#NYPD cites misleading footage as excuse for inaction during teen beatdown

The NYPD used an hour-old video of cops running away from a bottle-hurling mob — and toward the scene where a teenage girl would later be thrashed in the street while dozens of officers looked on — to justify not stepping in to help the girl, The Post has learned.

The 14-year-old victim — originally listed as an 11-year-old in police reports — was attacked by a group of fellow teens just after 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the corner of Madison Avenue and E. 125th Street.

None of the more than dozen cops sitting in police vans and SUVs, as well as five nearby white-shirt supervisors, on the block did anything to intervene in the 4-minute beatdown, a Post photographer on the scene observed. The photojournalist then saw the officer get out of the cruisers after the fight.

But after a Post exclusive on the startling inaction, the department tweeted a video with no location or timestamp that showed police retreating as bottles were being hurled at them from out of frame.

“Despite one newspaper’s account, our officers who came to the assistance of an 11-year-old girl being assaulted in Harlem on Sunday did not stand by. They were met by a large crowd that hurled projectiles at them and had to reposition, then called for additional officers,” the tweet claimed.

The Post photographer observed no bottles being thrown amid the 7:30 p.m. incident — but that’s because the NYPD’s video was shot a block and a half away and at least an hour earlier.

The clip, which appears to be shot from a surveillance camera looking north on Madison Avenue at 124th Street, shows police retreat north — in the direction of 125th street, where the girl was attacked.

The Post photographer saw no bottles being thrown when he witnessed the 7:30 attack — largely because the video clip the NYPD tweeted was most likely shot between 6 and 6:30 p.m. according to a review of the chaos from videos on social media and witnesses accounts.

Videos posted online also corroborate the photographer’s account of a hands-off police response to the mob of teens.

The department did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

The fight was just one of many that broke out during a chaotic more-than two-hour ordeal where dozens of teens were running back and forth down area streets after a basketball tournament let out.

Videos posted to social media capture disorderly mobs of teens yelling and roving the streets, causing damage to cars and property — as helicopters hoover overheard and police vehicles roll through the area.

In one video a man is heard yelling at the kids to go home — complaining that “they are throwing s–t at the police, they are trying to get them to disperse.“

“They need to stop. Acting like they got no goddamn sense. They need to go home. Where are their parents?”

Another man can be heard in the video as a van rolls by, “the cops not trying to get out of their cars… it’s too much… even if they throw gas or anything.

“The cops don’t even want to get involved because if they slam someone… it’s just too much,” the man filming says.

One video shows another fight break out but it is quickly broken up by the mob of kids.

In another video, one woman gripes that cops aren’t stopping the kids.

“Look at the police not doing nothing. The police not doing nothing. The police ain’t doing s–t. They everywhere, they pushing them from one side of the street to the next side of the street. They didn’t get out and do nothing.”

“These children ain’t got no respect… “They jumping on people’s cars, denting them,” says the woman posted the video to the Citizen app showing a police van rolling by.

“Look at the police riding by doing nothing…again… again.”