Lyndon Brown is an education advocate and president of the PTA at Thirteenth Avenue School in Newark. He was working on a conference at the school when he was carjacked on Nov. 16.

Brown also is president of the Fourth Bureau Community Precinct Council, which works to foster better communications between police and citizens. That makes what happened after the carjacking as ironic as it is inexcusable.

His 1993 Nissan Altima was recovered Nov. 18. He was told he will have to pay $842 in storage and towing fees — as of Dec. 9 — to get it back. “The police have had my car longer than the carjackers did,” he told me. “I feel like I’m being victimized twice.” He is.

Brown usually helps others navigate the problems that plague citizens in his city. When I asked, during a telephone conversation, what he would say to someone else in his position, there was silence on the other end of the phone. He had no words.

Brown does not remember much about the attack, except that two men demanded his keys. He was struck unconscious and came to with a broken nose and jaw, and an eye injury that required many stitches.

A Newark detective was assigned to his case and told Brown the car had been used to commit another crime, then recovered in North Bergen, and would be his again as soon as the Newark Police Department processed it for fingerprints and evidence. The detective went on vacation and Brown said he could not get information out of Newark. He called North Bergen police and was told Newark had not sent anyone to process the car.

Weeks went by. Brown was told to come to downtown Newark to take care of release forms. When he got there, he learned his car was still in North Bergen. It had just been processed, but remained in the Hudson County town — and that’s when he got news about the bill to get it released.

Brown put his complaint in an e-mail to Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio, and sent me a copy of DeMaio’s e-mailed response. The police director apologized and wrote, “If the delay was on the end of the NPD, we will certainly make sure that the fees are credited.” That was a week ago. As of yesterday, Brown still didn’t have his car. I’ve asked the NPD for some explanation. I was told it was coming. Haven’t heard yet.

After the e-mail exchange, Brown did get a call during which he was told that North Bergen did not notify Newark about the car until Nov. 22, so Newark could not be responsible for any claims before then. Funny thing: I called North Bergen, an official there read from a police report that said Newark — “Detective Hernandez,” the report said — was notified Nov. 18, the same day the car was recovered. There was even a note in the report that said Newark had not sent anyone to attend to the car that day — as if North Bergen expected a prompt response.

“I know the guy is overwhelmed and had to lay off a lot of police,” Brown said of DeMaio. But part of what bothers Brown is that the delay in processing his car means a delay in trying to find the people who beat him and took his property — giving them opportunity to commit yet another crime. It’s a delay that could mean those who attacked Brown have a better chance of doing their criminal two-step on someone else.

Now, I used to hear about such cases all the time, crime victims and people whose cars were stolen assessed hundreds of dollars — one tractor-trailer owner charged $11,000 — in towing and storage fees. The levy might be appropriate for someone who parks illegally, never for someone who is victimized. In 2006, the department said it would waive the fees in cases in which the NPD had to hold a car for evidence. Is Brown’s case different because another jurisdiction is involved? No.

North Bergen’s towing operation should be paid, but who should ante up? The long answer is that the police department — in this case, Newark — held up another jurisdiction, the victim and the fight against crime by not getting the processing done in short order. That should be an incentive to get things moving.

The short answer to who should pay is ... not the victim.