Two cops who rescued a victim of the Central Park sex attacks recalled yesterday fighting their way through a wild crowd of men leering at the terrified woman and harassing a cop who was protecting her.
The officers' account - the first from cops who took action during Sunday's wolfpack attacks - provides some balance to accounts claiming the NYPD brushed aside victims' complaints and stood by idly during the assaults. Officers Tyrone Franklin and Edward Negron of the Manhattan Traffic Task Force said their shift, which began at 6 a.m., had been peaceful.

"The parade was winding down," said Franklin, who was stationed east of the park. "There were no problems. The crowd was great." Everything changed around 6 p.m., he said, when Officer Victor Rodriguez radioed for help at Sixth Avenue and Central Park South. Franklin sped with his sergeant to the scene. Negron ran three blocks from 56th Street and other cops also descended onto the block.

Franklin found Rodriguez in his scooter with a sobbing Frenchwoman, naked from the waist down, and her husband. People in the crowd were shaking the scooter.

"I can't begin to tell you how many guys were around the scooter taking pictures and leering," Franklin said. "Myself and a group of other cops started pushing them away." Another cop, James Gonzalez, got a T-shirt from his car and gave it to the Frenchwoman.

Then another police vehicle pulled up with Officer Doreen DeBatista and three young Englishwomen, one of whom had been stripped and sexually violated by about 20 men. DeBatista was taking the women around to find their attackers. One of the victims spotted one suspect walking east on 59th Street.

"He was a big guy with long, crazy-looking hair," Franklin said. Negron started following the suspect, Tremayne Bain, who began walking faster, cops said.

"I wanted to get close," Negron said. "I picked up my pace. He saw I was following and started to pick up his pace, breaking away from his crew." He then ran down into the subway at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue.

Negron chased after him, running through the station and up the stairs back to the street, "I yelled, 'Are you going to keep making me run?' and he stopped," Negron said. "He asked, 'Why'd you stop me with all these millions of guys around? I didn't do anything."

The British woman identified Bain and then spotted another of her assailants. "He started to walk off, but we grabbed him," Negron said, adding the cop bashing has been unfair.

"All I know is we were up there with a lot of other cops doing a good job, and no one seems to be aware or care about it," he said.

AX HANGS OVER COPS WHO IGNORED WILDING

By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA, MURRAY WEISS, LAURA ITALIANO, MARIA ALVAREZ, DAVID SEIFMAN, ADAM MILLER and ANDY GELLER

As many as five cops could be fired for turning a blind eye to the Central Park wilding attacks - in which up to 50 marauding thugs groped and assaulted 47 women, Police Commissioner Howard Safir said yesterday.
Internal Affairs investigators have interviewed 80 cops and supervisors assigned to patrol the area.

"My sense is we'll probably find four or five police officers who acted inappropriately while the vast majority of them acted appropriately," Safir said.

"Those police officers who acted inappropriately will be subject to discipline" - which includes possibly losing their jobs.

So far, 13 people have been arrested in the wilding, which erupted in 90-degree heat Sunday as the Puerto Rican Day Parade was winding down.

A total of 47 women aged 14 to 40 were soaked with water, their tops were ripped off and they were groped - and in some cases robbed.

Safir released the photos of another 17 men who have been identified by victims who viewed amateur videotapes. One suspect is wearing a T-shirt that reads, "Bad Boy, Can't Stop."

The commissioner said these 30 are responsible for most of the attacks, but the number could rise to 50.

The 13 men arrested face charges of first-degree sexual abuse, which carries a maximum penalty of seven years, and first-degree rioting, which carries a maximum of four. Safir said some have records and most didn't know each other. "This appears to be something that happened relatively spontaneously, and apparently some of them did not really recognize the seriousness of the matters they were involved in," he said.

Police sources said one of seven suspects who surrendered, Steven Burt, 22, of Jersey City, committed one of the most outrageous attacks - ripping the clothes off a newlywed French tourist and robbing her while others restrained her husband.

The source also said Julio dela Cruz, 22, of North Bergen, N.J., who turned himself in early yesterday, had a Puerto Rican flag carved in his hair, but shaved his head to avoid detection.

A senior law-enforcement official said while in police custody the 13 "weren't running around and being cocky."

"Basically they're cowards. They don't know how to talk to a girl and have her respond in a normal way," the official said.

"These macho men, they weren't so macho when they were in here - some with their mothers, saying, ‘Mommy, I did something wrong.'

"Their parents should see the tapes to see what their little boys did and maybe consider taking a belt to their behinds."

The alleged ringleader, Manuel Vargas, 18, of The Bronx, protested his innocence as he was led from the 13th Precinct station house in Gramercy Park to Central Booking.

"They're telling me that I was involved - I was just sitting there doing nothing," he said. "I'm not involved."

In North Bergen, Esteban dela Cruz insisted brother Julio is innocent, too.

"He's a good kid," the brother said. "He would never do this. We don't know what's going on, but we know he's innocent. The video will show that."

On his weekly WABC Radio show, Mayor Giuliani said the wilding couldn't be compared to the Crown Heights riots in 1991.

Giuliani said the attacks lasted for about a half hour and "to make a comparison to something that went on for hours and hours and for days is a totally exaggerated reaction."

MOM: COPS MADE MY SON A SCAPEGOAT

By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA, ROOSEVELT JOSEPH, MARIA ALVAREZ, CHRISTOPHER FRANCESCANI, CLEMENTE LISA and MAGGIE HABERMAN

The mother of a man arrested in the wilding attacks - then released by cops - said her son was "humiliated" by the ordeal.
Police released Anthony Bryant, 25, of Manhattan yesterday after they decided he wasn't involved "It's not right. He told me, 'Mom, I never touched any of those girls,'" said Hatti Bryant, whose son had been picked out of an amateur video of the fracas as one of the suspects and turned himself in Thursday after seeing his image on TV. Bryant - who's seen on tape chatting on a cell phone - insisted that's all he was doing. Police, who said Bryant bears a strong resemblance to a man seen molesting water-soaked women on the tape, believed his claim and dropped the charges against him. "He was humiliated," Hatti told The Post at her Delancey Street home. "He's a good son. [The police] are the ones who messed up. "They are trying to cover their asses," charged Hatti. "Why pick up innocent people?"

Bryant's release came amid a series of developments:

* Cops obtained a sickening, eight-minute amateur video that - unlike the first one - shows two black women being chased like prey by a pouncing mob through the park, sources said.

* At a "Take Back the Park" rally at 59th Street and Sixth Avenue, some 40 women said the attacks were just a product of the way women are treated in society - criticizing the attackers and the police response.

"Whose street? Our street! Whose park? Our park!" the women chanted as they marched in a circle.

"Assaulting women is how young men gain their stripes among men," said Fran Luck, 57. "Women in this society are used as sport."

* The arrest tally rose to 16 in the wilding incidents - in which cops say as many as 50 roving thugs fondled women in Central Park at the end of the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade last Sunday.

The latest arrest is 20-year-old Jason Commissiong, who turned himself in around 1 a.m. yesterday and was charged with sexual abuse.

* Two more women - a 21-year-old and a 37-year-old, both Hispanic - claimed they were assaulted, bringing the growing number to 49.

* At least five suspects arrested Friday were awaiting arraignment in Manhattan.

Jennifer Soto, whose brother, Jensen, was among the suspects, charged the cops are trying to curb the rush of bad publicity from the attacks. "My brother isn't perfect, but he wouldn't disrespect a woman like that," she said. "They are just rounding up whoever they can at this point."

* Flanked by two New Jersey wilding victims who are suing the NYPD for $5 million, the Rev. Al Sharpton demanded that top cop brass be held accountable for the rampage. "Heads must roll," Sharpton said at his National Action Network headquarters in Harlem. "What was their deployment plan and how do they explain this?" harpton plans to hold a rally today on Central Park South. Victims Josina Lawrence and Ashanna Cover said they fear for their safety after going public about the attacks - and the police response.

* Parade organizers met for an hour at their Bronx headquarters to deal with the wilding aftermath. They decided to post a $5,000 reward to help nab attackers, and work with the NYPD on better security for parade overflow areas.

"This is a crime against all of New York, and especially against the Hispanic community," said National Puerto Rican Day Parade Inc. board spokesman Federico Perez. "This has tarnished our image."

* Acting on complaints from women that the cops stood by while the rampage raged on, NYPD Internal Affairs investigators have interviewed 100 cops and supervisors, officials said.

PINT-SIZED COPYCATS BUSTED

By ERIKA MARTINEZ

The Central Park wilding episode has sparked two frightening copycat incidents in The Bronx, cops said yesterday.
And in both cases, girls 10 years old or younger were involved.

One of the terrifying incidents occurred yesterday afternoon during a school-sponsored carnival in the parking lot of PS 95 in the Van Courtland Village section. Cops said three students - one aged 13 and two aged 15 - cut classes and hid in the carnival's haunted house. When their unsuspecting victims walked in, they pounced. Cops said they tried to rip the clothes off eight girls aged 8 to 10 years old and fondled their breasts. The boys were charged with sexual abuse. Their names were withheld because of their ages.

On Wednesday evening, five boys aged 10 and 11 molested a 10-year-old girl at Webster Avenue and Mosholu Parkway in the Bedford Park section of the borough, cops said. The boys grabbed the 10-year-old as she was walking by, pinned her up against a fence, ripped her blouse and began fondling her breasts, cops said. The victim screamed and the boys fled. The girl told her uncle the next day and the boys were arrested.

"When the five of them were marched into the precinct, two of them were balling," said a source close to the case. The boys were charged with sexual abuse.

YOUNGEST PUNK WAS WILDEST: POLICE

By LAURA ITALIANO, MURRAY WEISS, ROCCO PARASCANDOLA and ANDY GELLER

Roberto Camacho is slightly built, only 16 and the brother of a city cop.
So it's hard to imagine him being the worst of the 16 people charged in the last Sunday's infamous Central Park wilding. But as the city tries to recover from the latest incident to scald its conscience, that is exactly what officials contend.

They said Camacho took part in more than 15 of the 30 horrifying attacks, more than any other person. And when others tried to stop him, they say he shrugged them off by scowling, "F- that, they bitches anyway." The officials said Camacho tore the tops off several women and pulled off the underwear of another.

They also said he put his water bottle up the skirt of one terrified woman and squirted her crotch with water, then shoved the same bottle up the rectum of another.

If that wasn't enough, Camacho bragged about his sickening exploits at the Nassau County vocational school he attends, officials add.

And while cops were interviewing his mom at his Inwood, L.I., home, Camacho ducked out the back door, they said. Hardly the kind of behavior one might expect from the brother of a cop. But if police have learned anything, it's that the horrifying June 11 incident was a coming together of several unexpected factors:

* Three-thousand cops were assigned to the Puerto Rican Day Parade, which proceeds up Fifth Avenue. But most were deployed north of Central Park South to direct traffic and handle rowdiness where the parade ended at 86th Street.

* The cops, wearing bulletproof vests in the 90-degree heat, began a 12-hour shift that began at 6 a.m. So about 5 p.m., when the parade passed Central Park South without incident, commanders began letting their officers go home.

* There were 950 cops in Central Park, but none was assigned to cover the stretch of Center Drive, an extension of Sixth Avenue, where many of the assaults took place. That area had not proved to be a trouble spot in the past.

* Cops had been told not to anger the Puerto Rican community, so many turned a blind eye to drinking and pot-smoking. When the trouble began, the air was thick with the smell of marijuana, beer and alcohol.

* The 90-degree heat might have encouraged the marauders to seek shade. Near Sixth and Central Park South, there is a water trough used by hansom-cab horses. The thugs used the trough to fill their water bottles and high-powered squirt guns, then splashed themselves with water.

* Trouble had been brewing throughout the day. For example, a 20-year-old woman was molested at 72nd and Fifth at 5 p.m., and another woman was burned with a lighter and robbed of $120 at Sixth and Central Park South. But such incidents weren't reported until after the wilding scandal broke, so cops weren't aware of them.

"There was a lot of drinking. There was marijuana. It was hot. They were close to the water trough - that's what they were filling their bottles with - and they got carried away. It's a pack mentality," said a senior law-enforcement official.

The main attacks began at 6:14 p.m. and lasted till 6:48 p.m., 34 agonizing minutes. The first occurred near Sixth Avenue and Central Park South.

Two Long Island teens walked into the park and were surrounded by 15 to 20 men. The men rushed the women, spraying them with water bottles and squirt guns and groping them. The older teen, 18, was pushed to the ground. The thugs stole a pocketbook from the pair before moving on. Minutes later, a honeymooning couple from France was surrounded by the same group on Center Drive near the Wollman skating rink. The attackers splashed water on the 28-year-old wife, chanting, "Soak her! Soak her!" In a heartbeat, the incident turned ugly. The men yanked off her skirt and panties, ripping two gold chains from her neck and holding her stunned husband down. Authorities say the group included Steven Burt, 31, a Jersey City father of two who was paroled in May after an arrest for selling drugs.The husband managed to break free and lie on top of his wife until the men left.

While that attack occurred, rollerblader Anne Peyton Bryant, 29, was completing a loop of Central Park when she was confronted by a wolfpack near the Sixth Avenue exit. The men grabbed her backpack, pushed her to ground and tried to pull down her drawstring shorts, chanting, "Go! Go! Go!" Bryant fought back bravely: "I bit, scratched, chewed and screamed." Finally, a stranger pulled her away and she went to find a cop. But Bryant says none of the officers she spoke to took her seriously.

The final attack occurred at 6:48 p.m., when 15 men attacked three London tourists in the park near East 59th Street. The men surrounded one of the three, who is 18, tore her shirt and pulled down her shorts. Their sweaty hands groped her about 20 times.

In the meantime, the French tourists ran to Central Park South, where they found traffic cops in a motor scooter. While the woman sat in the scooter, men came up to leer and jostle for positions to take photos.

At the same time, the London tourists came up and saw two of their attackers walking away. The men were quickly arrested.

LATEST VIDEO SHOCKS EVEN HARDENED NYPD DETECTIVES

By MURRAY WEISS

The NYPD has received a new video of the Central Park wildings that has so shocked hardened investigators they fear showing it to the public.
The disturbing eight minutes of footage, obtained yesterday, shows moment by moment a crazed mob of about 50 thugs chasing two terrified young women down a path in the park as though they're hunting human prey.

And, for the first time, the investigators witnessed the terrifying assault on a naked French woman, who cried on the ground and desperately tried to cover her private parts with her hands as her husband tried in vain to shield her from a groping mob of attackers.

"It's worse than anyone thought," a source said.

Unlike previous tapes, which depicted crowds of thugs surrounding and assaulting women who happened to be in their midst, this chilling video captured the horror of two frightened women trying to outrun a mob.

Their screams, during a frantic foot race, are heard as they struggle to remain free until - horribly - they run up against a dead end at a fence near a construction site where they are "smothered" by a crowd that is clearly mauling them.

Cornered at a dead end, the women, nearly buried from sight behind the mob, were surrounded and screaming for their lives: "Help! Help! Help!"

"The tape's disgusting ... there are 50 guys who just smother them. It's the scariest tape of all," the source said. Another source, a veteran of homicide cases, said, "It's just terrible. The women's desperation, it's very graphic." And worse still, the video abruptly stops - similar to last year's horror hit "The Blair Witch Project" - before investigators know how the madness ends. "You don't ever see what happens," he continues. "It's just the most disturbing."

Sources say the two women have yet to come forward.

But the video, the sources say, has terrific value because a number of suspects, all already under arrest and claiming innocence, are clearly shown in the midst of wild attacks. "It shows the utter contempt and total disrespect for women," the first source said. "It's going to be used as evidence, even though we don't have the (two) victims. It's damaging."

Police brass want to show the video to the public to capture as many suspects as possible. But they know it may be too horrifying for the public to see.

Before the chilling chase scene, the cameraman captured the assault on the French couple, newlyweds who were honeymooning in the Big Apple. As the husband tried to shield his wife, men in the mob groped her all over. They even morbidly rubbed her back.

Not everything on the tape, however, repulsed the investigators. In fact, there was a scene which they nearly cheered. It showed a woman who fought back - ripping the shirt off the back of one of her cowardly assailants. "You could see she just got so pissed," a source said. "It was great."

ARRESTS IN PARK ATTACKS RISE TO 18

By LARRY CELONA, MURRAY WEISS, ED ROBINSON & WILLIAM NEUMAN

The number of arrests in the Central Park wilding spree rose to 18 yesterday after a Queens youth turned himself in to police.
Cops also spent the weekend poring over a newly obtained videotape of the violence - searching frame by frame for new suspects and for more evidence against those who have already been identified.

Police have told The Post that the new tape contains the most horrifying images yet of the July 11 wilding - in which a crowd of young men attacked women in Central Park near the Sixth Avenue entrance after the Puerto Rican Day Parade. Cops are hoping they can find two women who are shown on the tape being chased by the pack of marauders.

Pictures taken from another video obtained earlier by cops and played widely on TV led to the latest arrest when Lonnie Hopson turned himself in at a station house near his home in the Rockaways, police said. Investigators said Hopson, who lives on Rockaway Beach Boulevard, squeezed the buttocks and breasts of a woman caught in the rampage. He was charged with sexual abuse and rioting.

Fifty women have come forward so far to say they were victims of the half-hour of madness in and around the park.

Police have distributed pictures of 37 suspects taken from the videotape, and 18 men have been charged so far.

Meanwhile, outrage continued to build over the wilding - and over what some victims have said was a lackadaisical police response, with cops ignoring pleas for help.

Eric Adams, the head of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, said any cop who saw the wilding and did nothing "should be terminated." But he cautioned against a backlash against cops because of the incident. "We cannot broad-brush the entire Police Department," Adams said. He said he was "outraged" by the mob behavior - but also blasted the Giuliani administration for cutting the budget for after-school programs and summer jobs for young people. "Just to point to one issue and to say that this took place in a vacuum is a mistake," Adams said.

Later in the day, the Rev. Al Sharpton took victims Ashanna Cover and Josina Lawrence back to "the scene of the crime" for a prayer vigil. Cover and Lawrence are suing the city for $5 million each, charging the cops failed to protect them during the rampage. "We must continue to hold police responsible, but we must handle this problem internally," Sharpton said. "We want to know why this [violence] is inside the heads of our kids."

ATTACK ONLY BEGAN HER NIGHTMARE

By ROD DREHER

ONE week ago, Anne Peyton Bryant skated out of Central Park and into a nightmare. The sexual assault by the Central Park wolfpack was only the beginning.

The maelstrom that is her life today consists of endless media appearances to talk about NYPD officers ignoring her pleas for help. She's swamped with calls from lawyers and reporters eager to advance their careers with her story. And she's enduring what feels like betrayal by friends and family who think she's mistaken to take on the police. She suffers from paranoia about cops and male sexual predators, and is tossed on a torrent of emotions that take her from condemning police officers one moment to sobbing sympathetically over their plight the next.

"I'm a mess. I'm very close to shutting up," she said in an interview frequently punctuated by tears. "It's hard. I'm not a political activist." Though Bryant, a 29-year-old dot-com professional and part-time aerobics instructor, didn't anticipate the tremendous ruckus her going to the media with her outrage would cause, she doesn't regret it.

"Look at all the women who came forward after I did," she said. "I'm having women come up to me on the street and thank me for reporting sexual assault. They were too scared to." But it has left her emotionally strung out.

"I've lost my edge," she sighed, plopping onto the floor of her studio apartment. Bryant has only just begun to grasp that the explosive charges she's made in the media all week could end the careers of a number of police officers - if she can identify those who ignored her.

"I don't think it's fair that I should have to positively ID! It's not fair!" she said. "I was attacked by a crowd. Why should I have to remember every freckle on a guy's face?" Bryant's clearly losing her nerve. But few people could blame her, given the many events of last week, which taught her more than she cared to know about society's attitudes toward sexually assaulted women.

"The guy who was with me [during the assault] was like, ‘Just throw in the towel and walk away.' My boyfriend, who's a real sensitive guy, said, ‘Are you sure you're doing the right thing? This is going to eat up your life.' My own father has damned me for doing it."

"And women who don't know the facts of the case will come up to me and say, ‘You know, some women dress provocatively,'" she said. "That came from a woman." Bryant has taken to wearing a hat on the street as a disguise. She passed a group of police officers on the street Friday, and "wigged out" when she thought they recognized her.

And she's become terrified of another sex attack. "I just want to be able to walk down the street and go to a parade and feel safe, and not have to come out of a radio station, like last night, totally wigged out because it's nighttime and there's a man over there," she said, her voice cracking.

A self-described political libertarian, Bryant said she "was always very pro-police officer." In fact, the diminutive kickboxer seems to have a lot more feeling for the police than you would think, given her media omnipresence in the past week and the harshness of her anti-cop commentary.

She believes the NYPD was lax at the Puerto Rican Day Parade in large part because it's scared of being called racist by minority leaders like the Rev. Al Sharpton. Bryant was "upset" by two black women who claim they were attacked by the mob, and who later stood by Sharpton as he announced a $5 million lawsuit against the NYPD. "They weaken my claim, and that's embarrassing," Bryant said. "I don't want to be associated with something Al Sharpton's in. Those girls might have been hurt really bad, but why did they go to him?" But wait, isn't her lawyer planning to announce a lawsuit?

"I don't even understand what this lawsuit is, because I'm not out to do this. I'm scared. I'm so scared now. I'm scared," Bryant said. She explained that she didn't want to be seen as someone trying to get rich by suing the city. She just wants to feel safe on the streets of New York and make sure the NYPD changes its ways so that nothing like this is permitted to happen again. Still, she feels for the cops.

"Can't you see yourself going out there, a young guy proud to wear your uniform, and you keep getting beaten down and beaten down and beaten down?" she said. "You'd lose your edge. It's happening to me." She's standing on crowded Park Avenue now, and begins to cry.

"I was just trying to help somebody. I didn't want to ruin somebody's life. It's not fair."

ANTI-ROCKER HYSTERIA REFLECTS POORLY ON N.Y.


TOO bad John Rocker won't buzz into town a few days early to take a gander at today's Gay Pride parade.
Surely the sight of nipple-clamped leathermen high-stepping up Fifth Avenue would do wonders to rehabilitate his view of our gorgeous mosaic.

If you have anything even faintly favorable to say about America's favorite whipping boy, speak up before the anti-Rocker hysteria reaches its height on Thursday.

By the time the Braves take the field at Shea Stadium, the virtuous citizenry of our enlightened metropolis will be ready to string the Hillbilly Hurler up by his thick neck. Who said lynch-mob mentality only exists in Rocker's part of the country?

Much has happened since Rocker made his ill-considered remarks about the riders on the No. 7 train. None of it reflects well on Gothamites who look down on the Mouth of the South. Rocker has been made a leprous pariah in the sports world all out of proportion to his actual offense. Athletes who physically assaulted their coach (Latrell Sprewell), repeatedly indulged their cocaine addiction (Darryl Strawberry) and even were convicted of rape (Mike Tyson) are treated with vastly more respect than Rocker.

His crime? Having hick opinions - views less racist and obnoxious than what most of us hear on the subway any given day. Rocker will require 500 cops to protect him this week on our streets. The rapist Tyson can visit the Big Apple unmolested, and would even be greeted as a hero in some parts of town.

If you were a woman, would you rather walk alone through downtown Macon, Ga., Rocker's hometown, or Central Park? Until two Sundays ago, this would have been a silly question. Not any more. We live in a city where male mobs sexually assaulted women of all races while a politically intimidated police department stood by letting it happen. The whole world saw videotaped evidence of the shameful racial, sexual and civil-order problems from which New York suffers. And New Yorkers somehow sustain outrage over a country-boy blowhard likening our city to Beirut!

Since the park assaults, the media have all been busy tearing into the NYPD for its inexcusable inaction against the mob. No question, the police earned their licks.

But the cops - perhaps because many of them are, like Rocker, working-class white males - have been a convenient scapegoat for a political culture too dishonest or cowardly to confront the racial and cultural factors that may have contributed to the horrifying anti-woman spectacle in the Park.

Enough with the cop-bashing and the Rocker-bashing. How about some discussion of hip-hop culture, where criminality is celebrated, and women are routinely portrayed as "bitches" and "ho's" who exist to serve brutish male sexual desire?

Shall we talk about the epidemic of fatherlessness in minority communities, where far too many boys grow up with no strong men to guide them into responsible manhood?

Can we have some give-and-take on why it is so many people who attend the Puerto Rican Day Parade think they can trash the Upper East Side every year?

Oh, forget it. Let's just take more potshots at an easy target like Rocker, and congratulate ourselves on what fine people we are. Meanwhile, we read that 6th-grade boys in Queens gang-molested female classmates, chanting, "Puerto Rican Day Parade!" as they went about their game. Do you suppose little boys in Macon do this sort of thing?

Until and unless such big-city progress reaches south Georgia, New Yorkers ought to show a little humility in the Rocker matter. The hypocrisy is embarrassing.

THE HIDDEN VILLAINS OF CENTRAL PARK

It has come time to add some perspective to Sunday's outrageous sexual attacks in Central Park and the role played - or not played - by officers of the NYPD while the assaults were under way.
It has been said that some cops failed to do their duty Sunday, following the Puerto Rican Day Parade. If that proves to be the case, appropriate sanctions should - and doubtless will - be forthcoming. But here's where the need for perspective comes in.

For more than a year now, the NYPD has been the focal point of a relentless campaign meant to cast the majority of its white officers as racists - and potential cold-blooded killers to boot.

The low point came when Hillary Rodham Clinton, first lady of the United States and would-be U.S. senator, stood at Al Sharpton's side and outrageously declared the shooting of Amadou Diallo to have been a "murder." Yes, she apologized - sort of. But it took a full month - time enough for polling and focus-group testing - before she 'fessed up to her mistake. Even so, however, she admitted only that she "misspoke."

She was back to cop-bashing, however, after the shooting of Patrick Dorismond: "If this was an isolated incident," said Clinton, "I wouldn't be talking about it and you wouldn't be asking about it."

In fact, it was a relatively isolated incident: Last year, 11 civilians were fatally shot by police here; a decade earlier, under Mayor David Dinkins, the number was 41 - without a single Al Sharpton press conference or mass-arrest campaign. But Hillary Clinton is one of many pols who should have known better before they opened their mouths and said a lot of stupid things about the NYPD.

All of those who traipsed to Sharpton's mass arrest-a-thons, surrounded by signs comparing Mayor Giuliani to Hitler and New York cops to the Ku Klux Klan, are equally guilty. That campaign had one target. While ostensibly a criticism of policing tactics, its sole purpose was to cripple Giuliani's political career, precisely at the moment when he was talking about running for the Senate himself, with Clinton as his likely foe.

In their rush to destroy the mayor, however, Clinton and Al Sharpton and their allies did incalculable damage to the effectiveness of the NYPD - a force that deserves credit for having transformed New York into a safe city once again.

Public Advocate Mark Green and Rep. Charles Rangel are part of the gang; they're pressing the U.S. Justice Department to appoint a federal monitor to oversee the police on a day-to-day basis - a development that would force every cop to justify every single arrest he or she makes in order to prove a lack of racial bias.

Included also is the Rev. Calvin Butts, president of SUNY-Old Westbury, who declared that the Diallo shooting was part of a campaign by Mayor Giuliani aimed at "reinforcing white supremacy in New York City" and that Patrick Dorismond was the victim of a "lynching." (Why Gov. Pataki hasn't caused Butts' dismissal is a mystery, but it's never too late to do the right thing.) And don't forget the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a pro-Hillary tool that's agitating for a federal takeover of the department. So why should anybody be surprised that some cops have been demoralized - even frightened - by the endless clamor.

Once again, cops felt the need to constantly look over their shoulders and second-guess their actions, for fear of being accused of racism and overly aggressive tactics. Or, frankly, for fear of being indicted. Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson, with his grossly overreaching murder charges in the Diallo case, taught beat cops a lesson that won't soon be forgotten. Nor should it be.

Those who belong to the Al Sharpton school of cop-bashing would have the city believe that the NYPD has a deliberate policy of targeting black men for deadly "street justice." (Remember the offensive Art Spiegelman New Yorker magazine cover - the one that showed a grotesquely grinning cop aiming at human targets in a shooting gallery?) This despite the fact that the NYPD's efforts have been most fruitful in minority neighborhoods.

There is no small irony in the fact that many of the same critics are now ripping the NYPD for being too passive. On one level, the movement has slipped from the ridiculous to the sublime. The sight of Sharpton hogging the limelight as two college students announced plans to sue the city for $5 million because, they say, cops failed to be sufficiently aggressive, is too delicious for words. But all this has consequences.

Who really doubts that anti-social behavior of the sort that simply wouldn't be tolerated at most other parades is indulged routinely at the Puerto Rican celebration.

The crackdown on alcohol use that has been seen in recent years at the St. Patrick's Day Parade was obviously non-existent Sunday. This doesn't excuse individual officers if they deliberately ignored complaints about the thugs who roamed Central Park Sunday. "We were just following orders" is no legitimate defense.

But we can understand the frustration many cops must be feeling. "Last week we were criticized for being the most aggressive police force," one perplexed Manhattan cop told The Post. "Now we're being criticized for being the most passive." The blame for this confusion rests squarely with the self-serving politicians and other opportunists for whom cop-bashing has become a way of life.

In this election season, put Hillary Rodham Clinton near the top of that dubious list.

VICTIM RELIVES NIGHTMARE OF CENTRAL PARK GANG-GROPE

Saturday,March 3,2001

A honeymooner, one of some 25 victims expected to testify, took the stand yesterday at the trial of three of the suspects.
A French woman who'd come to New York on her honeymoon broke down in tears on the witness stand yesterday as she recalled being stripped and sexually abused by a mob in Central Park last year - and how "nobody came to help."

Her husband said the gang was so brazen and out-of-control they continued trying to grab her even after a cop had ushered them inside his police scooter.

"The men were still trying to touch [her] in the police scooter," he testified.

The disturbing testimony came on the first day of trial for three men accused of being part of the roving gang of thugs that terrorized close to 60 women after last year's Puerto Rican Day Parade. The petite, 29-year-old blonde, whose name is being withheld, testified that she and her husband of eight days had spent the day sightseeing on June 11 before going to the park to walk around and watch people playing baseball. The husband said there was a gang of about 30 people near Sixth Avenue and, as they got closer, he could hear somebody yelling into a megaphone: "Jump on the girl! Jump on the girl!"

"I didn't know what was going on. Then we had a lot of water thrown on us. I thought it was a joke, for fun," he told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Bernard Fried and the jury. But then he said he was suddenly knocked down and couldn't see his wife. "I thought it was still a joke, but then I heard [my wife] yelling, and saw she was in big trouble," he said. "A crowd came and just charged me," the wife said through an interpreter, tears welling in her eyes. "They pushed me to the ground. They [ripped off] my skirt and my underwear and fondled me. I screamed and nobody came to help."

Her husband, a 30-year-old supermarket manager, testified that he heard his wife screaming his name - and looked up to see five men fondling her and a dozen others trying to. He said he pushed his way through the crowd and grabbed his wife, then someone in the crowd gave him a jacket so he could cover her up. As he tried to lead her out of the park, he said, the mob just kept pawing and throwing water at her while others took her picture. The couple found a police officer outside the park who rushed them into his scooter. The cop then had to call for backup when the crowd surrounded them.

The woman was taken to Roosevelt Hospital, where she was treated for cuts and bruises that covered her entire body.

Neither the husband, who watched a chaotic amateur videotape of the attack, nor the wife was able to identify any of the attackers.

One of the three defendants, David Garcia, is seen in the tape yelling "Get up" to the wife, and his lawyer, Verena Powell, tried to argue that he was helping the wife escape. "Nobody helped," the wife testified.

Garcia, 33, and Abel Ortiz, 24, both of The Bronx, argue they were good Samaritans who tried to help women during the chaos.

Juan Miranda, 23, of New Jersey, is charged with grabbing one woman's genitalia, but he contends it was an accidental collision.

Prosecutor Lisa DelPizzo said all three saw the attacks as "a source of amusement," and that all three are caught on videotape.

She said 25 of the victims will take the stand during the trial, "strangers bound together by the humiliation and abuse that happened that day."

VIDEOTAPER: PARK WILDING ‘BETTER THAN DISNEYLAND'
Tuesday,March 6,2001

Two men who witnessed - and taped - dozens of women being attacked in Central Park after last year's Puerto Rican Day Parade said they did nothing to help, while a third called it "one of the best . . . I've ever been to."
"This is better than Disneyland," said Jason Ortiga, 24, as he videotaped a mob of thugs groping, stripping and mauling women June 11. The Queens graphic designer was one of four men who taped the horrifying scene to take the stand yesterday in the Manhattan Supreme Court trial of three of the alleged attackers, David Garcia, Abel Ortiz and Juan Miranda. Their testimony was necessary to introduce the tapes into evidence. Ortiga's hourlong videotape came complete with the play-by-play commentary he was making. "Fresh fish!" he yelled about one woman. "We got a live one!" he yelled about another. And when police arrived at the scene, he exclaimed, "It's the pigs!" At the very end of the tape, after seeing several half-naked victims and some of the attacks, he declared the event was "one of the best Puerto Rican Day Parades I've ever been to." He said he didn't realize how bad the attacks were until he watched the videotape later. He added he tried to call police to offer them the tape, but "couldn't get through," so he sold it to NBC for $1,000.

Another of the videotapers, 24-year-old Jose Mercado, who captured dozens of the attacks on film, said he didn't break away to find a cop because "I figured somebody else might have gone and done it . . . I thought it wasn't my duty to do so." He said he sold his tape to "about 10" news stations for $9,000.

Using a friend's video camera, Rudolph Pleasant also taped dozens of attacks and victims, including a French woman in New York for her honeymoon screaming frantically after her skirt and underwear had been ripped off by the groping mob. "She was screaming, ‘Help me! Help me!' before I even got there," he said. "But you didn't help her, did you?" asked Ortiz's lawyer, Edward Hamelin. "No," Pleasant answered.

The fourth filmer, Ivan Henao, 33, of Queens, had the most disturbing footage, including more shots of the French honeymooner and of another woman being trapped by a mob of about 20 men in front of a gate. He called a hot line and gave police the tape.

PARADE SEX-GROPE VIDEOTAPER ADMITS CASHING IN
Wednesday,March 7,2001

The parade of camera-toting cads continued in the Central Park wilding trial yesterday, with testimony by a fifth man who videotaped the attacks without helping any of the hysterical victims.
Jose Rivera, 26, of Brooklyn, told jurors he videotaped the attacks after last year's Puerto Rican Day Parade without lifting a finger off the "record" button to help the terrorized women. Instead, he went all out to pursue the victims - his video at times shows him straying into honking traffic or clambering over a chain-link fence.

When a defense lawyer noted Rivera's lens seemed drawn to the women's chests, he protested. "Not the breasts alone - but their buttocks, legs, feet," Rivera said.

"Did you videotape their faces?" asked the lawyer, Edward Hamlin. "If they were attractive," Rivera answered. Between attacks, Rivera killed time, "smoking a cigarette, drinking water," he testified. Then he sold the images to a TV station and a newspaper for $2,200.

Manhattan prosecutors had the five videotapers take the witness stand so they could enter their tapes into evidence against the three defendants on trial in Manhattan Supreme Court - the only men indicted in the June 11 attacks who are fighting the charges.

Abel Ortiz and David Garcia are charged with rioting, assault and sexual abuse. Juan Miranda is charged with sexual abuse. Sixteen other defendants have copped pleas. But Hamlin tried to show jurors the videotapers were the real culprits - their mere presence whipping up the crowd of men who surrounded and attacked some 50 women. Rivera said it did occur to him, as he filmed, to call the police. "It was a moral struggle," he explained. "And also there was a financial aspect to it."

Jurors also heard testimony from four more victims, ages 18, 15 and 20, who described being doused with water as mobs of men ripped at their clothes and groped their breasts and genitalia. "I couldn't escape," said a Long Island woman, one of 25 victims on the DA witness list. "There were so many men grabbing at me."

WILDING VICTIM RETURNED TO MELEE TO SAVE HER PAL

Wednesday,March 14,2001

A woman who fought off a gang of thugs who groped her and tore her top off after last year's Puerto Rican Day Parade testified yesterday that she ran back into the wilding bunch to save her friend.
The woman, a 22-year-old college student from Washington, D.C., was one of four who were assaulted in Central Park last June 11 to take the stand in the Manhattan Supreme Court trial of three of the alleged attackers yesterday.

The 5-foot-4 student, whose name is being withheld, said she'd gone into the park with her best friend, a 22-year-old New Jersey woman, because they were told there were parade "festivities" there.

As they were leaving, the student said, a group of men suddenly charged the two women and doused them with water. They separated the two pals, and the student said "I couldn't see [my friend] at all . . . they surrounded me. I couldn't move in any direction." The gang then started "grabbing any part of my body they could . . . over and under my clothing. They were yelling, ‘Get her! Get her! Take her shirt off!'"

They ripped her shirt and pulled it down, but the student said she kept fighting back, swinging her purse at the attackers while trying to hold up her shirt.

But when she finally got free, she said she couldn't see her friend, a 5-foot-8 AT&T employee, but saw the crowd was attacking somebody. Fearing it was her friend, she pushed her way back through the mob, with men groping and grabbing her as she did.

By the time she made it through to her friend, she was crying.

BRITISH TEEN RELIVES PARK-GROPE ORDEAL
Tuesday,March 20,2001

A young British tourist who went to the Puerto Rican Day Parade for a "good family outing" testified yesterday she was beaten, groped and sexually assaulted by more than 20 men in Central Park.
The 19-year-old university student, whose name is being withheld, came to New York for a vacation last June and went to the parade after getting a memo from her hotel concierge calling the event "a good family outing with lots of celebrities." She wound up going with two friends to the park, where many of the paradegoers were milling around, she said. Within 20 minutes, she saw groups of men throwing water at women "and yelling and taunting them," she said, adding that she soon saw some women "crying and others who had their tops torn off."

She started to leave, but suddenly found herself surrounded by about seven men. "Some men started touching my breasts and some touched my bum," she said. She fought back, kicking and screaming, and the crowd moved on to another victim. But as she adjusted her top, another group of men, larger and more vicious than the first, attacked her. In horrifying detail, she recalled how about 15 people pulled her top off and tried to pull her shorts off. About seven men violated her with their fingers, and one man punched her in the face, she said. She was finally dragged to safety by "a large man."

The woman was testifying at the Manhattan Supreme Court trial of three men accused of taking part in the attacks against numerous women last June 11.

‘WILDING' JURY CONVICTS 2 IN PARK GROPES

Tuesday,April 3,2001

Two Bronx men who claimed they were helping women during a wilding spree after last year's Puerto Rican Day Parade have been found guilty of attacking them.
After five days of deliberations, a Manhattan Supreme Court jury convicted Abel Ortiz and David Garcia of riot and assault yesterday for their roles in the attacks on more than 50 women in Central Park on June 11. The pair face up to seven years in prison when they're sentenced by Justice Bernard Fried on April 30.

Their families broke down in loud sobs as the verdicts were read - guilty 15 times on riot, assault and sex abuse for Garcia and guilty 14 times on riot and assault for Ortiz. Several members of the eight-woman, four-man jury wiped away their own tears as they watched the heartbroken relatives while the verdict was read.

"I know he's not guilty. He was blamed for what everybody else did," said Ortiz's wife and the mother of his 4-year-old twins. "What am I going to tell my kids?"

A third defendant, Juan Miranda, 23, of New Jersey, was acquitted of sex abuse, the only charge against him. "I left it to the hands of God, and He took care of it," Miranda said. "It's nice to have my life back." He said he plans to return to work and "not go back to the Puerto Rican Day parade."

Sixteen other suspects had already pleaded guilty in the case and were given sentences ranging from probation to four years in prison.

Yesterday's verdicts came after a three-week trial at which 22 of the victims took the witness stand, including a French woman. She'd come to New York on her honeymoon and wound up having her clothes ripped off and her body violated by a groping group of men that included Garcia, 33, and Ortiz, 24.

Both men were shown on numerous videotapes of the attacks, and the shirtless Ortiz was especially easy to pick out - he has tattoos of his children, his mother and himself covering his upper body. Neither man was shown directly participating in the attacks. But Ortiz could be seen smiling and clapping after some of them.

At one point, he could be heard directing the mob to another victim, shouting, "The bitch is over there!" Ortiz's lawyer, Edward Hamlin, said that what his client did "might have seemed tasteless, but it wasn't criminal."

Both he and Garcia's lawyer, Verena Powell, said they planned to appeal. But Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said, "They thought they'd never be identified. This proves there isn't safety in numbers." The jury forewoman, who didn't give her name, said the deliberations were "tough. It was a sad case."

WILDING VICTIM'S BRAVE COMEBACK

Victim Anne Peyton Bryant tearfully faced down one of the most unrepentant attackers of the Puerto Rican Day groping, begging a Manhattan judge yesterday to slam him with a maximum sentence. Then she did something even more courageous.

She took a walk in Central Park - the scene of the crime, where she is now a fitness instructor leading a biweekly outdoor exercise class.

"I will not allow them to take this park away from me," the petite spark plug of a woman said as she watched joggers and cyclists cross the same pavement where last summer she was brutally surrounded, pulled onto her back, and assaulted. "So much of me wants to run away," she said, her eyes tearing up again.

"But I will not allow them to take this city away from me." Bryant is one of some 50 women who reported being attacked in the melee that followed the June 11 Puerto Rican Day parade. Much of the chaos was captured in home videos showing terrified women - including Bryant - screaming while hands ripped at their clothing.

As the criminal prosecutions of the wilding's 18 defendants winds to a close - only one more is waiting to be sentenced - Bryant, 30, remains by far the most outspoken victim. In the 10 months since the attack, she has done numerous interviews, many discussing her multimillion-dollar civil suit against city police for allegedly ignoring the attacks and her pleas for help. She plans to testify at a disciplinary hearing Monday against three cops accused of looking the other way, said her lawyer, Susan Karten. She has become a certified rape counselor, and begun volunteering to help rape victims.

But what her friends and co-workers find most amazing is her ability to even take a single step back into the park - never mind to return there two mornings a week to lead a walking class. "It's incredible considering what happened there - she's so incredibly strong," said her boss, Lisa Hufcut.

Yet Bryant seemed an emotional wreck as she faced David Garcia, 33 - convicted last month of rioting, assault and sex abuse - before Supreme Court Justice Bernard Fried meted out a prison term of up to four years.

"Each time I enter the park, I think of that day," she said, describing her nightmares and anxiety attacks so tearfully a court officer passed her a box of tissues.

Later, back at the site of her attack, she said: "Look at how peaceful this is. And this is where all these women had their clothes ripped off of them."

PATAKI: MAKE GANG GROPES A FELONY

May 1, 2001 Gov. Pataki proposed yesterday that gang activities, such as the groping of women after the 2000 Puerto Rican Day Parade, should be felonies - punishable by up to four years in jail.
Many of the men arrested in the parade incidents in and around Central Park were charged only with misdemeanors. But Pataki's bill would identify a new crime - gang sexual assault - and classify it as a Class E felony. To be subject to the proposed statute, one would have to make unwanted sexual contact or remove someone's clothes, and be engaged in the act with the help of two or more people. Robert Carney, president of the state District Attorneys Association, said there was a need for a new law.

"The Central Park debauchery reminds us that sometimes our laws must be adapted to encompass behavior not previously contemplated but which cannot be tolerated," said Carney.

WILDING FIEND GETS 5 YEARS IN STIR

May 19, 2001 The last of 18 men found guilty of attacks on women after last summer's Puerto Rican Day parade was sentenced to five years in prison yesterday - the wilding spree's most severe penalty. Abel Ortiz, 24, had hoped for a no-jail sentence on charges of felony assault and rioting.

He sobbed as he apologized to his victims, insisting, "I didn't intentionally do anything to hurt anybody," and begging for mercy, but to little avail. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Bernard Fried shaved two years off the maximum allowed sentence of seven years.

The sentencing brings to a close - except for numerous lingering civil suits - a head<HO>line-grabbing June 11 melee in which 50 women reported being doused by water guns, then surrounded and grabbed at by chanting, beer-guzzling men along Central Park South. "Your actions fanned what can best be described as a human fire," Fried told Ortiz before throwing him in prison. Ortiz was caught on tape aiding and goading on other rioters, at one point shouting, "Shhhh! Be quiet. The b - - - h is over there!" Ortiz's claim that he was helping, not hurting, the victims was "not only unbelievable, but shows a total lack of remorse," Fried said.

In one instance where Ortiz claimed he was tapping a woman on the shoulder because he thought she was "pretty," amateur video actually shows Ortiz grabbing at her left breast, the judge said. "Women must know that they may be safely about in public places like Central Park without fear of mob attack," he said.

In deciding on the sentence, the judge took into account Ortiz's lengthy criminal record - more than a dozen arrests for robbery, drugs, assaults and disorderly conduct, and nearly three years behind bars.

VICTIM FINGERS CENTRAL PK. COP

May 8, 2001 -- A Puerto Rican Day wilding victim yesterday stunned an NYPD trial when she suddenly identified a motor-scooter cop as the officer who ignored her cries for help after she escaped a rabid mob in Central Park.
In a courtroom drama worthy of television's "Law and Order," in-line-skating fitness instructor Anne Peyton Bryant - who previously failed to identify the cop from photo spreads - rose in the witness stand pointing her left index finger at defendant Victor Rodriquez Rivera.

"That's him," she said when asked by a prosecutor to merely describe the cop who callously brushed her aside last June.

"I told him I had been attacked. I said, ‘Please help me.' I was frantic." Moments later, Bryant broke down into tears and was granted a brief recess to regain her composure. She walked into the hallway, where she was hugged by a boyfriend.

Until yesterday, the 30-year-old never picked Rivera's picture from numerous photo arrays - and, in fact, selected another cop, Ernest Anea, as the only possible match. Anea was never charged.

Later, outside court, she said when she laid eyes on Rivera, she knew he was the one. But she also unwittingly helped Rivera by saying she viewed videotapes of her assault - played at recent trials for the wilding suspects - that showed she was attacked at 6:24 p.m.

At the time, Rivera was helping a French woman and her husband escape the mob, and police records show he radioed for assistance at 6:25 p.m.

Under aggressive cross-examination by Rivera's lawyer, Marvyn Kornberg, Bryant was alternately combative and evasive, emotional and heart-wrenching, often ignoring direction from the judge and going off on long monologues.

At one point, Bryant, who is suing the city in a separate civil action, said she felt disrespected by Kornberg, and she stood up to leave. Patrick Orlando, a former boyfriend who had been with her during the attack, followed her to the stand. He failed to identify Rivera as the cop who turned them away. He selected another cop from photo lineups within days of the wilding. The cop he picked also was not charged. Orlando described the scooter cop who turned them away as someone with gray hair. Rivera has short, dark hair with just a hint of gray in it.

If convicted, Rivera could face the loss of a month's pay. Another cop, Michael Bonenfont, is charged with ignoring another victim. His trial is set for later in the week.

NYPD TRIAL JUDGE HITS 2 COPS OVER ‘INACTION' IN PARK RIOT
June 7, 2001

An NYPD trial judge has convicted two cops of failing to help a woman being molested by a crowd in Central Park after last summer's Puerto Rican Day Parade, The Post has learned.
Officer Victor Rodriquez-Rivera, who was lauded for his role in helping a French visitor escape a marauding crowd that had stripped her naked, was found guilty of failing to take action when fitness instructor Anne Peyton Bryant ran up to him on 59th Street and reported the incident.

Officer Michael Bonenfont also was found guilty of the same charge for ignoring another woman, Ashana Cover, when she claimed she was doused with water and groped. The trial judge, Assistant Deputy Commissioner Robert Vinal, recommended Bonenfont lose 30 days vacation and Rodriquez-Rivera lose 15 days - a lesser penalty apparently because of the help he gave to the honeymooning French visitor and her husband.

Rodriguez-Rivera's lawyer, Marvyn Kornberg, blasted the ruling as "politically motivated" to send a "pathetic message" warning cops patrolling the parade this Sunday. "If this isn't a message to the cops at the parade, nothing is, and it is done at the expense of an innocent officer," Kornberg said.

Bonenfont's lawyer, Stephen Worth, declined to comment.

The aftermath of last year's Puerto Rican Day Parade became one of the most embarrassing incidents in NYPD history when rampaging men doused women with water and then sexually assaulted about 50 of them, all while cops were ignoring cries for help. Eleven other police officers were cited for disciplinary action, including six supervisors, who received wrist-slap letters placed in their files. Vinal said he didn't believe a photographer who testified against Rodriguez-Rivera, and he didn't rely on Bryant, who is suing the city.

Bryant stunned the court when she identified Rodriguez-Rivera as the cop who brushed her aside, after failing during the investigation of the incident to pick him out of several NYPD photo arrays. She had told probers at the time that she could "no more describe him as fly to the moon."

The judge said he based his decision largely on circumstantial evidence: Rodriguez-Rivera was one of the only scooter cops in the area at the time.Bonenfont insisted Cover never said she was sexually assaulted, but the judge disagreed