Out-of-control teens are committing a growing portion of the Big Apple’s robberies, the NYPD revealed on Thursday — as Mayor Eric Adams warned that many city kids were headed toward a “career in violence.”

During a briefing on last year’s CompStat numbers, Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael Lipetri said that 20% of robbery arrests during the fourth quarter involved “individuals under the age of 18,” compared to 17% for the entire year.

“Under 18, robbing New Yorkers. The statistics are out there,” he said ruefully.

Even worse, Lipetri said, “The trends continue on, unfortunately, with 10% of all shooting victims — 10% of all shooting victims in New York City — are under the age of 18.

“Every other age category is down when you track it between 10 and 17, and 18 and 24, and so,” he added during the presentation at NYPD headquarters in Lower Manhattan.

Youngsters made up about 17% of the 9,942 robbery arrests last year, compared to 13% of those in 2021, according to NYPD data. In 2020, the statistics show minors accounted for about 19% of robbery busts.

That number was higher in pre-pandemic years, with those under 18 accounting for 27% of robbery arrests in 2019 and 23% of those in 2018, according to the data.

The disturbing statistics came despite what the mayor described as a turnaround from when he took office on Jan. 1, 2022, when “crime was on a trend increasing upward.”

“We’re leaving 2022 with crime…trending downward,” Adams said.

Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said there was an overall decrease in major crimes during the fourth quarter, as well as during “the current seven and 28 days.”

“These decreases are the direct result of a yearslong strategy,” she said. “With this momentum, going forward we are confident the coming year. We expect to see significant progress in the continuance of the crime trends that we’re seeing.”

During a Q&A session after the briefing, Adams repeated his Wednesday reaction to the viral video of a since-suspended cop clobbering a 14-year-old girl during a melee near a Staten Island school, saying, “I was horrified to see the way a well-trained officer would respond to an incident like that.”

“But I was also horrified to learn that a young girl in that school was being jumped by two other students,” he said.

“The violence that’s coming from our young people,” Adams continued. “When you see some of these actions, when you see the total disregard for human life, it is really challenging to just know the impact of what the victims are going through and how these young people are destroying their lives.”

Adams added: “I believe that officer was wrong and I commend the police commissioner and the Internal Affairs Bureau for taking swift action.

“But let’s peel that back. You know, that little baby was going to school and she was being jumped. She was being jumped!” he said. “We can’t normalize this. We can’t continue to ignore the violence that is really engulfing our young people…If we don’t intervene, they are on a pathway of a career in violence and we have to stop it.”

Adams said he planned to visit the Edwin Markham Middle School, near where the incident took place around 2:45 p.m. Tuesday.

“I’m calling all of my electeds in that community. I’m calling my religious leaders in that community. Let’s get over to that school and find out what’s going on,” he said.

The cop involved in the incident — identified by sources as Nicholas Scalzo, a 14-year veteran — declined to comment when The Post spotted him outside his Staten Island home on Thursday.

But during the Q&A at One Police Plaza, Sewell said, “The officers in that incident were responding to a violent fight among several people at that location.

“During the time when an officer was trying to take police action and apprehend one of the people for that fight, someone interfered in that apprehension and actually struck our officer,” she said.

Sewell added that “I don’t think anyone, or very few people, who saw that video were not concerned” and pledged a “thorough investigation” in which Scalzo “gets his due process.”

Additional reporting by Kevin Sheehan