An out-of-control Brooklyn woman has had a troubling string of busts over the past year, including alleged assaults on three consecutive days last week — but remained free without bail until now.
Charlena Nicholas, 29, has been charged with biting three NYPD cops, threatening someone with a Marine Corps flagpole, running over a man’s foot with her car and slugging an 80-year-old woman.
It wasn’t until her recent crime mini-spree that she was finally put behind bars.
Charlena Nicholas, 29, has a string of Brooklyn assault and menacing charges in recent months, including three alleged incidents in three days last week. Gabriella Bass“This is what happens when you’re the only state in the country that doesn’t have a dangerousness standard, allowing someone like this to fall through the cracks,” one source told The Post.
On Wednesday, Judge Masateru Marubashi finally had enough and set bail at $40,000 — $20,000 for each of her most recent alleged assaults.
Outside the courtroom, Nicholas’ grandmother said she has struggled with psychiatric issues.
“They say she’s schizophrenic or something like that,” Lynette Jameson said. “She stopped taking her medicine. She said it was making her sick. So I said, ‘There’s different types of medicine.’
Charlena Nicholas has been charged with biting cops, punching an 80-year-old woman and running over a man’s foot. Obtained by the NY Post“She wouldn’t take it. But with all she was going through, they should have given her help,” she said. “I’m not going to make excuses for her, I told her she needs to get help.”
In her recent rash of arrests, Nicholas is accused of trying to slug a 35-year-old woman on Gravesend Neck Road in Brooklyn on Feb. 27 in an unprovoked attack.
Charged with attempted assault, menacing and harassment, which are not eligible for bail in New York, she was released without bail at 11:38 a.m. Friday — only to be busted again less than four hours later, this time for allegedly slugging an 80-year-old woman on Flatbush Avenue.
The alleged unprovoked punching attack on the 80-year-old woman came on Feb. 28 on Flatbush Avenue. Obtained by the NY Post“What are you looking at?” Nicholas allegedly snapped at the woman before attacking her, police said.
Nicholas was back in handcuffs on Saturday, this time for allegedly making an antisemitic remark on a No. 3 train at an Atlantic Avenue subway station — then punching the victim in the chest.
“I think being a Nazi is cool,” she said to the Jewish victim, according to law enforcement sources. “Pretty cool. I’m a Nazi. I’m antisemitic.”
When the victim started shooting video of her verbal assault, Nicolas allegedly punched the woman.
She was arraigned in the two most recent cases on Wednesday, when she was finally held on bail.
Charlena Nicholas’ most recent arrest followed an alleged antisemitic assault on a Brooklyn subway train on Saturday. Wayne CarringtonMost of her earlier arrests failed to qualify for bail under the Empire State’s controversial 2019 criminal justice reforms, which barred judges from setting bail for most crimes.
According to sources, that includes a Sept. 12 arrest on menacing charges for allegedly threatening a staffer at Kingsborough Community College with a Marine Corps flagpole after she was told there were no free snacks available on the campus.
On Sept. 26, she was being evaluated at a medical facility when sources said she flew off the handle. When cops responded to a 911 call, Nicholas allegedly bit three of New York’s Finest.
She was charged with second-degree assault, which is eligible for bail, but the case was tossed less than a week later because the cops’ injuries weren’t serious enough, according to the sources.
But Nicholas had another scrape with the law in December in two road-rage incidents — a Dec. 16 encounter in which she punched a motorist after she nicked his car, and a Dec. 10 incident when she allegedly crashed into another car and ran over the victim’s foot when he confronted her.
Brooklyn prosecutors asked that she be held on $5,000 cash bail or a bond of up to $15,000, but the third-degree assault charge is not eligible for bail, so Nicholas was released again — until the three new arrests.
“Where’s the humanity on letting someone who demonstrated clear emotional distress — bits cops, random assaults — in letting them just go into the world?” another source said. “We need a mechanism that allows for civil commitment that’s seamlessly integrated at the point of arraignment.”
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has lead a charge against recidivism, recently meeting with Albany lawmakers for what she called a “very direct” conservation about how repeat offenders are plaguing city streets and subways.
In an address on public safety last week, the top cop called out the “unsustainable” revolving door of recidivism driving crime — and ripped city district attorneys and 2020’s controversial state bail reforms that she said put violent offenders back on the streets “over and over again.”
Cops in 2024 made the most felony arrests in 26 years, only to see suspects spat back out by the criminal justice system, she said.
“Before they can even finish that paperwork, their perp is back out on the street, immediately returned to the neighborhood and the people that they just victimized,” Tisch said at the Association for a Better New York’s “Power Breakfast” in Midtown.






