Female News 12 Anchors Harassed

A Long Island, N.Y., man was arraigned Friday on charges that he made hundreds of threatening and sexually suggestive telephone calls to female reporters and anchors at News 12 Long Island, AP reported.

Carmen Monaco Jr., 48, who worked at a trucking company, allegedly began making calls to the Cablevision Systems Corp.-owned cable network in 1996, but police told AP they became more frequent in the past nine months.

Monaco was charged with three counts of third-degree stalking and eight counts of second-degree aggravated harassment. Bail was set at $105,000, and he was ordered not to have contact with the network or its reporters, Katie Grilli-Robles, a spokeswoman at the Nassau County district attorney's office, told AP.

News 12 is “grateful to the Nassau County Police Department for its tireless and professional attention to this matter,” network spokeswoman Deborah Koller-Feeney said in a prepared statement.