ROGUE STATE
NYC drivers hit by 759% surge in Cuomo trooper tix
They’re super troopers — at least when it comes to slinging traffic tickets.
State Police officers doled out 14,542 tickets to New York City motorists in the first four months of this year — an astonishing 759 percent increase from all of last year, when they scribbled just 1,692 summonses, records show.
The troopers — blue-and-yellow fixtures on upstate highways — were once a rarity on city streets, giving out only four tickets here in 2015 and none in 2014.
But in December, Gov. Cuomo deployed 150 state cops to patrol city highways, bridges and tunnel crossings. Their presence achieved two Cuomo goals: to haul in revenue to state coffers, and rankle rival Mayor de Blasio, according to observers.
“This is the governor trying to show the mayor that all of New York is the governor’s turf,” said a city Democratic elected official.
When told of the surge in trooper tickets, mayoral spokesman Austin Finan said: “Sending troopers to patrol the safest big city in the country seems like a curious use of precious lawenforcement resources.”
Cuomo countered through his own rep Saturday night that it’s the mayor who’s playing politics, by complaining.
“This is State Police patrolling state-owned bridges, tunnels and roadways,” said spokesman Richard Azzopardi.
“The Mayor’s Office can play politics with public safety all they want; we’re concerned with security.”
Troopers have been pulling over vehicles on the FDR Drive, West Side Highway, Belt Parkway and the Brooklyn-Queens, Gowanus and Prospect expressways.
Most tickets have been for speeding and use of handheld cellphones, according to traffic lawyers.
“There’s concern city drivers will be paying through the nose,” said attorney Peter Tilem.
The trooper ticket blitz has likely generated more than $3 million in revenue. A typical speeding ticket costs $203 — with $88 in surcharges going to the state and the $115 balance to the city. A cellphone summons costs $288.
Troopers also made 93 arrests so far this year in Gotham — 48 percent more than the 63 cuffed in all of 2016, State Police records show. They made no NYC arrests in 2015.
With a barracks on Wards Island, state troopers have had a small footprint in the city since the 1950s. In the years following the 9/11 attacks, about 75 additional troopers were assigned to various joint crime-fighting task forces in the city, according to a State Police source.
But Cuomo has slowly and steadily increased the ranks of Troop NYC, sending 50 additional officers in September 2014 — one week after then-President Barack Obama authorized airstrikes against ISIS — to local airports, as well as Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal.
In December, the governor sent 150 more officers to patrol state-owned MTA bridges and tunnels while the crossings transition to cashless tolls. Troop NYC welcomed another 57 troopers last week.
But putting troopers in areas already patrolled by the NYPD creates a “dangerous mix” and an “accident waiting to happen,” according to John Jay College criminology professor and ex-cop Eugene O’Donnell.