Exclusive Photos by Paul Martinka: A time lapse showing the city’s removal of Banksy artwork.
Banksy picked up The Post — and threw down a challenge to the NYPD.
After unveiling his latest streetside stencil Thursday morning, the infamous graffiti artist all but dared cops to catch him in the act.
“I don’t read what i believe in the papers,” Banksy wrote on his Web site under a photo of The Post’s front page bearing the headline “Get Banksy!”
Mayor Bloomberg has blasted Banksy for “defacing” public and private property — and hours after the artist’s online taunt, city workers removed an apparently unfinished work by him in Brooklyn Heights.
The Parks Department called in its big guns — caustic chemicals and a high-power pressure washer — after an attempt with a gas-powered drill and an abrasive disc failed to erase a silhouette of the Twin Towers from a wall on the East River promenade.
Passer-by Mary Zappulla, 33, of Cobble Hill, lamented the loss of the work, which was painted in line with the new World Trade Center and is nearly identical to one in Tribeca that Banksy took credit for Tuesday.
“Why are they taking it away? It’s so perfect. It’s a beautiful tribute,” she said, pushing daughter Estella, 4 months, in a stroller.
“We are lucky to have Banksy in Brooklyn.”
Banksy never posted an online picture of the promenade piece, but a near-identical piece — with an added orange chrysanthemum — was unveiled in Tribeca on Tuesday, where it’s since been protected with a piece of clear plastic after someone scrawled Sept. 11 “truther” commentary nearby.
Earlier, a new Banksy piece appeared on the side of a privately owned building in Williamsburg — which the British guerrilla artist mistakenly identified as Bed-Stuy online — and chaos erupted when a masked vandal defaced it with black spray paint.
Building manager José Goya said he pushed the man to the ground to protect the work, a silhouette of two kimono-clad women, shown as though standing atop a sidewalk-level arch that once adorned a coal chute.
Goya said he had initially planned to paint over the graffiti, until a swarm of Banksy fans arrived and told him about the artist.
“It’s like defending my family. I’m defending this building and this artwork,” Goya said.
Law student Shawn Delacy raced to a nearby pharmacy and bought baby wipes and alcohol pads that he and several Banksy fans used to restore the image.
One of the building’s owners said, “We’re figuring out as a family how to preserve this so it’s available for the public, as Banksy intended it to be.”
Meanwhile, leading mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio professed ignorance about the art sensation who has captivated the city since launching his monthlong “Better Out Than In” project here on Oct. 1.
“I don’t know who that is,” the Democrat said when asked for his take on the prankster.
“I don’t know the artist so I can’t comment.”
Republican opponent Joe Lhota said he had just started reading up on Banksy but declared that “defacing property should never be considered art.”
“Using someone’s private property, or even if it is a public building, and using it as a canvas is never the right thing,” he added.
In a twist, it turned out that two mobile Banksy works were being stored right under cops’ noses.
A slaughterhouse truck and “mobile garden” have been parked outside a Brooklyn warehouse — steps from the NYPD’s heavily guarded Erie Basin Auto Pound.
Additional reporting by Jeane MacIntosh, Reuven Fenton, Yoav Gonen and Beth DeFalco
