In the elevator of a Bronx housing project, two good-for-nothing punks repeatedly punched and kicked a 70-year-old woman before stealing her wallet.  Then they ran outside and tried to hail a livery cab.

But the three men in the Crown Victoria they hailed had other business: They were plainclothes officers responding to reports of the robbery.  When the officers asked the men for identification, one of them pulled out the victim’s wallet instead, the police said.  “Oh, I just found this,” he said as he handed it over, said Joanne Jaffe, chief of the police housing unit.

Not so funny:  the woman suffered a dislocated shoulder, bruised ribs and a concussion.