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Mayor Bloomberg yesterday blasted the appeals judges who threw out the case against a 14-year-old punk nabbed with a loaded gun after a routine stop-and-frisk.
“I can’t imagine what was going through these three judges’ heads,” Bloomberg fumed about Tuesday’s shocking decision overturning the Family Court conviction of Darryl Craig — whom cops caught carrying a .25-caliber pistol in The Bronx’s Tremont section in February 2010.
He was stopped in a high-crime area in the wake of two recent gang shootings.
“Here’s a case, as far as we can tell, [of] a police officer doing everything by the book trying to keep you and your kids safe,” Bloomberg said. “They saw the kid put something in his pocket. It looked suspicious. They stopped him. It was a loaded gun.
“I don’t know what you’re supposed to do other than that — just send the kid, give ’em a flower and say go out and kill somebody?” the mayor sarcastically added.
The Post yesterday revealed that just a month after Craig was freed on probation from Family Court in April 2010, he allegedly got another gun and nearly shot a Queens man to death.
He was charged with attempted murder — but again treated as a youthful offender.
Craig “got himself another gun,” Bloomberg noted. “He shot somebody twice and he was about to blow the guy away with a fatal bullet and somebody screamed and he ran away.
“These judges have just got to understand the public at some point is not going to take this anymore.
“We cannot be putting people back on the streets. We can take them, we can work with them, particularly if they’re kids, and try to teach them and correct them, whatever that means,” the mayor said,
“But having them on the streets with guns and have somebody who you know is dangerous, it’s just the definition of insanity,” said Bloomberg, whose Law Department will appeal the reversal of Craig’s Family Court stop-and-frisk case.
Bloomberg also lauded Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s column in yesterday’s Post about the injustice.
“Ray couldn’t have said it better,” he said. “We want to make sure our police officers get home at night, and we want to make sure you and your kids get home every night.”
“We’re going to set a record for low murder in this city because of the great work of the NYPD,” said the mayor, who credits the Police Department’s 600,000 stops of people on the streets for the low homicide rate.
“We’re not going to lighten up. We’re going to do what it takes to keep you safe,” he vowed.
Residents of the neighborhoods where Craig was arrested in 2010 backed Bloomberg’s criticism.
“That kid doesn’t need to have a loaded gun near a school,” fumed Reynaldo Vega, 28, in Tremont.
“The cops getting that gun maybe saved a life.”
In Rosedale, Tim Hepburn, 59, said, “If they found a gun on him, that’s a good reason to keep him in, and that’s a good reason for that [stop-and-frisk] program . . . They let him go and look what happened. Here’s a chance it could have maybe prevented something.”
Meanwhile, Craig has hardly learned his lesson.
While incarcerated in an upstate facility for violent youthful offenders, he attacked and brutally beat a staff member with three other inmates, using chairs, a garbage can and a phone on June 1, the State Police said.
He was arrested for assault, and locked up without bail in the Columbia County Jail, where he was recently disciplined for undisclosed violations.
Additional reporting by C.J. Sullivan and Lorena Mongelli