The city’s top cop went on the warpath Monday after a 23-year-old woman got out of her handcuffs and escaped from police custody over the weekend — the fourth suspect to give officers the slip since June.
“I’ll make it very clear that the punishment we will be putting in place [for officers] for these types of events is going to be significant,” NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton told reporters.
“I will not tolerate it as police commissioner, these continued lapses in what should be basic police care in custody of a prisoner,’’ Bratton said. “The penalties being imposed for the officer who neglected their duties are going to be very significant.”
Cops are still hunting for Tiffany Neumann, a California native who successfully sneaked past the police officer assigned to guard her at New York-Presbyterian/Lower Manhattan Hospital on Sunday night.
Neumann had been taken to the hospital after saying she was pregnant and complaining of bruising, officials said. She somehow slipped out of her cuffs and escaped as the cop in charge of watching her took a bathroom break at around 9 p.m., police sources said.
“It’s embarrassing,” Chief of Department James O’Neill admitted Monday. “She was not a mastermind criminal. It’s just purely due to inattentiveness and carelessness. The police office [who was guarding her] was suspended last night.”
Neumann had been arrested Saturday after she walked out on her tab at Hi Life Bar and Grill on the Upper West Side and then swiped some merchandise at a clothing store down the street, according to police.
“There is clearly something going on with her,” said a restaurant employee who asked not be named. “She was acting strange and saying, ‘I’m sick, I’m sick. I’m pregnant.’ ”
Saskia Venet, a 22-year-old sales associate at Purdy Girl, a women’s boutique that is several doors down from the Hi Life, said Neumann came in and started acting suspiciously around 7:20 p.m.
“[She] was looking and browsing through the shirts, and one of the waitresses came over and told us that she might be stealing,” Venet said. “My coworker had stopped her mid-steal, and she had stuffed shirts under her dress, and as soon as the coworker tried to get them, she said, ‘I’m pregnant and my stomach hurts.’
“And then we called the police, and she resisted arrest. She said she was in the Mexican mafia and at one point, she actually hit an officer and they had to switch her to a different cop car. She was screaming ‘police brutality’ and saying they were trying to rip off her arms.”
Venet added that Neumann had anchored both of her feet to the side of the police car as officers attempted to get her inside.
Neumann was charged with petit larceny, possession of stolen property and trying to obtain transportation without paying, authorities said.
She was set to be arraigned Sunday when she was taken to the hospital.
She is believed to be traveling alone with no phone and very little resources.
She has six prior arrests, with three of them occurring in LA and three in New York, according to police.
Her most recent run-in with the law came Aug. 21, when she was slapped with a weapons charges after she pulled knife on a friend during a dispute, police said.
Neumann’s getaway on Sunday is only the latest in a long list of cringe-worthy criminal escapes in Gotham recently.
Last month, a prisoner escaped from police custody as officers were escorting him into the 23rd Precinct. He was caught a few days later.
In July, ex-con Arthur Collins slipped out of a holding cell at the 25th Precinct after being arrested for carrying drugs and a gun silencer. He later did cops a favor and turned himself in.
A monthe earlier, career criminal Tareek Arnold, 23, shoved a cop in front of the 32nd Precinct in June and ran off with his hands bound behinds his back. It took cops more than a month to catch him.