They’re the Big Apple’s worst transit terrors.
The five worst subway career criminals in the five boroughs have a whopping 590 busts between them — including more than 100 arrests for violent felonies like robbery and rape, The Post has learned.
The five repeat offenders were among hundreds of transit terrors rounded up under a “quality of life” pilot program at NYPD transit districts in Brooklyn and Queens — and three of the alleged criminals are now behind bars.
“It’s encouraging that we can prove that with proper enforcement of the laws, shockingly, we can get actual known, wanted, dangerous people off the streets and out of the subway system without doing indiscriminate ’round ups,’” one law enforcement source said.
NYPD brass launched the pilot at Transit District 20 in Queens and Transit District 34 in Brooklyn, with the initiative paying quick dividends, according to stats reviewed by The Post.
The pilot program has New York’s Finest reviving old-school policing by questioning straphangers caught committing quality-of-life crimes like smoking in the subways or carrying weapons.
Where cops in the past typically just shooed the minor offenders out of subway stations — knowing they would typically just walk away under the state’s lax criminal justice reforms — they now ask for ID.
The result, police stats show, is that cops are nabbing hundreds of suspects for more serious crimes, including dozens who were being sought on outstanding criminal warrants, the statistics show.
Since the initiative was launched in district 20 on Jan. 18 and district 34 on Feb. 17, police have issued summonses to 671 offenders and arrested 313 on more serious criminal charges — including 180 who were sought on active warrants, the stats show.
“It’s not hammers all the time, nor is it always a feather,” the source said. “But when you manage to get a guy with over a hundred arrests and in a known gang, maybe reasonable people can finally see the sense in having level-headed enforcement.”
Among the notorious career criminals picked up in the new effort was Robert Davis, 56, who has been arrested 129 times in the past, 19 of those for felonies that included nine robbery busts.
Davis, a reputed member of the Latin Kings now at Rikers Island on $3,000 bail, was stopped when cops spotted him between cars on Queens Boulevard — and was found to have at least five active warrants.
Jorge Molina, 36, has 128 arrests under his belt — 60 for felony offenses, including 52 burglary busts. Molina is now behind bars on $7,500 bail, correction department records show.
Also arrested was Kenney Mitchell, a career offender with 116 arrests, mostly for lesser crimes.
Mitchell, the youngest of the five at 28, is at Rikers on $5,000 bail.
Two others, William Watts and Pablo Colon, remain free without bail despite a string of prior arrests.
Watts, 57, has 114 prior arrests, including three for robbery and two for assault, records show.
Colon, a 56-year-old recidivist, has 103 arrests on his record, including 16 felony charges for burglary, robbery, assault and grand larceny.
The transit initiative came on the eve of Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch’s announcement of a new “Quality of Life” division last week to clamp down on aggressive panhandlers, open air drug use and vagrants in the streets and subways.
The division will be finalized in the coming months, Tisch said.
