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Foursome impersonated police to enter house

By Tien-Shun Lee

Three men and one woman wearing matching gray jumpsuits and police shields around their necks entered a home in Rego Park last Thursday morning and handcuffed a man before fleeing, police said.

Though the incident was originally reported as a burglary, police said it was unclear whether or not anything was stolen from the two-story brick house on 67th Avenue near Queens Boulevard.

The case is under investigation by the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Criminal Impersonation Unit.

Officers arrived at the scene shortly after 10:40 a.m. as the group was driving away in a tan, 1987 Nissan Maxima, said police. The foursome left behind on the street a 9mm handgun, a taser gun, a pair of handcuffs and a radio scanner.

After a short chase by several squad cars and one helicopter, police recovered the perpetrators’ abandoned vehicle around the intersection of Union Turnpike and Queens Boulevard.

One suspect was described as a 35- to 40-year-old Hispanic man weighing about 190 pounds. Another was described as a short, stocky Hispanic woman with black hair tied back in a pony tail. Police did not release any information about the other perpetrators.

No arrests have been made, said police.

“This house for 20 years was rented to drug dealers, gypsies,” said a man who used to live in the neighborhood and preferred not to be identified. “In 1988, they found two bags of cocaine in this house.”

His claim could not be independently verified.

Another man, Mayer Yedid, who lives down the street from the house, said the neighborhood was usually peaceful.

“Sometimes you see a bunch of crowds coming in the middle of the night smoking weed, but I haven’t seen any drug dealing,” said Yedid.

The incident was the second of two last week where perpetrators posing as police officers entered a house.

In the first incident, which occurred at about 11 a.m. on Oct. 15, two robbers knocked on the door of a house in Bayside, five blocks from the intersection of Bell and Northern boulevards, and identified themselves as police officers. Once inside, they tied up the resident, ransacked the house, and left with some jewelry, said police.

A spokesman for the 111th Precinct, based in Bayside, said there was no apparent connection between the two incidents.

Reach reporter Tien-Shun Lee by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com, or call 229-0300, Ext. 155.