A Painful Price To Pay

Sow the wind, they say, and reap the whirlwind. That is, empower criminals and New York City will suffer. As did Davide Giri, a 30-year-old native of Italy and a Columbia University PhD candidate who was randomly knifed to death just off campus Thursday night. It was a senseless crime that terrified the neighborhood and now shames the city before the world.

Is it the new normal? Would Giri be alive today if New York’s political class hadn’t abandoned the policies and practices that had kept the city safe for two decades? Perhaps yes, on both counts.

But this much is certain: New York set out deliberately two-plus years ago to disconnect punishment from crime — “reforming” bail, hobbling prosecutors, emptying jails and prisons and otherwise empowering criminals at the expense of the innocent.

Innocents like Davide Giri. And criminals like his alleged assassin, 25-year-old parolee Vincent Pinkney — who police say is a member of the Every Body Killas street gang with a long criminal record.

Giri was fatally attacked around 11 p.m. Thursday, and a second man was stabbed moments later, also allegedly by Pinkney — who police suspect in a third assault Wednesday night. It all took place in a notso-long-ago peaceful neighborhood that has seen a 27 percent increase in serious assaults this year alone.

That, of course, is just one more frightening statistic in a city now beset by violent crime — so much so that Bank of America wants its Wall Street-area workforce to dress down when they come to work so as not to attract muggers and other criminals.

What a corrosive, if necessary, message to send when pandemic-battered businesses all over town are coaxing their employees to come back to the office.

Yes, tourism — a vital element in the city’ economy — is picking up.

But Giri, again, was an Italian national, as was the second man knifed Thursday night, a tourist in town for all of one day. He’s going to survive, but you can bet that the attacks will be noticed overseas.

There is, of course, much more involved here than downtown dress codes and the tourist trade, as economically critical as it is.

Mayor-elect Adams has promised to make crime reduction a priority, but he’ll be squaring off against a City Council and state Legislature committed to continuing — indeed, expanding — the policies that brought the city to its current sad state. He’s going to be pushing a big rock up a steep hill.

So root for him as if the city’s future depends on him winning that battle. Because it does.