It was a trial that bared some anxieties that run just below the city’s surface: the weakness of a drunken memory; the vulnerability of ordinary residents to abuse from the powerful, especially in a police uniform. For nearly two months, New Yorkers followed a courtroom drama that held all the fascination of a television crime series, with intimate sexual detail and a haunting void at its center into which they could project their own fears or anger.

Those emotions poured forth with surprising gusto when a variety of New Yorkers, from civil servants to night-life denizens, were asked about the acquittal on Thursday of two police officers accused in the rape of a woman they had been called to help get home to her East Village apartment after she had been spent a night out celebrating a job promotion.

Some people talked eagerly about a topic they seemed to have mulled for weeks; others chose every word, carefully moderating emotions that included outrage, cynicism and resignation at what some called business as usual.

“It’s scary because I feel there are less and less people you can trust,” said Erin Walsh, 31, an English teacher who lives in Astoria, Queens. “It’s hard to wrap my brain around the situation. People in positions of power should do the right thing.”