Leading Backward on Crime

Mayor de Blasio just announced his latest step backward on crime: “We’re taking the Obama Foundation pledge” . . . to put more handcuffs on cops.

With shootings in 2020 already exceeding recent totals for entire years, de Blasio released his plan to meet the Obama call for reducing police use of force — even though the NYPD set the national standard for minimal force even before he took office.

Among the gimmicks: a proposed new “matrix” for cop discipline, with added penalties for violations ranging from the use of chokeholds to failing to activate bodycams to leaking information to the media. Punishments range from loss of vacation days to suspensions or terminations.

Yet, as Police Commissioner Dermot Shea noted, the Blue Ribbon Panel acknowledged that “the NYPD has a strong discipline system” already

“It’s not perfect, but it’s strong, and we do a lot of things well,” Shea said.

And what besieged residents from the South Bronx to Southeast Queens to BedStuy to the Upper West Side really need now is for cops to stop looking over their shoulders so they can do their jobs and quell the rising disorder on city streets.

On Sunday night, a hundred guys on illegal dirt bikes roared up and down Broadway in Manhattan for hours — with no cops in sight the entire time. (You could hear the bikers gathering beforehand in The Bronx, too.)

This weekly annoyance is just one more quality-of-life offense that’s going unpunished — signaling to every potential wrongdoer that the NYPD isn’t on the job.

Gang-bangers shooting kids at a cookout on a summer evening in a city park. Sexual assaults in the subway. Mentally ill homeless exposing themselves to kids in the street.

Those are the threats New Yorkers need their mayor to confront — instead of posturing to the Black Lives Matter crew or currying favor with an out-of-town foundation.

Honor your oath of office, sir: Protect the public.