NEW YORK — For Gina Ferraraccio, like many women in this city, the experience is all too common.
She's on a subway car during rush hour, crammed up against fellow passengers, when she feels a man getting closer than necessary -- sometimes surreptitiously groping her from behind.
Ferraraccio, a 25-year-old lingerie saleswoman, said she often turns and yells at the perpetrator to stop.
"But mostly, I just try not to stand next to creepy-looking guys," she said with a sigh as she waited on a platform for her downtown train on a recent evening. "I don't know if there's anything else that can be done."
Lewd public behavior -- especially in the cramped confines of a subway car -- has long been regarded as a quotidian hassle of New York living. But lately there are signs that the city is no longer taking it in stride, with the police and citizens turning their attention to exposing the culprits.
In the last few months, the New York Police Department has orchestrated undercover stings -- including one called "Operation Exposure" -- to catch gropers and flashers in the act.
This year, police have made 245 arrests for forcible touching, lewd behavior or sexual abuse on the subways -- an increase of 131% over last year.
Assistant Chief James Hall, commanding officer of the NYPD's transit bureau, launched the enforcement effort this spring after noticing an increase in harassment complaints from female riders.
"When you talk to women, you'd be amazed how many of them have had this happen to them," Hall said. "This is almost part of their daily commute.
"To me, it's a really big quality-of-life issue," he added. "Certainly, you have to have priorities when you're in law enforcement. Graffiti is bad, vandalism is bad. But these are women who are just trying to get to work, and they shouldn't be subjected to this."
With subway crime down overall this year -- a 19% drop over last year -- the transit bureau has been able to devote more resources to targeting lewd behavior, and now regularly deploys plainclothes officers onto the trains to look for gropers and flashers. In some cases, men have been caught after fondling female officers posing as businesswomen.
"They are put out there in what we would consider normal attire," Hall said.
Women have been fighting back on their own as well, posting cellphone-snapped photos of offenders on a website devoted to outing the perpetrators.
