2 cops slapped after leaving apt. where shots were heard

Two Brooklyn housing cops were stripped of their shields and guns after they failed to act when they heard gunshots inside an apartment to which they’d been summoned for help, police sources told the Daily News on Wednesday.

Officers Waqar Zafar and Sergio Garcia-Castillo, who are assigned to the NYPD’s Public Service Area 3, went to a second-floor apartment the Bushwick Houses in East Williamsburg (photo) around 9 p.m. Sunday after police got a call for help, sources said.

A man who answered the door told the Zafar and Garcia-Castillo that no one called the police, but rather, one of his friends was “bugging out.” Then a woman approached them, explaining that her boyfriend, Alexander Zarlengo, was depressed, but had no other issues.

The cops asked to enter the apartment to check on Zarlengo, but the man and woman refused to let them in, sources said. The woman told the two officers Zarlengo was locked in a bathroom.

During the four-minute exchange, the officers’ body-worn cameras recorded the sound of several gunshots and a man calling for help, sources said.

The cops stepped away, and turned off their body cameras, sources said.

But the gunshots triggered the NYPD’s Shot Spotter detection system and police got another report of an emotionally disturbed person — prompting Zafar and Garcia-Castillo to return minutes later, joined by cops from the 90th Precinct, sources said.

Zarlengo shot up the bedroom and bathroom and tried to escape out a window, sources said. No one was hurt in the shooting, said police.

He was arrested by 90th Precinct officers.

A search of the apartment found an unloaded .380-caliber

Ruger handgun in a bag, several shell casings and bullet fragments, on the bathroom floor, a machine that can be used to make credit cards, and several scales with crack cocaine residue, said police.

Zarlengo and another man, Marlon Daley, were charged with weapon possession, drug possession, and criminal possession of forgery devices.

Both were arraigned in Brooklyn criminal court and released without bail.

The incident led Zafar and Garcia-Castillo to be placed on modified duty for failing to properly investigate and take police action at the scene of a shooting, sources said. An NYPD spokesman confirmed Wednesday that the officers were on modified duty, but did not provide other details.

Zafar has six years with the NYPD, and Garcia-Castillo joined the department in 2019.