The Manhattan District Attorney will not be prosecuting the NYPD cops who were caught on video pepper-spraying and punching Occupy Wall Street protesters, the DA’s office announced on Friday.

The cops in question are two Deputy Inspectors, Anthony Bologna and Johnny Cardona.

In video footage that surfaced in late 2011, Bologna was seen liberally pepper-spraying a seemingly calm crowd in Union Square on September 24, and Cardona was captured punching a protester named Felix Rivera-Pitre in the face in the Financial District on October 14.

Bologna was reportedly docked 10 vacation days, and Cardona was cleared by the department.

According to a law enforcement source, the decision not to prosecute was based on evidence involving the time before and after the video recordings, which reportedly called into question the criminality of the officers’ actions.

“After a thorough investigation … we cannot prove these allegations criminally beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Manhattan DA chief spokeswoman Erin Duggan.

Roy Richter, Captains Endowment Association President praised the decision to the Daily News, and hailed Cardona as “a true victim of the [Occupy Wall Street] fiasco.” Cardona needed hip- and knee-replacement surgery due to injuries sustained during a demonstration.

Richter also said that Bologna “did nothing that rises to the level of criminal conduct.”

Ron Kuby, an attorney who pressed for assault charges on behalf of victims in both cases, condemned the DA’s decision, particularly in light of the office taking ”almost 19 months to decide he would do nothing.”

“Despite the overwhelming proof on videotape, seen around the world, Cy Vance Jr. has shown that he will do nothing to disturb his cozy relationship with the police, even in the face of the clearest wrongdoing,” Kuby complained to the Daily News.

Duggan pointed out to Metro that the DA’s Office has prosecuted more than a dozen police officers since 2010.

Among those are an NYPD Lieutenant David Chee, who pleaded guilt to making harassing phone calls in January 2011, NYPD Officer Shawn Jenkins who conspired to burglarize an apartment where a drug kingpin had hidden a large amount of money, and NYPD Sergeant Williams Eiseman, who pleaded guilty to perjury for lying under oath and conducting illegal searches and seizures.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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The murder trial of David Tarloff, accused of killing psychologist Kathyrn Faughey on February 12, 2008, was ruled a mistrial today, as the jury informed the presiding judge, Justice Edward McLaughlin, that they were at a deadlock.

Tarloff, who is a diagnosed schizophrenic, attacked the Upper East Side psychologist five years ago in the office she shared with his former psychiatrist, Kent Shinbach, who had not treated him in 17 years.

The jury had previously insisted they were at a deadlock on two separate occasions, and both times McLaughlin directed them to continue deliberating.

On Tuesday, however, McLaughlin announced, “I’m willing to say we’re finished,” the New York Times reported.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has already vowed to retry the case.

If convicted, Tarloff would face up to life in prison. If the insanity defense is accepted, he would be taken to a secure psychiatric facility, possibly for the rest of his life.

The attack

Court-appointed defense attorneys did not challenge that Tarloff killed Faughey, but maintained that he was not mentally well enough on the day of the attack to comprehend that it was wrong.

Tarloff has been in psychiatric care intermittently since 1991.

Evan Krutoy, an attorney at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, said the robbery was meticulously pre-meditated, and that the fact that Tarloff attempted to hide what he had done and escape proved he knew he had done something wrong.

Tarloff intended to rob Shinbach for money to take his mother from a nursing home to Hawaii, where he wanted to care for her himself.

The defense argued that he believed God wanted him to do it.

Tarloff reportedly told police that he was surprised to see Faughey when he arrived at the office.

He beat her in the head with a mallet and stabbed her repeated in the chest with a knife.

When Shinbach went to help Faughey, Tarloff attacked him as well.

Faughey died on her office floor.

Deadlock

After listening to three weeks of testimony at the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the jury was unable to come to a conclusive decision on the insanity defense.

Jurors sent McLaughlin notes on two separate occasions insisting they were deadlocked; the judge ordered them to keep on both times.

The first note, sent last Thursday, was seven days into jury deliberations. The Times reported that yelling could be heard anytime the door to the jury room door opened.

At that time, McLaughlin read the jury an Allen charge: a script directing them to continue deliberating and set aside opinions held for pride or other unsound reasons.

Jurors were reportedly visibly angry; some even rolled their eyes.

McLaughlin expressed empathy over the difficulty of the task.

But, he said, “it was not intended to be any other way.”

Forensic psychologist, lawyer and professor Charles Ewing told the Times he was surprised that cases involving insanity defenses didn’t result in hung juries more often, as the jurors are charged with the challenge of gauging the testimony of conflicting experts.

“A hung jury may simply mean that the jurors could not agree on the morality of punishing someone who is clearly mentally ill, regardless of whether he meets the high legal standard for insanity,” Ewing explained.

The jury had at one point asked to have expert testimony reread, and spent almost a full day hearing expert opinions for a second time.

They had also previously asked McLaughlin to repeat his explanations of the requirements to prove insanity, and of the consequences of hung jury.

One juror had asked to go home on account of “negative attitudes” among the other jurors. She ultimately stayed.

To prove insanity, it is not enough for the defendant to have been under psychiatric care for a lifetime; the jury must be persuaded that Tarloff did not understand that his actions would kill Faughey and that it was wrong to attack her.

The Times pointed out that this defense is used very infrequently: out of 5,910 murder cases in New York state in the past decade, only seven defendants have been found at trial not responsible for reason of mental disease or defect.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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63 members of three of Manhattan’s most violent gangs were indicted today, announced Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly.

The rival street gangs, known as Air It Out, True Money Gang, and Whoadey, have battled for control of an area in East Harlem, spanning from 106 Street to 116 Street and 5th Avenue to 3rd Avenue, since at least 2009. They are responsible for at least three murders and more than 30 shootings.

They have also been responsible for numerous assaults and nabbed on possession and trafficking of firearms. They are being charged now with conspiracy in the first degree, which is a Class A felony. Additional charges are for conspiracy in the second, third and fourth degree, assault, criminal possession of a weapon, and attempted gang assault in the first.

The conspiracy charges are based on conspiracies to commit murder in the second degree.

Between October 2009 and March 2013, True Money Gang and Whoadey banded together against Air It Out to protect territory and avenge shootings and murders.

According to the indictments, the gang members used hundreds of Facebook and Twitter posts and direct messages, text messages, cell phone videos, and calls made from Rikers Correctional Facility to plot the deaths of rival gang members.

Social media and prison phone calls apparently were also used to traffic firearms and ammunition, and give warnings about law enforcement.

The indictments come after a three and a half year long investigation led by the DA’s Trial Division and Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit, as well as the NYPD’s Gang Division.

Since the DA established a Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit, there have been 10 indictments charging 11 different gangs.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Two men have been charged with kidnapping a woman and forcibly prostituting her for two days until she finally escaped by jumping out of a six-story window, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Benjamin Gaston, 36, and Johnny Jackson, 53, have been indicted for raping and sexually assaulting a prostituted woman who they held captive for two days in November.

Gaston brought the victim, 28, to Jackson’s apartment on West 92nd Street around 4 a.m. on Nov. 13. She was then robbed, raped and forced to have sex with multiple men. She called 911 from a phone in the apartment but was not able to relay her location to police.

On the next evening, Gaston brought the woman to another apartment on West 149th Street where several men were waiting. She was locked in the bedroom and told she would be forced to have sex with each of the men. The woman then tried to escape through a window and ended up falling six stories, breaking bones in her back, leg and arm.

“The facts of this crime are truly heinous – these defendants are accused of holding a woman hostage in order to essentially enslave and prostitute her,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. “They are also charged with raping and sexually assaulting her, making her so fearful for her life that she tried to escape from a sixth-floor window.”

The men are charged with kidnapping, rape and sex trafficking, among other charges.

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