NYPD sleaze

Former Police Commissioner Howard Safir will not be charged for backing his Cadillac Escalade into a pregnant woman in the Upper East Side and then driving away.

But his victim is kicking up a fuss.

Ms. Valarezo said in a telephone interview on Friday night that she was on a break from her job at a doctor's office and had gone to buy socks for her unborn child when she was hit. "I was crossing the street in between cars and he hit reverse, and his female passenger screamed, 'Are you not looking, there's someone there,' and as he was reversing, he hit me on my shoulder and my knee and the side of my stomach," she said.

Then he started to drive away, she said. "I confronted him and I said, 'I'm pregnant. Did you not see?' And he just disregarded that and kept going," she said. She said if the passenger had not screamed, causing her to turn, she would been hurt more seriously.

Knowingly leaving the scene of an incident, whether or not it involves personal injury, is, of course, against the law in New York State. All we know of Safir's version is that he told investigators he was unaware he had hit anyone as he maneuvered his double-parked Escalade on Third Avenue. That was apparently good enough for NYPD, at least initially.

Valarezo said she was "very upset" that Safir won't face criminal charges. "It's not right, because he is a human being like anyone else, and he left the scene of a crime."