They Do That?

The Post reports that for about a week there alleged dirty fucker Peter Braunstein was tracked by police via his Metrocard:

Cops have been covertly tracking phone-fireman sex suspect Peter Braunstein as he slithers around the city – thanks to his Metrocard.

Authorities know exactly when and where the creepy and crafty 41-year-old scribe has used his card to board trains and buses since he became a fugitive two weeks ago.

And they know he travels only in daylight.

“He’s been walking the streets during the day, riding the subways, taking buses,” one police source said.

Braunstein entered the West Fourth Street station in the Village early last week, sources said — and the cops missed him by just two hours.

At other times, cops have come within minutes of catching him. On Friday, they were within 15 minutes of nabbing him after a tipster told them he was on the street in Chelsea, sources said.

Earlier in the week, Braunstein was reported at a Richmond Hill subway station near his mother’s Queens home, police sources said.

It’s been a typical cat-and-mouse scenario that has been repeated since Braunstein went on the lam after the twisted Halloween attack on a former fashion-magazine co-worker in Chelsea.

Does the ACLU know about this?

Detectives were hoping the fugitive journalist would make a slip-up — and he almost did. He bought the unlimited-ride MetroCard using his credit card.

The purchase automatically registered his information on the MetroCard — which was then transmitted back to a computer every time the card was swiped through a turnstile.

It enabled detectives to check every subway station to trace his travels.

But such a check takes several hours to return information to cops — meaning Braunstein was likely long gone from any station he passed through by the time detectives learned he had used the card there.

That tracking time can be cut down to several minutes, but only if cops know a specific station to which the suspect might be headed.

They could then narrow down the search to that site.

Potential crucial leads from Braunstein’s MetroCard use have since dried up, police sources said, because his unlimited card expired at some point last week.