NYC cops accused of storing bodies in transit worker break rooms

Commuters wait to ride New York City Subway in New York, December 12, 2013. (REUTERS/Eric Thayer)

Stand clear of the dead bodies.

“Leaking” corpses of people killed by subway trains are often brought to employee lunch rooms and other break areas inside stations, disgusted union officials and sources said on Monday.

In an effort to restore service quickly, bodies are simply carted off to “whatever room happens to be nearest,” a union source told The Post.

“If a lunch room is the nearest, they’ll put it in the lunch room,” the source said.

And that’s enough to make transit workers lose their lunch.

LaShawn Jones, 52, who has been a station agent for 18 years, said she was coming into work at the 103rd Street 1 train station about five years ago — and made a quick stop in the employee bathroom when she saw some NYPD Emergency Service Unit officers handling a body inside.

“They weren’t aware that I was coming in and I wasn’t aware that they were in there,” Jones told The Post. “All I remember seeing was a black bag with purplish stuff.”

An MTA source said that bodies are temporarily kept in non-public areas by the NYPD while they wait for the Medical Examiner to show up.

In a statement, an MTA spokesperson said that “it’s of the utmost importance” that anyone who dies in the subway system is removed from the tracks and platforms as fast as possible “to restore service quickly and to give humane treatment to the deceased and their family.”

A City Hall spokeswoman said in a statement that the ME’s office and the NYPD, “are committed to reducing our response times even further to ensure both the humane treatment of the deceased and the health of subway workers and straphangers.”