Cop in flap goes online to apologize

A BROOKLYN precinct commander who faced a flurry of criticism after suggesting last week that some rapes aren’t as bad as others posted an apology on social media for his headscratching choice of words.

Capt. Peter Rose, in his comments at a Wednesday precinct community council meeting, said attacks by strangers were “the troubling ones.”

Rose (photo), a 26-year veteran of the NYPD, issued the mea culpa on Twitter Monday after victim advocates called for him to be fired.

“I failed to communicate accurately how I respond to reports of rape and the actions the department as a whole takes,” Rose wrote. “My comments were not meant to minimize the seriousness of sexual assault. Every rape, whether it is perpetrated by a stranger or someone known to them, is fully investigated. We make no distinction in our response. My comments suggested otherwise and for that, I apologize.”

Police Commissioner James O’Neill noted Rose’s apology in an Op-Ed piece for the Daily News. He explained that all rapes are investigated and acknowledged that Rose’s comments were “certainly insensitive.”

Rose, the commanding officer of the 94th Precinct in Greenpoint, got into hot water when he spoke at the community meeting last week about the neighborhood’s rise in rapes — from eight in 2015 to 13 last year.

Sex assaults in which women are attacked by men they know are “not total-abomination rapes where strangers are being dragged off the streets,” he reportedly said.

“If there’s a true stranger rape, a random guy picks up a stranger off the street, those are the troubling ones,” Rose said.

Ten of the 13 rapes are still unsolved, Rose said, suggesting it was because the victims had stopped cooperating with detectives. Two of the rapes were committed by strangers, he said.

Rose’s words likely would have little impact on any case, as detectives from the Special Victims Division, not the precinct, are the ones who investigate sex crimes.