[NEWYORK.CBSLOCAL] They call themselves street performers — costumed, anonymous and not always well behaved.As CBS 2's Dave Carlin reported, there has been a string of crimes in character. The latest alleged incident happened Friday night when a Spider-Man was arrested for allegedly groping a New Yorker, police said.
Moussa Rabaoui, 22, of Queens, is accused of grabbing a woman's breasts and backside after putting his arms around her. He was charged with misdemeanor forcible touching.
Now, the president of the Times Square Alliance is calling for regulations on costumed characters, saying they've gotten out of control.
"In the last 10 days alone, we've seen two Statues of Liberty arrested, a Spider-Man convicted of harassing a tourist, and now a third character arrested for groping a woman in Times Square," Tim Tompkins said in a statement on Saturday. "The situation is out of control and a licensing and regulatory scheme must be put in place."
It wasn't all that long ago that Times Square was a seedy area where you wouldn't want to bring your kids unless they were into peep shows. Giuliani cleaned it up, but after that everybody voted "independent" for Nanny Bloomberg and now they're back to voting the straight Tammany ticket. Tell the kids the peep shows will be back, to go with the costumed Arabs groping Mom.