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NEW YORK — Cookie Monster stands accused of shoving a 2-year-old. Super Mario was charged with groping a woman. And Elmo was booked for berating tourists with anti-Semitic slurs.

Times Square is crawling with entrepreneurs who dress up as pop-culture characters and try to make a few bucks posing for photos with visitors to the big city. But some of these characters are unlike anything you’ve seen on “Sesame Street” or at Disney World.

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They smoke, they use foul language, and they can be aggressive. At least three of them have been arrested in the past seven months.

“He was using words that were really bad,” said Parmita Kurada of Stamford, Conn., who told police she got into a dispute this week with a man in a Cookie Monster costume who demanded $2 for posing with her 2-year-old son, Samay.

Kurada said that when she told the Cookie Monster that her husband needed to get cash, the shaggy blue creature pushed the boy and began calling her and the child obscene names.