This time, it’s personal. Just in time for the rash of bloody shootings that marred the city’s Fourth of July, dangerous dimwits who sit on a Manhattan appeals court stabbed good people in the eye — or shot us in the heart.
It took seconds — the time it takes to pump a pistol trigger. The panel of august jurists, none of whom presumably lives in a treacherous housing project, threw out the conviction of a teen found with a loaded gun after a police stop-and-frisk.
Are they nuts?
Jaquan Morant was 14 and had a rap sheet when Officer Mourad Arslanbeck saw him in 2010 looking up and down the street before a sketchy Harlem project and acting “fidgety.’’ Morant gave the cop permission to search his backpack. Guess what.
The patrolman found a loaded gun, proving the majority of criminals are too stupid to get away with it.
That is unless they have powerful help. And last week, Morant won the grand prize in the hugs-for-thugs lottery.
Sentenced to 15 months probation, Morant had that small guarantee against trouble yanked away. Five state appeals judges voted 3-2 to toss the youth’s gun conviction. They said Arslanbeck lacked both the reasonable suspicion needed to justify patting down Morant and the probable cause needed to search his bag.
Horse pucky. A war is being waged on the effective police policy of stop-and-frisk, and it will end in buckets of blood on city streets. It’s already begun. In less than a week, there’s been a wave of at least 18 shootings with 16 deaths.
In a single week, two convictions based on stop-and-frisk were tossed by judges who are proving more dangerous to the common good than the miscreants they love.
Days earlier, the state Appellate Division overturned the conviction and probation sentence of Darryl Craig, also 14, whom cops caught carrying a .25-caliber pistol in The Bronx in 2010.
Three months after his arrest, Craig allegedly tried to shoot a Queens man to death. But the appeals panel either didn’t know — or, more likely, didn’t care.
I guess the courts ran out of milk and cookies.
“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?” Mayor Bloomberg said of idiot judges.
His spokesman, Marc LaVorgna, said, “They are basically saying officers need to wait for someone to stick a gun in their face before looking for a weapon.’’
The people of Tremont in The Bronx have even more to fear. “That kid doesn’t need to have a loaded gun near a school,” Reynaldo Vega, 28, told The Post. “The cops getting that gun maybe saved a life.’’
This city has come too far to go back to the days of Dodge City. But homicidal creeps get emboldened each day.
Shootings in the city have skyrocketed lately. On July 4 alone, 17 people were victims of gunfire, including a 33-year-old Brooklyn man who died after being shot in the head. In a single 15-minute period, two shootings broke out, injuring five people.
A week earlier, 60 people were shot — a 46 percent hike from last year.
For what?
The victims don’t include Officer Brian Groves, shot in the chest in the stairwell of a Manhattan project — and saved from certain death by his bulletproof vest. Or MTA cop John Barnett, stabbed in the eye at the Jamaica, Queens, LIRR station with a gravity knife. He survived after gunning down deranged attacker Edgar Owens.
Still, the war on stop-and-frisk is only ramping up. This is personal.
The next victim could be someone you love. It could be you.
Saying young men of color are unfairly targeted, The New York Times in May published an insane editorial urging the city to “learn from Philadelphia’’ and cut back on its policy of stop-and-frisk. What?
Philly’s Mayor Michael Nutter, who is black, wondered what the paper was smoking. He’s watched his city’s crime rate soar since courts teamed up with the ACLU to curtail stop-and-frisk.
Don’t learn from Philadelphia. (Or Detroit. Or Newark.)
Stop-and-frisk is the best way to beat the bad guys.
We can’t let our city die.
Off a sinking ‘Cruise’ ship
In addition to discovering that her husband is a fanatical Scientologist loon, Katie Holmes learned that being Mrs. Tom Cruise didn’t win her any favors from Hollywood star makers.
“Things are not handed to anyone,’’ Katie, who played a weak Jackie Kennedy in a TV miniseries, grouses to Elle magazine in the issue out next week. “If anything, you work a little bit harder when you’re in such visible circumstances.’’
The revelation comes as Jenna Miscavige Hill, niece of Scientology leader David Miscavige, gave thumbs-up to Katie for fleeing to Manhattan with 6-year-old daughter Suri (above with mom in Chelsea yesterday).
“My experience in growing up in Scientology is that it is both mentally and, at times, physically abusive,’’ Hill, who left the church, wrote on her Web site. She said she was forced into labor at her religious boarding school and kept away from her parents.
Maybe Suri, who has no little friends, now has a chance for a normal life. And her mom has a shot at a career.
McCarren a pool for reflecting
The pool in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park, dreamed up as an urban oasis, has turned into a a big-city war zone.
Shut since 1984, the newly renovated facility opened on June 28 to bursts of violence. Teens roughed up a lifeguard. Young men beat up two police officers. The gentrified surrounding neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint were strewn with litter and human waste by morons lining up to get inside.
So now cops search people arriving for a dip. It makes me ill to think that a gift to the people of this city could be so abused.
Vicious cycle fine
The city has added 250 miles of dreaded bicycle lanes, but none on Hone Avenue in The Bronx. Yet 72-year-old hardware-store owner Phyllis Cannon got a $115 summons after parking her son’s 1998 Honda in a space that an overzealous traffic agent called — you guessed it — a bike lane.
The widow fought the ticket for five months, but lost. Cannon reluctantly paid the fine.
They say you can’t fight City Hall. Well, fighting bike lanes is like hitting a brick wall.
Feds sink fish tale
Government buzz-kills say mermaids are not real.
“No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found,’’ the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced. It seems a mermaid show on Animal Planet prompted folks to call and demand to see evidence that aquatic humanoids do exist.
So “Splash?’’ A fable. “The Little Mermaid?’’ Grow up! And don’t even think of dressing your daughter as a fish-girl on Halloween. DC has spoken.