

NYPD cops who are tired of quality-of-life offenders are taking matters into their own hands by posting pictures of vagrants online.

The Sergeants Benevolent Association is urging members, their families and friends to snap photos of the city’s homeless to document its decline.

“As you travel about the city of New York, please utilize your smartphones to photograph the homeless lying in our streets, aggressive panhandlers, people urinating in public or engaging in open-air drug activity, and quality-of-life offenses of every type,” says the letter from SBA President Ed Mullins.

According to the NY Post, snapshots already uploaded on the photo-sharing site Flickr show panhandlers approaching cars, someone sleeping on pizza boxes outside a park and others slumped on sidewalks with cups and signs begging for handouts.

Mullins writes in the letter that while cops are prohibited from taking pictures of members of the public while on duty, “photos may be taken while traveling to and from work or any time off duty.”

While the city council has been pushing a plan to decriminalize low-level offenses like public urination– for which only a summons would be issued – NYPD Chief Bratton disagrees, saying these offenses lead to more serious crimes.

Mullins says he decided to spearhead this effort after two years of “failed policies, more homeless encampments on city streets, a 10 percent increase in homicides, and the diminishing of our hard-earned and well-deserved public perception of the safest large city in America.”