City will let ‘petty’ fugitives off hook

“Broken Windows” is getting smashed to pieces.

Starting next month, the city is tossing 700,000 old warrants seeking arrest for low-level crimes such as public urination, sources said, reversing decades of strict enforcement.

Mayor de Blasio, the NYPD and four of the city’s five district attorneys have signed off on the plan, which would apply only to warrants older than 10 years, according to a spokeswoman for City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who has pushed for the amnesty.

But de Blasio’s Republican challenger, Nicole Malliotakis, argued that the scheme would encourage more scofflaws.

“What is the deterrent then for individuals to not commit quality-of-life crimes?” she fumed. “There’s no criminal penalty and now there’s going to be a civil pen- alty that’s not enforced.”

The soon-to-be-tossed warrants were issued over the years mostly against people who failed to appear in court after being slapped with summonses for infractions such as public urination, littering and various subway offenses.

Citywide, there are more than 1.5 million such outstanding warrants, Manhattan DA Cy Vance Jr. said in March. The city will not forgive quality-of-life warrants if an individual also has an active felony warrant, he said.

The plan was ripped by law-enforcement unions and the only district attorney to oppose the plan.

“I believe that issuing blanket amnesty . . . is unfair to those citizens who responsibly appear in court,” said Staten Island DA Michael McMahon.

Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins said he was “baffled” by the plan.

“We’re softer on all these crimes,” he said. “Now we’re just going to vacate warrants for people who didn’t show up in court. It’s almost selective prosecution for people who paid their warrants and went to court, took days off work.”

Detectives’ Endowment Association President Michael Palladino added, “My fear is that someone may be victimized by a criminal who got a pass.”

The amnesty program is the latest instance of the de Blasio administration moving away from the NYPD’s “Broken Windows” method of policing, which assumes that aggressive efforts to halt minor infractions lead to a drop in major crimes.

Last summer, the mayor signed the council’s controversial Criminal Justice Reform Act, which decriminalizes quality-of-life infractions.