Opinion

Bail for a cop-shooter

Seventeen-year-old Elijah Foster-Bey will be home with his family this Christmas. Not so Richard Ramirez — the NYPD officer that cops say he shot three times and nearly killed.

Ramirez is still lying in the hospital, undergoing exhaustive rehab sessions and learning to walk again — lucky to be alive after the Oct. 17 shootout in East New York.

Foster-Bey, on the other hand, is free — thanks to Brooklyn Judge Gustin Reichbach, who denied prosecutors’ request that he be remanded into custody and instead set him loose on $100,000 bond.

The teen’s family made that bail the day before Thanksgiving by posting just $6,200 in cash and putting up a home in Georgia as collateral. Foster-Bey then not only bragged on Facebook about what a great Turkey Day he had, but also complained about how “frail” he’d grown, having lost 50 pounds in the hospital after being shot by cops in the battle.

Poor thing.

Ramirez, 29, a five-year NYPD veteran, caught two bullets in his leg — one of which severed his femoral artery — and one aimed at his chest that likely would’ve killed him had he not been wearing a protective vest.

Only quick work by Ramirez’s partner, tying off his leg while awaiting the ambulance, kept him from bleeding to death.

Cops say the shootout began when Foster-Bey fled plainclothes officers who tried to question him. They were patrolling the street after a spate of robberies by a suspect who, like the teen, was riding a bike.

After being chased to a third-floor landing in a nearby building, Foster-Bey turned and opened fire with a .32-caliber revolver — sending Ramirez tumbling down the staircase.

All of which raises the question of why Judge Reichbach — a one-time radical who has since allied with scandal-scarred Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez — made it so easy for Foster-Bey to walk out of his courtroom.

“I can’t believe a judge would allow a criminal like that to go free,” a visibly — and understandably — angry Ramirez told Post reporters.

Frankly, neither can we.