NY’s Punch-Drunk Lefty Leaders

What kind of sicko sucker-punches a child? Better question: What kind of depraved society helps him do it? Sunday, Jean Carlos Zarzuela was nabbed for socking a 9-year-old.

Kicker: The horrifying assault might have been prevented if it hadn’t been for soft-oncrime Manhattan Judge Laurie Peterson, who let Zarzuela out without bail after he was arrested for slugging an elderly woman April 4.

That’s right: Peterson (who has a record of springing violent criminals) put him back on the streets to find his next victim.

In 2020, she sprung an accused looter who allegedly assaulted a cop, denying prosecutors’ request for $25,000 bail. In 2016, she freed a defendant accused of assaulting a woman in Manhattan and went on to allegedly slash the faces of two more women.

Peterson knows the potential consequence of releasing suspects like Zarzuela is more innocent people harmed, yet she does it anyway.

Judges like Peterson are encouraged by pols like Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who has resisted even small fixes to the disastrous no-bail law and recently claimed (preposterously) he doesn’t “believe raising penalties is ever a deterrent on crime.”

They’re turning New York into an anythinggoes, consequence-free haven for criminals — and a nightmare for everyone else.

And the rot is spreading: Over the weekend, two cops were killed in a shootout during a traffic stop near Syracuse, just weeks after the murder of NYPD Det. Jonathan Diller.

In New York, bad guys are going free, and the most vulnerable are being sacrificed on the altar of “criminal-justice reform.”

If a 9-year-old girl being assaulted won’t move New York leaders to change their ways, nothing will.

The only option left for New Yorkers: change their leaders.