Commemorative coin marks NYPD rookie Vera Mekuli’s lap dance at boozy holiday bash

This lap dance was a gold-medal performance.

A commemorative “challenge coin” was made to mark rookie NYPD officer Vera Mekuli’s infamous caught-on-video lap dance for a married lieutenant at the 44th Precinct’s 2021 holiday party.

One side of the coin says “NYPD XXX-Mas Party 2021” and “Cumming home late” with an image of two women who look to be strippers in Santa hats. The other side says “Rookie of the Year” and “In the Line of Booty” — a ripoff of The Post’s headline about the boozy bash — with the image of a stripper.

Photos of the coin were seen by The Post. It is unclear who produced it and whether it was being sold and for how much.

Such collectible coins are made to represent police precincts or divisions, depict an inside joke or mark an event such as the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. An NYPD Counterterrorism Division coin for the anniversary recently sold on eBay for $29.

“Usually they’re done tastefully,” said Michael Alcazar, a retired NYPD detective who is now an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “I would think this would be embarrassing and insulting to other police officers, especially a female police commissioner.”

Alcazar added that the lap dance coin was “undermining the hard work of female police officers. It’s pretty horrible. You’ve got your first female commissioner and this whole thing is happening under her administration.”

Mekuli, 27, did not respond to a request for comment about the coin.

She has hardly shied away from the limelight. She posted a provocative photo shoot on her Instagram page last month dressed in a skimpy costume as comic villainous Harley Quinn. She then giggled as she showed off a copy of The Post with her photo in it.

In her latest Instagram post, which was dated Thursday, Mekuli is posing in her NYPD uniform. She captioned it “Hold up wait a minute… y’all thought i was finished?” She added a smiling face emoji with a hand over its mouth.

Mekuli was suspended in May for making a scene over a relative’s drunk driving arrest in New Jersey. But she is still assigned to the 44th Precinct in the Bronx, the NYPD said earlier this month.

The department did not respond to a request for comment about the challenge coin.