Lawyer Nabbed Taping Colleagues

An attorney from Queens who worked for Manhattan Legal Aid was charged last week with aiming a camcorder disguised as a clock at female co-workers to catch images of the women as they changed in and out of their courthouse attire.

Peter Barta, 32, was busted after police found the images of the women in various stages of undress on a computer they seized from his Kew Gardens home, authorities said.

Sources said Barta targeted young prosecutors in Legal Aid offices at Church and Thomas Streets in Manhattan. Many of the women were new Legal Aid lawyers who changed from their business suits for after-work visits to gyms, the sources said.

Barta purchased the surveillance "clock" from a Sharper Image catalog and placed it in the office facing the desks of female employees, the sources said.

The women were alerted to the taping when one woman spotted a Sharper Image ad featuring the camera clock, the sources said. The women took a close look at the device, popped out its computer memory card and downloaded images of themselves.

The women alerted their supervisors, who placed their own hidden camera on the clock and waited to nab the culprit.

Barta was busted when the Legal Aid camera caught him taking the camera clock out of the office. He faces up to four years in prison on felony charges of unlawful surveillance, prosecutors said.

Barta, a graduate of prestigious Stuyvesant H.S. in Manhattan and Georgetown Law School in Washington, D.C., resigned his position immediately after his arrest. He could also be disbarred for his actions, authorities said.- Liz Goff