By John Annese
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — An Occupy City Hall protester who tried to cut an NYPD van’s brake line and committed COVID relief fraud was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in federal prison.
Jeremy Trapp, 26, of Brooklyn, told a paid NYPD confidential informant in July 2020 that he wanted to burn NYPD precincts and cut the brake lines of police vehicles, and later that month he made good on one of those desires, according to federal prosecutors.
As the informant and NYPD officers watched, he crawled under a police van at Fourth Ave. and 42nd St. in Sunset Park on July 17, 2020, and cut what turned out to be the van’s “wheel speed sensor.”
Even though it wasn’t the brake line, the damage still could have caused havoc on the street. “The damage done by the defendant affected the vehicle’s stopping power and maneuverability,” federal prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.
Brooklyn Federal Court Judge William Kuntz sentenced him at a hearing Wednesday.
In addition to hating cops, Trapp also had no love for his neighbors on typically pro-police, Republican-leaning Staten Island. He told the informant he wanted to burn down the Verrazzano Bridge so “white supremacists” from the borough couldn’t cross into Brooklyn, the feds said.
When authorities seized his phone, they found evidence he lied about owning a car wash to get a $42,500 loan and a $10,000 grant from COVID-19 relief funds.
Trapp was locked up for five months after his arrest. His lawyer, Ashley Burell, asked for time served, stating that his client is autistic, suffers from mental illnesses and was coaxed into cutting the brake line by the informant.
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