Prosecutors yesterday began picking apart accused “rape cop” Kenneth Moreno’s tale of chaste chivalry — accusing him of taking advantage of “that drunk, helpless girl,” and even of “making stuff up” on the witness stand.

After a day and a half of Moreno’s testimony, during which he painted himself as a sympathetic, reformed-alcoholic ear and “counselor” to a drunk young fashion executive whom he and his partner helped stumble from a cab up to her East Village apartment, it was prosecutor Coleen Balbert’s turn to question the man accused of raping the woman while on duty.

“So you could go back there and take advantage of that drunk, helpless girl — that’s why you made that fake 911 call, didn’t you?” asked him at one point during her increasingly combative cross-examination of Moreno, who earlier in the day finished his direct testimony.

The prosecutor was referring to Moreno having admittedly called 911 from a pay phone on the night of his alleged, on-duty rape of the intoxicated woman, calling in a false report so that he and his partner could return there on duty.

“You’re a New York City police officer,” Balbert railed. “You didn’t think of that when you picked up the phone and made that call?”

“I was also a human being,” Moreno insisted, his hackles clearly rising. “I’m not a machine.”

Moreno is accused of raping the then-Gap exec as she was drifting in and out of an alcohol-induced haze. His partner, Officer Franklin Mata, is also accused in the rape for allegedly acting as a lookout. Sidewalk surveillance video caught them making three return visits to her on that predawn morning in December 2008.

Moreno has already admitted he gave himself cover for the first of those return visits by claiming to be “John Edwards” from Canada reporting a “homeless guy” sleeping in a vestibule three doors down from the woman’s East 13th Street address when he called 911.

“I was thinking about [the alleged victim],” Moreno protested, appearing irked and insisting that as a recovering alcoholic himself, he merely wanted to help the woman through her rough night. “I just wanted to let her know that I was going to be there.”

The 13-year NYPD veteran appeared at times to loose his cool under Balbert’s repetitive, jackhammer attack.

“She wasn’t vomiting constantly!” Moreno was reduced to protesting at one point, apparently irked by one lengthy line of vomit-related questioning. “It’s not like ‘The Exorcist.’ She wasn’t a fountain.”

laura.italiano@nypost.com

