Another Violent Street Rape Reported on Bushwick/Bed-Stuy Border

UPDATE, Aug. 18, 4:30 p.m.: Michael Mann, a 52-year-old Bushwick resident and convicted sex offender, was arrested Wednesday after calling 911 and asking police for a ride.

Original story below.

BUSHWICK, BROOKLYN — Another brutal mugging and street rape reported near the Bushwick/Bed-Stuy border this week — this one at knifepoint — is one of more than 30 rapes or rape attempts recorded in the area so far this year.

In Bushwick, rape reports were up 31 percent through mid-August, compared to the same time period last year, city data shows. And in the next-door police precinct covering Bed-Stuy east of Marcus Garvey Boulevard, rape was up 13 percent.

On Tuesday, Aug. 17, around 2:45 a.m., a 27-year-old woman was attacked near the intersection of Dekalb and Bushwick avenues while walking home from the J Train's Kosciuszko Street subway stop, a spokeswoman for the New York City Police Department (NYPD) told Patch.

The victim told police after the attack that a man she didn't know approached her, displayed a knife, demanded her property, sexually assaulted her and fled into the night.

According to PIX11's police sources, the rapist forced his victim into a dark garage at knifepoint, then raped her in the garage.

Via PIX11: "Before running away he told the victim he’d seen her in the past and if she reported the incident to police he’d kill her, sources said."

The woman described her attacker as a black man in his mid-40s, around 5-feet-7-inches tall with a medium build and a salt-and-pepper beard. He was last seen wearing red sneakers, blue jeans, a dark shirt and a dark baseball cap, according to the NYPD.

While the NYPD has touted historic lows in most major crimes this year, rape is up 6 percent across the city.

In North Brooklyn, the spike in sex attacks has been much more extreme: Through mid-August, 161 rapes or attempted rapes were reported in the area, up 17 percent from 138 rapes the year before.

Police precincts covering Bushwick, eastern Bed-Stuy, the Fort Greene-Clinton Hill area, East New York, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Ditmas Park, Park Slope, Prospect Heights and Crown Heights have all reported a rise in rape reports in 2016. (For a more precise idea of where, exactly, the rapes were reported, check out the NYPD's new, interactive crime map.)

It's unclear how many victims in the borough's 2016 rape cases knew their attackers.

Indeed: The only public statements NYPD officials have issued by way of addressing this ugly trend is to say that rapes are most often domestic in nature.

But at least a dozen stranger rapes have been reported in Brooklyn since around April — and those are just the ones the NYPD has publicized. (In early May, for example, the department never officially notified the media about two scary street rapes that occurred on the same weekend, within five minutes of each other, on the Bed-Stuy/Bushwick border.)

In another wee-hours rape attempt in Bushwick in late June, a man slashed his victim's throat before she was able to escape.

And one month later, in late July, a 29-year-old Bushwick woman was raped by a nearly 200-pound man who snuck into her bedroom while she was sleeping.

Patch has reached out to the NYPD's press office with a request to interview Deputy Inspector Maximo A. Tolentino, commanding officer of the 83rd Precinct — which covers Bushwick — about recent crime trends in the area and how police are addressing them. We have yet to hear back.