oh brooklyn

Dozens of NYPD Detectives Searching for 5 Kids Who Might Have Planted Those White Flags on the Brooklyn Bridge

Photo: DNAinfo/Janet Upadhye

How many detectives does it take to catch a group of flag-planting miscreants? About three dozen, the NYPD hopes. With members of its homicide, counter-terrorism, and intelligence units working the case, the department has identified some prime suspects in the great Brooklyn Bridge white-flag switch of 2014. But right now they’re known only by nicknames, and the NYPD dream team doesn’t sound very confident that these are even their perps. “We have no good images of these guys on cameras … None of the footage captures the perpetrators of this crime,” a police source told the New York Post.

But the Daily News has more details on the supposed suspects, described as a group of men in “their late teens or early 20s.” One them was seen carrying a skateboard. The group was captured on video some 20 minutes before the flag exchange went down at 3:30 in the morning on Tuesday.

Even with those dudes at the top of the list, police are pursuing other possibilities, including construction workers with access to the bridge and workers who put fireworks on the bridge for July 4 festivities. They’re also leaving open the possibility that the next move of flag-planting skaters will be blowing the bridge to smithereens. As a police source told the Daily News, “Suppose it was a dry run for terrorism, just to see how good the security is?”

Dozens of Detectives Searching for 5 Kids