Opinion

TURN ‘EM LOOSE TANYA

What was Judge Tanya Kennedy thinking in offering violent recidi vist rapper Busta Rhymes a sweet heart deal that will leave him on the streets after committing two violent assaults last year alone?

Alas, Rhymes is what he is.

So it’s no surprise that he’d reject the offer tendered by the Manhattan district attorney’s office to resolve both cases – separate crimes combined into a single plea deal, for which the DA offered six months behind bars.

But it is simply astonishing that Criminal Court Judge Kennedy would nix that arrangement – and offer Rhymes another in a long series of slaps on the wrist.

He has until March 26 to agree to this bargain: Plead guilty to third-degree assault (a misdemeanor) – and get a sentence of three years probation, five days of community service, two weeks of giving youth lectures and six months of anger-management classes.

What? No partridge in a pear tree?

If Rhymes stays clean for six months – obviously no easy feat – one assault charge will be dismissed.

That’s absurd. In a previous hearing, prosecutors used a precise term of legal weight – “violent predicate felon” – to describe Rhymes.

Beyond the incidents last August and December, Rhymes’ record includes a 2004 assault charge in Massachusetts and an illegal-weapons charge here in 1999.

He got probation in both cases; clearly, the only lesson he learned is how easy it is to get over on the system.

But wait: There’s more.

Rhymes has stubbornly refused to cooperate with Brooklyn DA Joe Hynes’ probe into the murder of a former bodyguard, Israel Ramirez.

Ramirez was shot dead one year ago in Brooklyn during a video filming.

Rhymes was present at the murder, but quickly fled and subsequently dummied up – ignoring multiple requests from the police for cooperation.

Ramirez’s death left three children fatherless – and Rhymes, by his cowardly actions, has demonstrated that he couldn’t care less.

Which makes Kennedy’s condition that Rhymes conduct “youth lectures” nothing more than a sick joke.

What sort of lessons can this thug offer kids? “Don’t cooperate with the cops; beat a few people up; don’t worry, you’ll luck out and find a clueless judge who will let you walk.”

Perhaps Kennedy couldn’t overtly use Rhymes’ lack of cooperation in the bodyguard murder in assessing the assault case – but his earlier violent acts certainly need to be factored in.

Yet the judge (who was elected to the bench last November for a nine-year term) can see fit to give this character kid-gloves treatment and allow him back on the street?

Frankly, the public is in more danger from the wrongheaded lady in the black robe than it is from professional thug Busta Rhymes.

Justice isn’t blind. She’s brain-dead.