MTA sees spike in reports of sexual abuse on subways

City straphangers are grabbing onto more than just poles.

With victims encouraged by police and transit officials to come forward, sex abuse complaints in the city’s transit system skyrocketed in 2015 as cops saw a rise in reports about creeps groping, molesting and grinding up against vulnerable women riders in packed subway cars, the Daily News has learned.

 

The city ended 2015 with a nearly 33% increase in sex abuse cases on the rails — from 98 in 2014 to 130, according to documents obtained by the Daily News.

There was also a 25% jump in forcible touching cases — from 272 in 2014 to 340 — and a 9.3% increase in public lewdness cases, where men are found pleasuring themselves on the train.

33 years old, NYPD Officer Randolph Holder dies after being shot in the head by gunman in East Harlem

An NYPD housing officer was killed Tuesday night, shot in the head by a trigger-happy perp during a chase and gunfight on a pedestrian overpass above the FDR Drive in East Harlem, police said.

Officer Randolph Holder, 33, was shot in the forehead by the callous gunman, who had stolen a bike and was being pursued by cops along the promenade hugging the East River around 8:30 p.m., Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said. The brave officer died at 10:22 p.m. at Harlem Hospital.

A suspect, shot in the legs, was arrested.

Holder, who emigrated from Guyana, was a third-generation police officer, following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps in the line of duty, Bratton said during a somber press conference at the hospital.