#De Blasio’s claim he’s helpless to stop violent crime is pathetic

Mayor Bill de Blasio admits violent crime’s out of control, yet he’s pretending he can’t do anything about it — and telling New Yorkers they’ll just have to suffer until help from the feds or state arrives. In fact, what the city desperately needs is better leadership.

“For the rest of the year” — his last day is Dec. 31 — “we’re going to be dealing with a major challenge,” he warned Monday. “We are doing everything we can here in this city, but we need help.”

“We need help from the federal government” in stopping the influx of guns, he huffed. And “from the state,’’ with services for parolees.

Please. De Blasio claims COVID somehow attracted more guns here, but he ignores the fact that more thugs will carry if they think they’ll get away with it.

He says “the parole issue is looming larger,” with parolees more likely to be responsible for violence. But the state didn’t suddenly cut parolee services; his own staff admits that. If parolees are committing more crimes, maybe it’s because more convicts have been let out early. (Sadly, the Legislature is hammering out bills for even more early releases.)

Truth is, the city’s spike in violence coincided with new laws and shifts in policing on de Blasio’s watch. Some, like the state’s 2019 bail reforms, aren’t directly his fault, but he did everything he could to put the Legislature in far-left hands.

And he let the City Council handcuff cops with endless “reforms,” OK’d a rollback of broken-windows policing and raced to let inmates out of jails and prisons. He had the NYPD disband its anti-crime units (undercover agents who got guns off the streets) and signed off on “Defund the Police” measures that led to fewer cops — even as he now hopes new recruits will contain the violence.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, meanwhile, says he’s “not thrilled” with the mayor’s handling of crime. Yet he, too, bears some responsibility: He signed the no-bail law and joined de Blasio, in effect, in painting cops as racist.

No, New Yorkers shouldn’t be fooled: There’s plenty de Blasio and Cuomo can do to stem the bloodshed. Pointing fingers isn’t one of them.