Brooklyn Teen Brutally Gang-Raped on Playground: ARREST UPDATE

For all further updates, see: Disturbing New Details Emerge in Brooklyn Gang-Rape

UPDATE, Jan. 10, 11 p.m.: Four teenagers have been arrested in connection to the rape, police announced late Sunday night. The suspects — aged 14, 15, 15 and 17 — are now in custody “with charges pending,” according to the NYPD. Two of them surrendered at the 73rd Precinct building, police said, while the other two were apprehended by cops. (The two that surrendered were brought into the precinct by their mothers, according to the New York Daily News.) One suspect is still at large.

Original story below. Details have been added throughout.

BROWNSVILLE, BROOKLYN — Police and politicians in Brooklyn are rallying the community to help hunt down five men believed to have gang-raped an 18-year-old woman in Brownsville’s Osborn Playground late Thursday night.

The young woman was walking through the park with her father around 9:10 p.m. when the pair was approached by five men, according to the NYPD.

One of the men was armed with a gun, police said.

“The male with the gun pointed it at them and told the father to leave the area,” the NYPD said in a statement sent to Patch. “The father complied and each one of the five suspects raped the victim.”

After being separated from his daughter, the rape victim’s father came upon two NYPD officers in a patrol car, according to the police narrative. He then directed officers back to the spot where he’d last seen her.

By that time, though, the suspects had fled, police said.

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The 18-year-old woman was immediately transported to Kings County Hospital, where she was treated and released, according to the NYPD.

Two days later, on Sunday evening, police released surveillance footage (below) of their five main suspects entering a Brooklyn bodega before the rape.

The suspects can be seen smiling casually in the video.

“They looked happy,” a clerk at the bodega told the New York Daily News. “They are bad guys.”

The victim’s mom said in an interview with the News: “I want them to get caught and go to jail for a long time. I feel bad, horrible.”

Local media outlets, activists and politicians have questioned this apparent two-day delay in the investigation — as well as the circumstances that allowed an 18-year-old woman to be brutally gang-raped by five separate men in a public park with no immediate intervention or repercussions.

“I am calling on the NYPD to conduct a full investigation not only to identify all those responsible for this horrific attack, but also to determine if everything possible was done to protect the victim and the public,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said in a statement released Sunday.

The New York Daily News also quoted Adams as saying: “We need to listen to the 911 call. We need to find out…the response time from the time it was reported. This baffles all my police experience. Something is missing.”

Adams reportedly said he thought the media’s reaction would have been different if the gang-rape had occurred on the Upper East Side.

Stephen Davis, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of public information, defended the police response in a statement blasted to all New York’s media outlets.

“There was no delay in responding to the rape in the 73 Precinct,” Davis said.

Below, his explanation in full.

“There was no probative video in the immediate area of the attack. However, detectives in conducting an expanded canvas were able to find video in a bodega, after an extensive search around 2 p.m. on Saturday, January 9. After review, retrieval and copying, the video was distributed to the media around 8 p.m. on Saturday to help identity the five males. The commanding officer of the precinct began contacting local community leaders preliminarily on Friday, January 8.”

Davis also insisted that no 911 calls were made in association with the attack.

But critics are also targeting the NYPD’s prevention tactics.

Rapes in New York City rose 6 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to the New York Post. “Stranger rapes” reportedly rose almost 50 percent. Another significant jump: Taxi-cab drivers were reportedly identified as suspects in nearly 10 percent of stranger rapes.

In response to these figures, NYPD Commission Bill Bratton suggested women use the “buddy system” to avoid being raped in taxis.

Now, Bratton’s “sexist” logic, New York City Councilmember Laurie Cumbo said Sunday, has been further unraveled by the brutal attack in Brownsville.

”If a father cannot protect his own daughter in this day and age then it is obvious that the so called ’buddy system’ is sexist, antiquated and an insult to women throughout New York City,” Cumbo said in a statement.

Cumbo continued:

“We do not need a buddy system. Every woman in New York City has the right to feel safe and protected at all times within the greatest City in the world. What we need is a strategy, resources, manpower, enforcement and a plan to keep every single woman in the City of New York safe.”

Borough President Adams also suggested the city look into “better lighting and design of public spaces like Osborn Playground.”

Community leaders are planning a rally at Osborn Playground at 6 p.m. this coming Thursday, where they will encourage members of the public to come forward with information about the Osborn attackers.

“These individuals do not deserve to live amongst us in this society and should be captured and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Cumbo said.

“We have hit an all-time moral low in the City of New York,” she said.