Third Suspect in 5 Days Escapes NYPD Custody; 2 Are At Large

A suspect escaped from police custody early yesterday morning while being guarded inside a Brooklyn hospital, police officials said. Forty-six-year-old Gregory Pollock, who police said was recaptured hours later, was the third suspect to escape in five days.

The two prisoners who escaped from police custody last week did so from separate precinct houses within a 24-hour period beginning early last Thursday morning. They are still at large.

In the wake of the escapes, a lieutenant, a detective, and a police officer have been suspended from the force and the police department is taking extra measures. Supervising officers at several Manhattan precincts yesterday made it a point at daily roll call to remind officers to be very wary of their prisoners, police sources said.

"This is a very big deal," a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Eugene O'Donnell, said. "They don't take prisoner escapes lightly. Losing your badge, your gun, or a prisoner are serious infractions."

Mr. Pollock, who was arrested on Sunday for allegedly drinking a beer in public and possessing a crack pipe, escaped from Long Island College Hospital at about 1 a. m. yesterday after allegedly assaulting the officer guarding him and running through a plate glass window, police said. The alleged assault took place moments after the unidentified officer had released one of Mr. Pollock's wrists from handcuffs so he could use the bathroom, police said.

Mr. Pollock, who was taken to the hospital from central booking after he told police he was in need of medication, allegedly fled into the streets of Carroll Gardens, police said. The officer chased Mr. Pollock but was unable to keep up with him because of the injuries he had sustained, police said.

At about 3 a.m., police spotted Mr. Pollock in the Brownsville section of the borough, across Prospect Park from where he escaped, and a foot chase ensued. Mr. Pollock was found hiding under a car on the corner of Pitkin Avenue and Herzl Street.

He is being charged with felony assault of a police officer and escape, police said.

Last Thursday, a suspect being questioned in connection with an alleged shooting, Maxie Dacosta, 27, is believed to have escaped from a window of an interrogation room in the 103rd Precinct in Jamaica, Queens, according to police. A detective, who was later suspended, had removed Mr. Dacosta's handcuffs.

The following morning at about 2:30 a.m., a 17-year-old suspect, Ezekial Edwards, is believed to have snuck out of the window of a room in the 77th Precinct in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Mr. Edwards had been handcuffed to a pole, but police told the New York Times that he was somehow able to slip out of the cuffs and escape from the unsecured room.

An investigation into the escape by the police department has led to the suspension of a lieutenant and a police officer in the precinct, police said.

While Mr. Pollock's escape marked the third in five days, the police department's head spokesman, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, pointed out that prisoners in the city are rarely able to flee police custody.

"The escapes this year compare to 275,000 arrests. That's 1/5000 of 1% of the arrest total," he said in a statement released yesterday.

Unlike the escapes last week, the officer who was guarding Mr. Pollock was doing his job and will likely not be suspended, police said.

"In the most recent escape, a police officer was attempting to control a prisoner in the always-difficult environment of a hospital," Mr. Browne said.