Behavior is located on West 27th Street, just north of Chelsea and the Flatiron District. It’s not generally considered a dangerous neighborhood, as evidenced by the several luxury high-rise apartment buildings that have been built here recently. And yet, we were made aware today that there have been two very recent rapes within five minutes walk from our offices, both thought to have been committed by the same suspect, and one of them happening on 27th Street itself. (As reported by The New York Times here.)This obviously raised a bit of concern with us, and we’re exercising added caution in our building and while leaving the premises at night. I did a search on the Web for news of these events, and saw that New York Newsday reported that the NYPD had released a photo of the suspect just yesterday.

But the Web edition of the story carried no accompanying image. Okay. So I decided to search the NYPD’s Web Site — I defy anyone else to find that photo before midnight tonight. From what I can tell, it simply isn’t there.

What’s going on here? I can perhaps understand if the NYPD’s budget is too restrictive for keeping their Web site up-to-the-minute, but there don’t seem to be any other suspected rapists on this site, only suspected murderers. And neither the New York Times nor Newsday are blameless either; how hard can it be to make that image available? Has the Web been so subsumed by commercial interests that these sites can’t provide this basic a public service?