Surveillance cameras caught a rapist on camera again, and, again, the police have failed to catch him.

A 19-year-old woman was raped at knifepoint inside the Van Dyke houses in Brooklyn early Thursday – a housing complex with more than 200 cameras supposedly monitored around the clock by the NYPD.

Sources told the Daily News that at least one video camera recorded the rapist grabbing the young woman and pulling her into an elevator.

The suspect hustled the young woman out of the elevator and raped her in a stairwell landing of the Brownsville complex, sources said. The actual sexual assault was not caught on video, police said.

So, the woman was grabbed and forced into a stairwell, yet the police failed to recognize, or even see, that this was unusual behavior.  Worse yet, there are no cameras in the stairwells.  If this place is such a problem that they need 200 cameras monitoring the area, why are the stairwells not covered?

The police response was that, even if they saw it happen, the rape still would have occurred before they could arrive.  This is even worse when you consider that this same man is a suspect in a rape that occurred in the complex on March 6th.  While that is a horrible thought, you surely can dispatch some officers to catch the guy either in the act or as he’s trying to flee.  Instead, they did nothing.  Nothing!

In both cases, the man wielded a knife and dragged his victim to a stairway landing. Both times he made similar threats, saying, “Don’t scream, don’t fight or I’ll stab you,” sources said.

The 30-year-old victim told police she recognized the man from the neighborhood, which is why her guard was down.

What horrified residents was that in both cases, the rapist, if not the violent attack, was caught on video. The suspect who raped the woman March 6 was on camera for nearly 30 minutes, sources said.

The police also claim that the pictures flash once every 7 seconds and that the work is tedious and mind numbing.  If this has you horrified, it gets even better….or worse if you actually live in this place.

The video monitors are staffed mostly by cops who are on medical leave or face disciplinary action and cannot carry a weapon.

So, the citizens have it ingrained into them that they police are there to protect them and that they shouldn’t dare carry a weapon to protect themselves.  Then, at least two rapes have been caught on tape and nothing is done about it.

These officers who are facing disciplinary actions probably aren’t the most attentive at their jobs.  However, because they still need to be paid while reviews of their actions are underway, they are placed in supposedly non-threatening jobs.  They don’t want to be there, so they do their jobs half-assed, yet the public is reassured that they are being protected.  New York needs to loosen their overly tight restriction on weapons and let the people start protecting themselves again.  Then we’ll see just how many rapists wander this housing complex.

EDIT: The police have nabbed a suspect.