#NYPD needs ‘help’ keeping criminals off the street: Shea

All he wants for Christmas is some backup on gun busts.

The NYPD is pulling its weight to get illegal guns off city streets, but needs the help of prosecutors, judges and pols to ensure laws are actually enforced rather than rendered “fake,” Commissioner Dermot Shea said Thursday.

“It’s Christmastime, so I’ll ask for one thing under the Christmas tree,” said Shea during a wide-ranging virtual sit-down with The Post’s editorial board. “We need to get serious about guns.”

Despite an alarming rise in shootings, attrition in the ranks and city-imposed budget cuts, NYPD gun busts have actually climbed by 27 percent this year, the top cop said.

But too often those caught packing heat end up back on the street in short order thanks to a reticence by the rest of the criminal justice system to use the full force of existing gun laws, said Shea.

“From a policing perspective, we expend so much of our resources on that,” he said. “We need help.”

When gun-toting criminals are let off easy, it renders the strong-in-theory laws a functionally “fake” paper tiger, according to Shea.

“It doesn’t exist,” he said. “Everyone in the criminal justice system knows this.”

Shea particularly called out district attorneys and jurists for not following through on cops’ good work, leaving the NYPD locked in a perpetually uphill battle.

“Prosecutors, judges having discretion — maybe they want to give the person a second chance, maybe they’re gonna give them supervised release,” he said. “But listen, if you’re giving them supervised release, transparency is not just good for the police department. Transparency is good for all the parts of the criminal justice system.”

He called for a more clear-eyed look at who gets to enjoy supervised release — and just how supervised it really is.

“Let’s have some data on how many people were placed on supervised release,” he said. “How many in-person meetings there were, who goes to school, who has a job. None of this exists.

“It’s just a buzzword that the advocates insert with no real repercussions.”

Shea acknowledged that such a transformation wouldn’t be easy, but that it is worth fighting for.

“Let’s have those hard conversations,” he said. “If we focus on guns, we can keep incarceration down, we can improve public safety in neighborhoods. We can all work together, and we don’t have to throw everyone in jail.”

Shea called for a harder look at what happens to gun cases once they’re out of the NYPD’s hands as city shootings have nearly doubled in 2020 compared to last year, approaching levels not seen in 14 years.

The commissioner largely attributed that skyrocketing violence to trigger-happy gangbangers — but said cuts to department spending imposed when the City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio caved to “defund the police” protesters aren’t helping.

“The problem in New York City is easy. … It’s gang members with guns,” he said.

But even with the problem diagnosed, the NYPD is working with a leaner operation to try to solve it.

“Of course it has an effect,” Shea said of the fiscal belt-tightening. “We’ve had a lot less cops in some of those neighborhoods that need them the most. That’s a fact, and that certainly has contributed to some of the crime.”

Shea stressed that the NYPD is doing the best it can with the deck stacked against it, but the department can’t do it alone.

“We’re one part of the criminal justice system,” he said. “We’re not the jury. We’re not the prosecutors. We’re not the system that puts ankle bracelets on.”