In 2014, The Post reported that then-First Lady Chirlane McCray had meddled with NYPD hiring — and threw a tantrum when her purported pick for commissioner, Phillip Banks III, resigned under Commissioner Bill Bratton. 

McCray then took to the pages of The Daily News to denounce us as “having created a fictional character.” But the only fiction here is McCray’s. An ongoing lawsuit has brought to light details suggesting she was deeply involved in hires of NYPD brass. 

Joanne Jaffe — the NYPD’s first female 3-star chief — was pushed out in 2017 in favor of a Latina woman, the suit claims, with McCray (and her husband, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio) allegedly deeply involved in picking her replacement. McCray also allegedly wanted Rodney Harrison, who is black, to get the Chief of Department post.

Sure looks like meddling to us. 

Why all the need for new NYPD hires? Four chiefs got the boot around the same time; Jaffe was one. Per the lawsuit, it’s because she was white and de Blasio wanted more blacks and Latinos in the top spots. 

That McCray misused her (unelected) status to make seemingly race-based calls is bad enough. That de Blasio, an elected official, was aligned with this is worse still. 

Choosing brass on the basis of skin color, rather than overall qualifications, not only risks lowering competence, it undermines morale. Maybe that seemed “affordable” back in 2017, with crime at historic lows. But this was hardly de Blasio’s only undermining of the NYPD and public safety, and his fellow progressives in the Legislature and City Council added fuel to the fire. 

And now it’s all come home to roost: Those historic safety gains are eroding. Major crimes are up overall 34.2% year on year and shootings almost double — double — the pre-pandemic level. 

And the overwhelming majority of major crime victims in the city are black and Hispanic. Indeed, black New Yorkers, 24% of our overall population, were a hideous 65% of murder victims in 2020. 

A mayor seeking more diverse top brass in a diverse city is not in itself unworthy. But clumsy racial reengineering of the high command (and who knows how far down it went?) betrays the duty of elected officials (and their unelected spouses) — with the very groups they sought to boost suffering most.