THE NEWS SAYS

The numbers are alarming. It’s time to give the Police Department the tools to fight gun crime.

The NYPD is “struggling with homicides and shootings,” the chief of the department admitted on Monday in an ominous appraisal of public safety in New York. Memory fails to recall a similar admission of strategic uncertainty by the police force that led the global way in driving down crime.

Something has changed. Perhaps it was the virtual abolition of the tactic of stopping, questioning and frisking individuals suspected of criminality. The tale will be told in whether bloodshed ebbs or continues to flow.

James O’Neill, the NYPD’s top cop in uniform, detailed the latest crime statistics. He did so unaccompanied by Commissioner Bill Bratton, who is on vacation in Italy.

The past week saw 37 shootings, an increase from 28 in the same week last year, adding to what’s now a 9% rise in shootings over the first five months of this year compared to last year.

Ten murders in the last week marked a 66% increase over the same week last year, contributing to a nearly 20% rise so far this year versus last.

Guns are accounting for a greater share of murders now — nearly three in four so far this year, where in the past it’s been less than three in five.

While New York is far safer than in decades past, those numbers are alarming, even as crime overall keeps falling.

De Blasio, a critic of stop-question-frisk while running for mayor, says there’s no comparison to the bad old days of the 1990s, noting the NYPD pushed down crime last year without new cops.

In a Channel 7 interview aired Sunday, the mayor also pointed to new technologies like ShotSpotter and cops “not wasting a lot of time on needless stops” to argue there’s no need for more cops. “A lot more police time is going into serious crime. So, I think we’re going in the right direction.”

But, Mr. Mayor, shooting and homicide numbers are going in the wrong direction while O’Neill says the NYPD is struggling.

Bratton has noted many shootings involve bad guys targeting each other. Indeed, 84% of those fatally shot this year had significant arrest records.

But bullets don’t discriminate, as one innocent 50-year-old man shopping for food found out Sunday in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The man was shot when a thug sprayed a Glock 17 in broad daylight in what police say was a drug dispute.

“We do not take this lightly,” said O’Neill, and the department is beginning its “all out” summer effort earlier this year than last, with 330 officers being trained for it at the NYPD academy. Last year, the drive showed success. Let’s hope.

With the department already using more discretion and less enforcement, Bratton has asked de Blasio to send in the cavalry for all New Yorkers, rather than count those caught in crossfires as collateral damage of police “reform.”

Instead of talking about how Bratton has done more with less, it’s time to act to give him more.