You’re overpaying on senators’ rent

The rent that state senators pay on the taxpayers’ dime is too damn high!

Data obtained by The Post found that 19 of the 27 senators representing parts of New York City — 70 percent — submitted rental bills that exceeded their $40,000 annual allotment for 2011-12.

Among the budget busters was Democrat Jeff Klein of The Bronx, one of the new co-leaders of the Senate. He spent $49,821, although his spokesman said he moved in October 2011 to a cheaper office — which is still over the limit on a yearly basis.

Malcolm Smith of Queens, who spent $50,000 on a Jamaica Avenue office, is one of the five members of Klein’s Independent Democratic Conference, which formed an unprecedented power-sharing coalition this year with the Senate GOP.

Republican Martin Golden of Brooklyn was also among the transgressors, billing taxpayers $48,000 for his district office in Bay Ridge — the same amount Senate Democratic Campaign Committee Chairman and deputy Democratic leader Michael Gianaris of Queens paid for his district office in Astoria.

And Sen. Tony Avella (D-Queens) paid $49,723 for his district office at 38-50 Bell Blvd. He insisted the Senate Republicans negotiated his lease — claiming he didn’t even know he was over the limit.

Even imprisoned ex-Sen. Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) and indicted former Sen. Shirley Huntley (D-Queens) got in on the fun, despite having represented lower-rent neighborhoods, spending $45,000 and $47,452, respectively.

Klein cut his annual rent by $15,000 by leaving his East Tremont Avenue district office for the Hutchins Center, where he pays “market rate,” said spokesman Eric Soufer.

“Believe me, nobody comes to work for us because of the accommodations,” Soufer said. “I’ve had college dorm rooms that are bigger than our office.”

Golden blamed his $4,000-a-month rent on Bay Ridge’s “expensive” real-estate market, saying, “We try to be fiscally responsible. It’s difficult.”

Senate administrators had already publicly read the riot act to Sens. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) and Ruben Diaz Sr. (D-Bronx) for their $78,537 and $70,212 respective rent bills.

“East Midtown is one of the most expensive real-estate areas in the city, if not the country,” Krueger spokesman Andrew Goldston said of her digs at 211 E. 43rd St.

Diaz claimed Senate Republicans approved his large office at 900 Rogers Place — in one of the city’s poorest areas — and insisted his bill includes utilities and other costs.

Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos’ office said it’s cracking down on the most egregious rent busters and helping senators renegotiate their leases or find cheaper digs.

ekriss@nypost.com

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NYPD Daily Blotter

Brooklyn

***

What a brew-haha!

When a security guard confronted Rebecca Davidsson after she had walked out of a Bedford-Stuyvesant supermarket with an unpaid-for 12-pack of beer, she tried to douse him — with blistering-hot coffee, according to court documents.

Davidsson, 30, had just left Mr. Kiwi’s Fruit & Vegetable on Broadway near Myrtle Avenue at about 1 a.m. Jan. 13. When the guard called after her, she splashed the java in his direction and tried to run away, sources said.

She didn’t get far.

The court papers list her charges as assault, menacing, petit larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, harassment and criminal possession of a weapon — the cup of joe.

***

With an old-school landline, things might have gone different.

A city bus driver pummeled his wife with a cordless phone, then tried choking her in their Bushwick home early yesterday, police said.

Nathan Lopez, 41, allegedly lost it while arguing with his spouse at 4:20 a.m., sources said.

He was charged with assault, strangulation, harassment and criminal possession of a weapon — the phone, cops said.

***

An 18-year-old was lucky to be alive after someone shot him in the back, police said.

The unnamed teen was wounded on Pacific Street near Schenectady Avenue in Crown Heights at 9:40 p.m. Saturday, cops said.

He was listed as being in serious but stable conditions at Kings County Hospital.

There had been no arrest as of last night.

Manhattan

***

The body of an unidentified woman believed to have been in her 50s was found floating in the East River yesterday, cops said.

The grisly discovery was made near the FDR Drive and Jackson Street on the Lower East Side at 2:40 p.m.

Investigators said that there was no obvious sign of trauma or foul play and that it was not immediately clear how long the body had been in the water.

The Bronx

***

A 7-year-old Soundview girl required hospital treatment for cuts, swelling, redness and plenty of pain after her mother repeatedly struck her in the head with a belt because, she told cops, she feared that the child would grow up and eventually control her.

Michelle Johnson, 31, assaulted her daughter at about 4 p.m. Jan. 14 in their home on Saint Lawrence Avenue near Randall Avenue, court records state.

She was taken into custody after police were alerted by staff from the local hospital.

Johnson was charged with assault, menacing, criminal possession of a weapon, endangering the welfare of a child and harassment, cops said.

Queens

***

A late-night one-car crash cost a man his life in Ozone Park, police said.

Winston Joseph, 61, of Far Rockaway was alone in his white Toyota Camry when it rolled east on South Conduit Boulevard at 10:10 p.m. Saturday, cops said.

As he neared Linden Boulevard, the car careened out of control and slammed head-on into a tree, police said.

EMTs rushed Joseph to Jamaica Hospital, but there was nothing that could be done for him, and he was pronounced dead on arrival, investigators said.

Staten Island

***

A former Great Kills resident collected about $4,000 worth of unemployment benefits for seven months while continuing to work, officials said.

Investigators from Staten Island DA Daniel Donovan’s office, the state Department of Labor and the NYPD agreed that Filippo Curto, 34, was working while accepting and cashing unemployment checks dated from July 28, 2008 through Feb. 22, 2009, according to court records.

Curto was living in Great Kills at the time, but he has since moved to Jersey City, sources said.

Prosecutors said he cashed $4,082 worth of checks while working.

***

A West Brighton man mugged a passenger on a city bus, authorities said.

Rasheen Sanders, 19, grabbed a fellow rider by the shirt at about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday at the corner of Port Richmond Avenue and Albion Place and screamed, “Gimme your phone, or I’ll beat you up!” according to court documents.

The victim managed to hold on to his phone, and Sanders fled on foot, only to wind up in handcuffs a short time later, the court papers say.

He was charged with menacing, attempted robbery, attempted grand larceny, attempted petit larceny and attempted criminal possession of stolen property.

***

Two men were under arrest after a police raid uncovered a massive pile of drugs and weapons in their Mariners Harbor home, authorities said.

Officers who descended upon the house on Grandview Avenue near Davidson Street at 6:15 a.m. Wednesday found 75 Ziploc bags filled with cocaine, PCP and marijuana as well as scales and a single 9mm bullet, although no gun was located, according to court papers.

Derrick Bloomfield, 40, and Luis Johnson, 43, were charged with possession of a controlled substance, criminal use of drug paraphernalia, possession of marijuana and possession of ammunition, the documents say.

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Church shelter holy war

This church can’t do anything rite.

Brooklyn residents are flocking mad that Greenpoint Reformed Church quietly launched a 10-bed homeless shelter — saying it’s the last straw in a cavalcade of food pantries and AA meetings that bring trash and feces to their block.

Milton Street neighbors say the holy house should have notified locals before launching the city-run shelter in November.

“The church has been operating on a system of ‘it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,’ ” said neighbor Teresa Toro. “It’s a testament to the goodwill of Milton Street residents that no one’s complained until now.

“It’s really not about the shelter,” she added. “It’s about the lack of open dialogue.”

The line for the church’s food pantry often goes around the block, beer bottles and garbage are jettisoned on the sidewalk, and unsavory characters linger near the chapel at night, neighbors said.

One longtime neighbor said she has witnessed men defecating on her lawn and that one drunk stranger broke into her home.

Pastor Ann Kansfield was surprised that some residents want the church to alter its charitable ways.

She said she didn’t notify residents about the shelter because the church quickly filled in for another congregation that had canceled a proposed shelter at the last minute.

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Pusher: he died fighting

He didn’t go down without a fight.

The Muslim-hating maniac who shoved a Queens immigrant to his death in front of the 7 train told The Post yesterday that the victim tried to shake her off at the last second — but she was determined to kill.

“My mind was just racing that day. I was mad. I was just angry,” Erika Menendez, 31, said in a rambling interview on Rikers Island.

“I was homeless. I was hungry. I was fighting with my boyfriend. He came running up the stairs, and I just got up and pushed him.”

Sunando Sen, 46, didn’t have time to react.

“He was trying to shake me off,” she said.

Paul Martinka

Erika Menendez

Menendez — glassy-eyed, greasy-haired and clad in a prison jumpsuit — professed her hatred for Muslims and Hindus and said the murder was revenge for 9/11. Sen was Hindu.

But the massive loss of life in the World Trade Center attacks was not what left her enraged.

“I’m not mad about the people. I’m mad because I liked the buildings,” Menendez said.

“I just wanted to hurt Muslims and Hindus ever since [9/11].”

Her attachment to the buildings, she said, comes from being a native New Yorker.

For much of the interview, she was emotionless.

But her eyes lit up and she became very animated when describing other violent run-ins with people she believed were Muslim or Hindu.

“I’ve been beating up Muslims and Hindus for a long time. I just want to hurt them. I would punch them,” she said.

Her racist rants and callous disregard for Sen’s life horrified the dead man’s heartbroken friends.

“How could she do this to him? My hands shake. I can’t be alone. I think of him all the time, all the time,” said the woman he rented a room from in Queens.

Her son is now scared to ride the subway, she said.

“We were family. Who cares if he is Muslim or Hindu? He was a man,” she said.

That’s not what the unhinged Menendez saw on Dec. 29.

In her first interview since being arrested, she told The Post that Sen had stood out from the other riders because of his religion.

The tragedy might have been averted if she had taken the medicine she is prescribed.

She said she doesn’t take them because she hates the side effects, which make her “shaky.”

She “self-medicates” by smoking pot.

“If I smoked a blunt that day, I wouldn’t have pushed him,” Menendez said.

Sen was the second person fatally shoved in front of a subway train last month.

Queens father Ki Suk Han, 58, was pushed into the path of a Q train at the 49th Street station in Manhattan on Dec. 3 by Naeem Davis, cops said.

Additional reporting by Natasha Velez

jennifer.fermino@nypost.com

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LI man on the run after 4-year-old in his care was beaten to death: sources

Victor Alcorn

Police visit the Long Island home where officials say a 4-year-old sustained fatal injuries.

The boyfriend of a Long Island woman is on the run from cops after allegedly beating her 4-year-old godson who later died, sources told the Post.

Jonathan Thompson called his beau, Lakisha Pitt, Wednesday afternoon from their Amityville rental apartment and told her that Adonis Reed had fallen unconscious, Pitt's father told the Post.

The panicked woman told him to immediately call police as she rushed home from work to check on the boy, Willie Pitt said.

Thompson made the 911 call but vanished from the scene before cops arrived, sources said.

Arriving EMS crews found little Adonis unconscious in his pajamas on a couch and attempted resuscitation before rushing him to Good Samaritan hospital where he later died.

Cops initially grilled Pitt, a social worker who takes care of disabled children, before determining that Thompson was the true suspect in the case.

"They don't know where he is," Willie Pitt said. "He just left. The police kept asking my daughter if she knows where he is but she doesn't."

Pitt described the dead boy as a smiling, happy child who loved his big sister and was just beginning to play video games. He wrote in a school workbook that he wanted to be a police officer when he grew up.

"He was just a happy little kid," he said. "The boyfriend seemed to take good care of him. This makes no sense."

Pitt said the kids' biological mother, Kiara Daniels, is a close friend of his daughter who ran into financial difficulties. Lakisha Pitt was also taking care of her 6-year-old daughter who was at school when the incident took place.

She was placed in the custody of the Department of Social Services yesterday.

Thompson had stayed home from work to watch Adonis because he had a cold, Willie Pitt said.

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Girl relives rape nightmare

A sobbing Brooklyn girl testified yesterday how she was just 11 when she fought a losing battle with an accused serial rapist in her Crown Heights building’s elevator and then rushed to her apartment to say, “Mommy, I just got raped.”

The girl, now 14, identified Angus Pascall as the man who cornered her on July 11, 2010, as she returned home after taking her dog for a walk.

“He walked into the elevator and said, ‘This elevator seems to be broken, isn’t it?’ That’s when I bent down to pick up my dog,” she said in Brooklyn Supreme Court. “When I had turned back around, that’s when he put the gun to my face.”

“Then he said, ‘Drop your pants and turn around.’ I did what he said and I was scared. I started to cry,” she said.

She said she was forced to perform oral sex on Pascall, 35, an FDNY EMT, and was sodomized by him repeatedly.

She said when he was done ”he pulled his pants back up, walked out of the elevator and then walked out of the building.”

Friends and family members in the courtroom began to sob as she told how she went to her apartment “and called my mom.”

“I said to her, ‘Mommy, I just got raped.’”

Police have said that Pascall used an FDNY key to bring the elevator to the ground floor prior to the attack. Pascall is charged with five assaults. Prosecutors have said DNA links him to all of the attacks.

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Defer madness: 3-year wait for Morgan Stanley cash bonuses

Wall Street’s high-rollers are facing a cash crunch.

Morgan Stanley is deferring cash bonuses for its top executives for three years as new regulations and stricter capital requirements force banks to slash staff and pay.

The belt-tightening moves come as other banks, including UK-based Barclays, are planning to cut bonuses and trim staff in the coming weeks, The Post has learned.

Banks like Morgan Stanley also are facing heightened pressure by regulators including the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to defer more cash bonuses in an effort to tamp down the sort of perverse incentives that many believe led to the financial meltdown.

AP

President and CEO of Morgan Stanley James P. Gorman.

Bankers this year are widely bracing for smaller bonuses, including cuts of as much as 30 percent in some areas.

Morgan Stanley, which is gearing up to lay off 1,600 of its investment bankers, would defer cash bonuses for all employees earnings more than $350,000 — or those due a bonus of at least $50,000. Lower-paid employees would not have their bonuses deferred.

The high-pay group would get 25 percent of their cash payout in May and then in equal payouts in three successive Decembers, a person familiar with the situation said.

Bankers’ stock awards would vest over three years, starting next January.

Last year, Morgan Stanley chief James Gorman limited bonuses to $125,000 and set the cash-deferral bonus payments to those receiving salaries of $250,000 or more.

“Some execs cried poverty,” hence the increase, according to one person familiar with the situation.

Gorman, who has hitched the company’s success to its 17,000-strong wealth managers, has been thinning its ranks in its volatile investment banking platform.

Activist investor Dan Loeb of Third Point Capital has taken a stake in the company and has been pushing it to lower compensation costs.

Morgan Stanley bankers are due to learn the size of their bonuses on Thursday — a day ahead of the release of the bank’s fourth-quarter results on Jan. 18.

Many of Morgan Stanley’s compensation changes have been aimed at limiting costs and have targeted cutting the fat at its highest levels.

The bank is expected to promote the lowest number of managing directors it has since 2009.

“Morgan Stanley is trying to use all the tricks in its playbook to shrink their size,” said Wall Street recruiter Michael Karp.

A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Barclays is said to be pushing to limit the number of senior managers it elevates as it also moves to trim its ranks.

Under new CEO Anthony Jenkins, Barclays has been aiming to restructure the big international bank, which was whacked by the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, scandal.

That regulatory dust-up forced former CEO Bob Diamond and other top officials to step down.

Jenkins is slated to announce changes at the bank when it releases its fourth-quarter results on Feb. 12.

mark.decambre@nypost.com

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Herbalife shares bounce back, to Loeb’s advantage

The bull is now beating the bear.

For the first time since brazenly challenging his fellow hedgie’s theory that shares of nutritional supplement distributor Herbalife were toast, Dan Loeb’s high-stakes bet is worth more.

A 10.1 percent spike in Herbalife’s shares yesterday put estimates of Loeb’s profit on his $285 million bet at $108 million.

Bill Ackman, who on Dec. 19 trashed Herbalife as a pyramid scheme worthy of a regulatory beat down, placed a $1 billion short bet on the company’s stock.

Ackman’s investment — a short of more than 20 million shares — is now just $85 million on the good side, according to estimates, after Herbalife shares are up 69 percent since Christmas.

Reuters

Dan Loeb (above), who has a $285 million long position in Herbalife, nowhas profited more than Bill Ackman, who has a $1 billion short on shares of the nutritional supplement company.

The rise in Herbalife’s shares yesterday was tied to analyst reports that the company would pre-announce strong earnings this week, moving it closer to an ambitious stock buyback program.

Such a buyback could create an enormous short squeeze of Ackman and his Pershing Square hedge fund.

Herbalife shares closed at $42.50 on Dec. 18, the night before Ackman attacked.

Following the assault, the shares quickly fell 40 percent, bottoming at $26 on Christmas Eve.

Ackman likely paid an average price of $50 on shares that he borrowed, said analyst Tim Ramey of DA Davidson.

Herbalife closed yesterday at $44.08, giving Ackman an estimated gross profit, so far, of roughly $120 million.

But Ramey estimated his expenses totaled $35 million — including $25 million paid to the Ira Sohn Foundation to host the three-and-a-half-hour meeting where Ackman expanded on his pyramid attack.

Loeb bought his 8.9 million shares at an average price of $32.

“The stock is now higher than before Ackman opened his mouth on Dec. 19,” said hedgie Robert Chapman, whose Dec. 31 bullish thesis helped spur the stock. “I’m actually starting to feel sorry for him.”

Ackman did not return calls, and Loeb declined to comment.

mcelarier@nypost.com

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Whole new nightmare for teen molest ‘victim’

Andrea Peyser

He JUST wants justice for his son.

It may never come.

In the 2 1/2 years since Mordechai Jungreis’ boy revealed the awful truth — the mentally disabled teen was allegedly molested in a Jewish ritual bathhouse — Jungreis (pictured) has turned from a respected member of the Hasidic community into a leper. A nobody.

Pond scum.

Jungreis, his wife and four children were kicked out of their apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and forced to move to the community’s outskirts. They found a new synagogue that would accept them.

His son, “badly damaged” by the alleged abuse, was targeted a second time, he said, expelled from two yeshivas. Summer camp, too.

Paul Martinka

People on the street crossed to the other side when Jungreis walked by. Words of abuse were hurled anonymously into the telephone. Or on the street.

As a Jew, I’m horrified that, in 2013, Jungreis, 38, could be punished, vilified and treated worse than a criminal. All for publicly accusing a fellow Jew of a heinous crime?

Finally, tomorrow, Meir Dascalowitz, 29, the man charged in 2010 with molesting the teen, is scheduled for a pretrial hearing in a crime that, Jungreis says, he discovered after finding blood on his boy’s underwear. Jungreis hopes this exercise in jurisprudence will put his nightmare to rest.

He expects nothing.

“I went through hell,” Jungreis, who once considered himself a member of the Bobov ultra-Orthodox community, told me.

“We used to pray in the park, because I wasn’t allowed in the synagogue. My son is not in school.’’

And now, Dascalowitz has the full support of Jungreis’ neighbors.

“Everyone is running away from my child,’’ said Jungreis, whose son is afflicted with learning disabilities and a low IQ. The boy, now 17, is tested regularly for HIV.

“What about my child? This is a disabled child. And they’re screaming at me in the street!”

The ugly cloak of secrecy that has long ruled the Jews of Williamsburg was ripped to shreds last month. A Brooklyn jury convicted Satmar Nechemya Weberman of 59 counts for sexually abusing a now-18-year-old woman from the time she was 12.

The parallels with Jungreis’ case are inescapable. Weberman’s victim contends she was maimed again by her fellow Jews after she came forward. As Weberman, 54, prepares to be sentenced next week, one question remains:

Have things changed?

“On the one hand, advocates and victims feel empowered” by Weberman’s conviction, said Ben Hirsch, spokesman for Survivors for Justice, which supports sex-abuse victims.

But “the courageous victim in the Weberman case has been publicly vilified by the grand rabbi of Satmar, and thousands of Hasidim have publicly supported Weberman.” Hirsch accused Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes of lacking the guts to fight Jewish leaders who intimidate victims.

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Bus strike looms for schools

A school-bus strike that threatens to strand 150,000 children is likely to begin Wednesday and could be announced as early as today, sources told The Post.

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 has already printed strike posters, assigned members to future picket lines at bus yards across the city, and distributed a list of “do’s and don’ts” for conduct during a strike, sources said.

Members will not have to take any additional action this week to initiate a strike because a May vote pre-authorized it.

The city has been anticipating the strike and has announced contingency plans that include handing out MetroCards to students and parents.

Where public transit is not available, private drivers and taxi or car services would be reimbursed.

Some predict chaos will ensue outside schools as many parents idle and jockey for parking during arrival and dismissal times.

“We are still taking the threat of a strike seriously and communicating our contingency plans to families,” said a Department of Education spokeswoman.

The union, comprised of 9,000 drivers, mechanics and escorts, is battling the city to retain employee-protection provisions in case a yellow-bus company they work for loses its contract.

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Subway platform door test

Stand clear of the closing platform doors.

The MTA is considering adding sliding doors at L-train stations to stop riders from falling on the tracks following the deaths of two straphangers pushed in front of trains last month.

The L would be the ideal test spot because it doesn’t share track with other lines and is used by only one type of train, said Thomas Prendergast, the agency’s acting executive director.

That means the doors in the pilot program would only have to fit one kind of subway train.

It would likely be at just one station to start and spread to others if successful, he said.

Adding platform doors system-wide could cost over $1 billion, he said.

But it’s possible the agency will get funding from private companies, who could take a share of the ad revenue on the doors, he said.

In addition, the agency is planning an “aggressive passenger information campaign” to warn riders to stand away from the platform edge.

And they also are considering expanding the “see something, say something” campaign to ask riders to look out for the mentally ill.

Both suspects in the subway shoving deaths last month — Naeem Davis and Erika Menendez — have a history of mental-health issues, cops said.

jennifer.fermino@nypost.com

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Man gunned down in Bed-Stuy

A man was gunned down in Bedford-Stuyvesant Thursday night, according to police.

The man, described by cops as a white male in his 30s, was shot in the torso near the corner of Macon Street and Throop Avenue at around 9:30 p.m., authorities said.

He was transported to Kings County Hospital where he later died.

Police are still investigating. No arrests have been made.

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LI travel agent shoved to his death in Brooklyn robbery: police

A Long Island travel agent who showed up at a South Slope, Brooklyn address to buy a car wound up dead when he was shoved to the ground and smashed his head in an apparent robbery, law enforcement sources said this morning.

Jesus Morales, 67, of Merrick, LI, was discovered lying with head injuries at 260 18th street at around 7:15 p.m. yesterday.

Morales was rushed by EMS to Lutheran Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

Cops are calling the incident a robbery, though it was unclear what was taken.

According to family, Morales owns a travel agency in the neighborhood.

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NYPD Daily Blotter

Manhattan

***

A female gang member was gunned down at a Harlem housing project, authorities said.

Jayyidah Woodley, 32, was found in a lobby of a building at the King Tower Houses on Lenox Avenue at 11:30 p.m. Monday, police said.

She had been shot 12 times in the chest and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Woodley had a record of 12 arrests, including one for murder, and was a member of the Bloods, police sources said.

***

A woman walking her dog in Washington Heights yesterday found the body of a woman that had washed up from the Hudson River.

The body of the 55-year-old woman was spotted on the rocks near West 165th Street at 8:30 a.m., just steps from where construction workers were working.

Police are looking for two men (above) who are wanted for a home invasion robbery in Long Island City, authorities said.

Police are looking for two men (above) who are wanted for a home invasion robbery in Long Island City, authorities said.

“I arrived early this morning and was doing some work when I heard a woman screaming,” said Donovan White, 50.

“She said, ‘Oh, my God, there is a body in the water! Help!’ ”

There were no signs of injuries, and the body was fully clothed.

The medical examiner will determine the cause of death.

Brooklyn

***

A corrections captain was busted for DWI in East Flatbush, authorities said.

Jahaira Almodovar, 33, was driving a 2001 Ford Expedition at 3:05 a.m. when she crashed into a telephone pole, cops said.

At first, she cooperated when cops tried to administer a Breathalyzer, but changed her mind and allegedly turned combative.

She later submitted to a test, and her blood-alcohol level was allegedly .22 — nearly three times the legal limit. She was hit with charges of DWI, reckless driving, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

***

A man stole an acquaintance's wallet in a Bed-Stuy home, then attacked the victim when confronted about the theft, authorities said.

Jackie Moorer, 46, snatched the wallet off a counter in a Monroe Street brownstone at 12:10 a.m., Sunday, and walked off, court papers claim.

When the owner confronted Moorer about 15 minutes later, the suspect hit him in the face with an unknown object, leaving a gash that required sutures, the papers say.

Moorer was charged with petit larceny, assault, menacing, criminal possession of a weapon, attempted assault and harassment, records show.

Queens

***

Police are looking for two men who are wanted for a home invasion robbery in Long Island City, authorities said.

The thieves went into the home on 45th Avenue near 23rd Street at 1:50 a.m. Sunday, police said.

One flashed a gun and demanded the seven people inside fork over their belongings, police said.

They made off with cash, jewelry and cellphones, police said.

The suspect with the gun is in his late 40s, about 5-foot-8 and 160 pounds. The other is between 27 and 33 years old, 5-foot-9 and about 240 pounds.

No one was injured.

Staten Island

***

A drunken driver was collared by FDNY fire marshals after he hit two cars in St. George, authorities said.

Lorenzo Garcia, 33, was zooming down Richmond Terrace in a Ford Windstar at 1:35 p.m. Sunday when he rear-ended a sedan and almost hit a pedestrian at the intersection of Hamilton Avenue, court papers say.

Garcia then sideswiped a fire marshal’s GMC Yukon further up Richmond Terrace, near Carroll Place, cops said.

Two marshals nabbed Garcia and held him for police.

His blood-alcohol level was .232, almost three times the legal limit of .08, court papers state.

Lorenzo, who had a suspended license, was busted for aggravated DWI, leaving the scene of an accident and reckless driving,

***

A gunman robbed a man of his cellphone in Old Town, authorities said.

Jesus Marrero, 24, flashed his firearm at the victim at around 12:36 a.m. Jan. 4 and barked, “Run your pockets,” according to a criminal complaint.

Marrero then pistol-whipped the victim in the head and made off with his Samsung Galaxy III smartphone, cops said.

Marrero was apprehended in Oakwood, and officers found a 9mm gun stashed under the front seat of his Toyota Camry, according to cops.

He was charged with robbery, weapons possession and assault, records show.

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Bronx DA fails to jail

Bronx DA Robert Johnson’s record is now officially the worst in the city.

A report issued yesterday by Mayor Bloomberg’s office confirmed stories published in The Post showing that The Bronx is the least likely borough to send suspected criminals to jail.

John Feinblatt, the mayor’s criminal-justice coordinator, found that the performance of Johnson’s office lagged in virtually every category measured:

* The borough has the lowest incarceration rate, 21 percent, for violent-felony arrests in 2011. Manhattan had the highest, 30 percent.

* Citywide, 54 percent of felony defendants were retained in custody at arraignment. In The Bronx, the figure was 44 percent.

The Post had previously reported that Johnson’s conviction rate for violent felons was the lowest in the city, at 43 percent in 2011.

Johnson issued a statement saying he was reviewing the numbers .

“We believe that the proportion of felony convictions should be a percentage of indictments, not arrests,” Johnson said.

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Vandal covers B'klyn Civil War statue in white paint

Phil DiPaolo

A vandal covered the Greenpoint Monitor Statue in white paint.

A treasured Brooklyn monument celebrating locals who served in the Civil War was trashed yesterday by vandals who dumped buckets of paint on the statue.

The Greenpoint Monitor Statue — which depicts a man working on the USS Monitor, the Civil War ironclad battleship — now has its head, shoulders and chest covered in white paint.

The bold vandal went so far as to scribble the initials “JJ” in the same paint near the bottom of the McGolrick Park statue.

“The neighborhood has a big historic connection to the Monitor because it was built in Greenpoint and stationed in Greenpoint,” said Phil DePaolo, a community activist. “It was big slap in the face to the community.”

Police could not immediately comment on the defacement.

Stephen Levin/Facebook

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‘Poor’ some $ugar on me!

They’re on the dole — and watching the pole.

Welfare recipients took out cash at bars, liquor stores, X-rated video shops, hookah parlors and even strip clubs — where they presumably spent their taxpayer money on lap dances rather than diapers, a Post investigation found.

A database of 200 million Electronic Benefit Transfer records from January 2011 to July 2012, obtained by The Post through a Freedom of Information request, showed welfare recipients using their EBT cards to make dozens of cash withdrawals at ATMs inside Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn; the Blue Door Video porn shop in the East Village; The Anchor, a sleek SoHo lounge; the Patriot Saloon in TriBeCa; and Drinks Galore, a liquor distributor in The Bronx.

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Two go-go dancers at a nightclub

The state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA), which oversees the “cash assistance program,” even lists some of these welfare-ready ATMs on its Web site.

One EBT machine is stationed inside Club Eleven, an infamous Hunts Point jiggle joint known as much for its violent history as its girls in pink thongs.

Cops have been cracking down on the Bronx club since 2009 and shut it down temporarily in 2010. In July, five men were stabbed and two others shot outside after bouncers broke up a 4 a.m. brawl with pepper spray. The club appeared to be shuttered when The Post visited Thursday.

Club Heat, another Bronx strip club that dispenses EBT cash, is also no stranger to violence. A 33-year-old woman was fatally shot in the head outside the club in December 2011.

Critics blasted the government for turning a blind eye to welfare’s sleazy money.

“This is morally scandalous,” said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “I have nothing against strip clubs, but that’s not what benefits are for. I don’t blame [recipients]. If you are poor, it’s a crummy life and you want to have a drink or see a naked woman. I blame the people who are in charge of this.”

Welfare recipients receive food stamps and cash assistance under the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Both benefits are accessed through an EBT card, but only cash assistance — meant for housing, utilities and household necessities — can be accessed at ATMs.

A single-person household could receive a maximum $200 in monthly food stamps plus $158 in cash assistance. A family of four could get as much as $668 in food stamps and $433 in cash.

The food-stamp program prohibits the purchase of booze, tobacco and lottery tickets with an EBT card. But with the cash-assistance program, users can blow money on strippers or a six-pack and to tap welfare dollars from liquor stores, casinos and adult-oriented establishments.

The Post found dozens of pubs, nightclubs and tobacco shops where welfare dough was dispensed — and presumably spent.

The Boiler Room, a gay dive bar in the East Village, had $120 and $60 transactions a minute apart on Jan. 17, 2011. The bar is around the corner from a Bank of America that takes EBT cards.

West Village tobacco shop Shisha International had EBT transactions ranging from $40 to $180 in 2011. The store is near at least two EBT-friendly ATMs.

Legislative efforts to crack down on sinful spending have fallen short.

State Sen. Tom Libous (R-Binghamton) passed a bill in his chamber in June that would outlaw welfare withdrawals at gambling dens, strip clubs and other venues of vice, but the measure is gathering dust in the Democratic-controlled Assembly.

Libous is looking for a new Assembly sponsor to carry the bill in that house in the upcoming legislative session, after past sponsor George Latimer (D-Rye) was elected to the state Senate.

With only one of the city’s Assembly members, Nicole Malliotakis (R-B’klyn./SI), as a co-sponsor, the bill faces an uphill battle.

The Assembly typically doesn’t support welfare reform, because its more liberal members think the measures “hurt the poor,” Libous said. If the bill remains stalled, the state stands to lose $120 million in federal welfare funding.

The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, signed by President Obama last February, requires states to prohibit sinful welfare spending by 2014. If they don’t, they’ll forfeit federal cash.

“The people who are stealing from the program are the ones I want to go after,” Libous said. “Not someone who lost his job or a single mom who has to feed her kids. That’s what this program is supposed to be for.”

A spokesman with the US Department of Health and Human Services said states make their own rules on EBT cards.

Some states already limit where EBT cards can withdraw money.

A rep from OTDA, New York’s welfare office, said the state does not choose or regulate which retailers get ATMs that handle EBTs. Instead, retailers decide whether to use an ATM that accepts welfare cards.

Additional reporting by Susan Edelman and Brad Hamilton

kbriquelet@nypost.com

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‘Sloshed’ La Guardia pilot’s wings clipped

An American Eagle pilot who reeked of booze was yanked off a flight from Minneapolis to La Guardia Airport yesterday and arrested after failing a Breathalyzer test, authorities said.

The pilot, Kolbjorn Jarle Kristiansen, of Raleigh, NC, was charged with suspicion of flying under the influence.

In other aviation mayhem:

* An allegedly drunken woman headed from Newark to Stockholm, Sweden, became belligerent inside a plane and took a swing at a member of the flight crew yesterday morning, sources said.

Federal air marshals arrested Sarah Melena Wilson, 37 — who claims to be the daughter of a diplomat — and charged her with interfering with a flight crew and assaulting a federal officer, a source said.

KRISTIANSEN Pulled off NY-bound flight.

* A 13-year-old boy was led off a plane at La Guardia Airport on Thursday night after he flashed another passenger. He will not be prosecuted, a source said.

* Also on Thursday, cops at Kennedy Airport had to escort a woman who was off her meds from a bathroom after she started causing a scene inside Terminal 1, a source said.

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Statement by NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly

At 7:32 p.m., a lieutenant and three police officers assigned to Transit District 34 were in plainclothes on patrol in two separate cars of a Manhattan-bound ‘N’ train here in Brooklyn. Officers Michael Levay and Lukasz Kozicki observed an individual moving from the second car to the third in violation of transit regulations.

As the train approached the Fort Hamilton Parkway station at 62nd Street, the subject sat down toward the front of the third car. The officers approached, and asked him for identification with the intention of removing him from the train as it came to a stop. The male stood up as if to comply with the officers, and appeared to reach for his wallet.

Paul Martinka

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly responds after three officers were injured Thursday.

Instead, he pulled a 9-millimeter Taurus handgun from his waistband and opened fire. Officer Kozicki, 32, was struck three times; once in each of his upper thighs and once in the groin.

A witness said that the gunman appeared to notice the officer’s bullet-resistant vest, and, as a result, aimed low before he fired.

Although shot in the lower back protected by his vest, Officer Levay, 27, returned fire, striking his assailant, killing him.

A passenger on the same car sustained a graze wound to the leg during the gun fight.

Fortunately no one else was injured, as passengers ran onto the platform when the gunfire erupted.

An hour earlier in the Bronx, as the Mayor said, at 6:30 p.m., Police Officer Juan Pichardo was working off-duty at his family’s car dealership when two men, one of them armed with a Bryco .380 handgun, entered the location. Two accomplices waited outside in a getaway car.

After the two feigned interest in buying a red Altima that was parked near the dealership office, one of them produced the gun and forced Officer Pichardo and a second dealership employee on to the floor in the small back office. They began to ransack the office, looking for cash and the safe, all the while brandishing the weapon in Officer Pichardo’s face.

A few minutes after the robbery, Officer Pichardo stood up and grabbed the gunman, who fired, striking the officer in the right thigh. Despite being wounded, Officer Pichardo and the other employee wrestled the gunman to the ground and disarmed him. The gunman’s accomplice fled with the two others in the getaway car, a white Impala with Oregon license plates.

Officer Pichardo held the gunman for responding officers, who recognized the gunman as a member of a Bronx robbery crew who they had been looking for. A short distance away, at 183rd Street and Katonah Avenue, police stopped the getaway car and its three occupants, placing them under arrest.

As both of these incidents illustrate, the historic crime reductions that New Yorkers enjoy come at a price. As the Mayor said, a dozen police officers were shot last year. And now three more, in the first three days of the new year. So thank God, that the doctors at Lutheran and Jacobi did their usual work, and all of these officers will recover.

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Obama signs cliff deal, $633B defense bill

HONOLULU — President Obama has signed a bill that boosts taxes on the wealthiest Americans, while preserving tax cuts for most American households.

The bill, which averts a looming fiscal cliff that had threatened to plunge the nation back into recession, also extends expiring jobless benefits, prevents cuts in Medicare reimbursements to doctors and delays for two months billions of dollars in across-the-board spending cuts in defense and domestic programs.

The GOP-run House approved the measure by a 257-167 vote late Tuesday, nearly 24 hours after the Democratic-led Senate passed it 89-8.

Obama also signed a $633 billion defense bill for next year that tightens penalties on Iran and bolsters security at diplomatic missions worldwide after the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Obama had threatened to veto the measure because of a number of concerns, including limits on his authority to transfer terrorist suspects from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for one year.

But Obama said that although he continued to oppose certain sections of the bill, "the need to renew critical defense authorities and funding was too great to ignore."

The bill includes cuts in defense spending that the president and congressional Republicans agreed to in August 2011, along with the end of the war in Iraq and the drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan.

Obama, who is vacationing in Hawaii, signed the bills using an autopen, a mechanical device that copies his signature.

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