Protester busted for allegedly trying to cut NYPD van’s brake line
By Rebecca Rosenberg
New York Post
August 5, 2020
A cop-hating protester was busted by the FBI on Wednesday for attempting to cut the brake line on an NYPD van, officials said.
Jeremy Trapp was also charged for allegedly telling a paid informant — who was embedded at a demonstration — that he wanted to blow up the Verrazzano Bridge, according to federal prosecutors.
“Had the NYPD not been watching him the consequences here could have been tragic,” Assistant US Attorney Francisco Navarro said at Trapp’s arraignment Wednesday on charges he tampered with a police vehicle.
The Brooklyn man lived up to his name when his defense lawyer Ashley Burrell suggested that he had been entrapped by an NYPD informant he met at a protest, who goaded him on.
“At best, Mr. Trapp is unsophisticated and easily susceptible,” she said at the Brooklyn federal court proceeding that was conducted via video.
On July 17, Trapp, accompanied by the informant, allegedly crawled under an unmanned NYPD van parked in Sunset Park and used a pair of scissors to snip what he thought was a brake line. The informant was pretending to act as a lookout.
It turned out he’d mistakenly severed a wheel speed sensor, which is part of the vehicle’s anti-lock braking system, the prosecutor told Judge Steven Gold.
The informant and cops, who were surveilling Trapp, videotaped the alleged sabotage.
Though not as dire as faulty brakes, a snipped wheel speed sensor line would “adversely impact a driver’s ability to stop and maintain control of the NYPD van in an emergency,” court papers state.
“The defendant has shown he’s willing to violently attack police officers regardless of whom he might hurt in the process,” said Navarro, arguing that Trapp, 24, should be held without bail.
The prosecutor added that when FBI agents showed up at Trapp’s home Wednesday with an arrest warrant, he resisted and had to be wrestled into cuffs.
Trapp was already hit in state court with seven counts of reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and other raps for the incident — and released. The state crimes don’t qualify for detention under bail reform laws.
Burrell argued that Trapp has no criminal history and has stayed out of trouble since he was charged in state court.
But the judge sided with prosecutors and ordered Trapp held without bail on the federal case for which he faces up to 20 years in prison.
“It’s hard to imagine a more potentially dangerous act than cutting the brake lines of any automobile much less a police car that might find itself involved in high-speed activity, running through red lights with sirens on,” said Judge Gold.
Trapp allegedly met the informant at a protest outside the Brooklyn Criminal Court building July 13 and boasted that he had once burned a cop car and had more sinister plans for the police, court papers allege.
The two exchanged numbers and over the next four days bonded over their hatred of cops.
Trapp allegedly told the informant during a drive in Brooklyn that he wanted to “burn the [Verrazzano-Narrows] bridge down so that “white supremacists” could not use it. The pair later visited the bridge allegedly to conduct reconnaissance, snapping pictures of the structure.
In secretly recorded conversations with the informant, Trapp allegedly argued that the demonstrations weren’t achieving their aims because they were too peaceful.
Trapp questioned the value of burning police cars and allegedly said that they could inflict more damage by setting precincts on fire and cutting NYPD vehicle brake lines.
During the city’s mostly peaceful demonstrations against police brutality sparked by the killing of George Floyd, cops have been the targets of violent attacks — and their cars vandalized and set on fire.
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