The safest way for city residents to celebrate around the Fourth of July may be to get out of Dodge.
Asked about New York’s recent spike in shooting deaths, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday responded by offering statistics showing that the increase has actually been taking place for several years now.
“The last four years have been the four safest in city history, but the week when the Fourth of July falls has been bloody every single year,” Bloomberg rep Stu Loeser told The Post.
“We’ve brought crime down lower and lower, but it’s important to note that after there were 18 homicides in the Fourth of July week in 2011, 18 in 2010, and 11 in 2009, each year ended up at or near historic murder lows.”
His comments came after a week that saw 16 killings in 18 incidents.
Three victims were in Saturday’s Queens bloodbath involving a drug thug armed with an AK-47 knockoff.
James Bussereth, 33, of Queens was targeted because he ripped off a drug dealer for nearly $1 million, law-enforcement sources said.
Jason Wood, 27, and Odane Linton, 29, of Brooklyn were also killed in the Springfield Gardens attack.
A fourth man, Jeremy Brann, 35, from Kentucky, was wounded in the 5 a.m. ambush as the men sat in a double-parked SUV on 144th Avenue.
Sources said two gunmen — one armed with the semiautomatic assault rifle, likely an SKS, and the other with a 9mm — squeezed off a total of 63 rounds.
Such SKS rifles “come from all the states [illegal] handguns come from, wherever the gun laws are lenient,’’ one source said.
Investigators were checking whether a second assault rifle was used.
The killings appear to be linked to the earlier slaying of Keith Taylor, who, along with Bussereth, was involved in the drug rip-off, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
Taylor, 39, was killed on June 22 in Queens.
Meanwhile, the weekend of violence continued with at least four more men and a 3-year-old boy wounded in separate shootings.
There were 672 shootings through July 1 this year, compared with 606 at the same point last year.
From July 2 through 10 p.m. yesterday, there were another 59 shootings — with a total of 72 victims.
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton and Kevin Sheehan