Act like the Finest

Alooming police corruption trial is spotlighting evidence of damning doings by a former top cop — and a trail of entitlement of a kind still too steady for a force that now asks New Yorkers to weave cops ever deeper into their communities’ fabric. America’s best and largest police department is better than this, and shouldn’t be afraid to show it.

Philip Banks was the Police Department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer when he suddenly resigned in 2014. It turned out he had been cavorting with influence-seekers connected with a Ponzi scheme tied to a night spot popular with cops. And made hundreds of thousands of dollars on investments with one of the participants, Jona Rechnitz, who has since pleaded guilty to fraud.

But not before taking Banks to Punta Cana on a chartered jet, then escorting him around Israel with Jeremy Reichberg, a defendant in the NYPD influence scheme. Allegedly accompanying Reichberg and Rechnitz on a prostitute-stocked flight to Vegas were two other NYPD officials — one of whom, James Grant, will be tried for taking gifts and arranging police escorts and gun permits.

Banks, who’s not charged, says his investments with the crooked Rechnitz were legit. Never mind; setting the tone at the top, he plunged into business with a wheeler-dealer who plainly sought favors.

The bad behavior of one disgraced former chief of department is no comment on the current conduct of 36,000 members of the force, the vast majority of whom are upright and impervious to graft.

But in policing as in many things, perception bleeds into reality. With Mayor de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Jimmy O’Neill promising a revolution in neighborhood policing as the path to further improving public safety, they must declare zero tolerance for abuses of the public trust.

That includes abuse of police parking placards to take parking spots away from others or block bus stops or sidewalks: It corrodes NYPD credibility among New Yorkers. Follow @placardabuse on Twitter to see a carnival of such arrogance.

A stubborn insistence on protecting misconduct from prying eyes only further hurts relations.

Such as when the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association demands the New York City Bar Association rescind a report supporting a rewrite of 50-a, the state law that limits release of police personnel records, and invokes the same law to try to block release of videos from body camera footage.

And when internal disciplinary records that leak nonetheless show police remained on the force after getting caught lying, a firing offense. O’Neill says a crackdown is in progress, which is welcome, but the 50-a shield prevents the public from seeing it in action.

Responsibility in part rests on O’Neill, who has the power to release information about the outcomes of officer disciplinary proceedings but insists his hands are tied.

Over decades, New York’s police have been brilliant in driving down crime. In recent years, they’ve done it while stopping, questioning and frisking far fewer young black and Latino men — and exercising historic restraint in the use of force.

It’s a record to celebrate, if only the NYPD would get out of its own way.