Two dozen seemingly random slashings since November have Gotham on edge.
“It’s not the crime statistics that are causing the fear, it’s the perception of being attacked by a razor blade or a knife,” said Joseph Giacalone, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a retired NYPD detective.
Cops are battling an 18 percent spike in knife assaults this year, and police sources and criminologists are blaming copycats, gang initiations and hordes of mentally ill homeless people.
“Unfortunately for the NYPD, there is no rhyme or reason to many of these slashings or attacks,” Giacalone said.
The medley of victims includes a 71-year-old grandma riding a D train, a 16-year-old Chinese exchange student walking to school in Queens, and a 30-year-old bus commuter in Brooklyn.
Giacalone said that cops had better be ready because “opening day for crime is Easter Sunday.”
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has called the wave of slashings an “aberration,” and an NYPD spokeswoman said most “are related to disputes or other adverse encounters,” but declined to discuss specifics.
The Post mapped the following 23 recent, seemingly random attacks:
November
Nov. 3 – Razor-wielding career criminal Stanley Gray, 29, slashes two straphangers in the face without uttering a word on a C train near the Rockaway Avenue Station in Bedford-Stuyvesant, police say.
December
Dec. 10 – A man is slashed in the back of the head at East 55th Street and Madison Avenue.
Dec. 16 – A man wearing a surgical mask and white gloves slashes a 16-year-old Chinese exchange student across the throat as she walks to school on 13th Avenue at 147th Street in Whitestone, Queens.
Dec. 21 – Matthew Jacobs, 26, stabs a man in the buttocks on an F train at the Forest Hills-71st Avenue Station in Queens, police say. The victim was with his teen daughter.
January
Jan. 1 – Kari Bazemore, 41, later dubbed the “Chelsea slasher,” slices a young woman in the face with a boxcutter near East 134th Street in Mott Haven, The Bronx, police say.
Jan. 6 -Bazemore slashes a woman in the face on West 24th Street as she walks to work, police say.
Jan. 16 – An apparently unhinged Francis Salud, 28, slashes a man in the face and back on an East Village street, police say. Salud was arrested Oct. 18 for allegedly slashing a man over a cigarette outside Bellevue Hospital.
Jan. 16 – A man slashes an MTA bus driver in the arm with a boxcutter on a bus at Mackay Place and Shore Road in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
Jan. 22 – A man is stabbed in the upper back while walking near Park Avenue and East 104th Street in East Harlem.
Jan. 24 – A man is sliced in the face with a boxcutter on a bus in Brooklyn.
Jan. 25 – Damon Knowles, 21, slashes an elderly Brooklyn woman across her face on a D train at the Broadway-Lafayette Street Station in Greenwich Village, police say.
Jan. 26 – A machete-wielding man screaming, “I will chop you up!’ slices a woman in the hand while riding a 3 train near the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center Station in Brooklyn. Ras Alula Nagarit, 37, turns himself in to police two days later.
Jan. 26 – A Bronx man is slashed on a 6 train near the 116th Street station in East Harlem.
February
Feb. 1 – Stephen Braithwaite, 37, slashes a man in the face while riding a 3 train in East New York, Brooklyn, police say.
Feb. 6 – A man is slashed across the face as he walked down the stairs at the West Farms Square-East Tremont Avenue station on the 2 and 5 lines in The Bronx.
Feb. 7 – A Queens teen is slashed on the leg while out for a run on 25th Avenue between 79th and 80th streets in Jackson Heights.
Feb. 10 – A 25-year-old Orthodox Jewish man suffers a collapsed lung when he is knifed while walking on Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Keny Rochelin, 26, is charged with attempted murder as a hate crime.
Feb. 12 – A Bronx student is slashed across the face while talking on her phone on Holland Avenue near Morris Park Avenue after stepping off a 2 train.
Feb. 16 – Leolyn Rowe, 47, slashes a cabdriver from ear to mouth near 159th Street at Amsterdam Avenue in Washington Heights, police say. The cabby was dropping off Rowe.
Feb. 21 – A man is slashed on the face while walking on East 173rd Street near Southern Boulevard in The Bronx. Rahi Suazo, 21, and Karon Burrell, 27, are arrested.
Feb. 26 – A worker at the jeweler Chopard is slashed on the cheek and thumb after bumping into a man who was blocking the door of a crowded subway train at the N/Q/R station in Times Square.
March
March 6 – James Patrick Dillon, 23, who was off his meds, slashes a 39-year-old woman as she walks to church in Astoria, Queens, police say. Later, he enters a liquor store on Astoria Boulevard, fatally stabs its 55-year-old owner, and sets the owner and a shopper on fire, police say. Cops shoot and critically wound Dillon, who might have been attempting “suicide by cop.”
March 10 – A Brooklyn woman is slashed in the neck while walking near the corner of Rugby and Beverley roads in Ditmas Park.
March 15 – A man is slashed across his face at a Crown Heights homeless shelter at 594 Ralph Ave.
