Police are searching for a man accused of aggressively slamming and damaging a door at the NYPD's 40th Precinct station house in Melrose, a confrontation with the building itself that happened last month and left no one hurt but still has detectives asking the public for help identifying him.
The incident took place on September 15 at 567 East 149th Street, according to News 12 Long Island, which reported that the man slammed the precinct door aggressively enough to cause damage. Detectives estimated the cost of the damage at up to $250, per the outlet, and police said no one was hurt during the incident.
That dollar figure matters more than it might seem. Under New York Penal Law, intentionally damaging property valued up to $250 is Fourth-Degree Criminal Mischief, a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, according to Saland Law. Cross that $250 line, and the charge becomes Third-Degree Criminal Mischief, a Class E felony carrying up to four years in state prison. The detective estimate cited in the case sits right at that statutory boundary, meaning the eventual charge, if the man is identified and arrested, hinges on exactly where the final damage assessment lands.
A High-Profile Target in the South Bronx
The station house itself is not an ordinary precinct building. The 45,260-square-foot facility, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group at a cost of $85 million, opened in November 2024 as the first NYPD station house built with a dedicated public community room, according to Architectural Record. It replaced a cramped, roughly 10,000-square-foot precinct house that had served the neighborhood since 1923, making the new Melrose building something of a symbol for the department's investment in the South Bronx.
The 40th Precinct covers Mott Haven, Melrose, and Port Morris, a dense stretch of the South Bronx with a heavy concentration of public housing and active commercial corridors along streets like East 138th and East 149th, per Wikipedia. It is also one of the busiest commands in the city by certain measures: NYPD CompStat figures through late July showed the precinct logged 210 year-to-date robbery complaints, the highest total of any single precinct in New York City, even though that figure marked a 17% drop from 2025.
Mixed Crime Trends in the Precinct
Other CompStat data paints a complicated picture of safety trends around the station house. Shooting incidents in the 40th Precinct fell 8.3% year-to-date compared to 2025, but felony assault complaints rose 8% to 869 reported incidents over the same stretch, according to NYPD figures released in October. Citywide, burglaries dropped 13.9% year-to-date compared to 2025, with the Bronx accounting for nearly half of the city's overall reduction in major crime during the first half of the year.
The precinct has also been at the center of broader operational shifts. In April, the NYPD announced it would restaff the former 40th Precinct station house at 257 Alexander Avenue as headquarters for the newly created Patrol Borough Bronx South, adding roughly 200 officers to commands across the South Bronx, Hoodline previously reported.
How Police Are Pursuing the Case
Comparable cases involving damage to police property suggest how aggressively such incidents can be charged once a suspect is identified. In a September case elsewhere in New York, a suspect who repeatedly kicked and damaged a police vehicle door panel ended up facing multiple counts of criminal mischief along with obstruction charges, according to the Daily Voice. Whether the man accused in the Melrose door-damage case will face similar stacked charges remains to be seen, since he has not yet been identified or arrested.
The NYPD is leaning on its Crime Stoppers Program to help crack the case. The program, a public-private partnership between the department and the New York City Police Foundation, offers anonymous tips that can lead to rewards of up to $3,500 if they result in an arrest and indictment. Anyone with information about the man accused of damaging the precinct door is asked to call the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS.
