Metro

Ex-con busted for smashing car windows & stealing on Mother’s Day

What a mother.

A callous ex-con spent Mother’s Day smashing the windows of pricey cars on the Upper West Side and pilfering goodies from them — including even cards and gift-wrap for the holiday, cops said.

“We’ve had a lot of robberies plaguing the area in the last couple of weeks, but now that we’ve got this guy caught, hopefully, that will come to an end,” said the NYPD’s Brian McGinn, commanding officer of the neighborhood’s 20th Precinct, to jittery residents at a community meeting this week.

Suspect Ronald Jackson, 50, had been fresh off a 15-year prison stint — on raps including for breaking into a car — when he was caught red-handed, authorities said.

He had on him 12 Mother’s Day cards and wrapping paper that he’d swiped from a red Honda Pilot, as well as a hefty stash of other items from a total of 17 cars, authorities said.

He also had one other damning piece of evidence: the “lighthammer’’ — a tool specially designed to break windows with minimal force — that he had just used to steal from them, police said.

It was still in his left rear pocket when cops nabbed him around 5:50 a.m. tearing down West 82nd Street near Riverside Drive.

A resident in the tony neighborhood first alerted cops to the creep after hearing the sound of glass breaking outside the window.

The witness looked out and spotted Jackson allegedly breaking the window of a 2011 gray Mercedes.

Arriving cops nabbed Jackson as he was trying to drop his gray tote bag and black messenger bag stuffed with loot, officials said.

Inside the two bags were the items allegedly swiped from the Mercedes — a Whistler Radar Protector Model XTR 475 and car charger — and a black iPod from a 1999 Jeep, authorities said.

A Lexus and Suburu Outback had been robbed, also. In addition to the Mother’s Day items, the Pilot was missing a Garmin Global Positioning System, car charger, pair of red charity-friendly Toms shoes and two purses, too, officials said.

Jackson — who has been arrested at least 27 times before — had been on parole since December.

He had been serving a 12 ¹/₂- to 25-year sentence for attempting to assault a woman and breaking into a car when he was sprung from Attica.

“He’d barely been gotten of jail, and then he goes hits up all of these cars in one night,’’ one cop said.

“He obviously didn’t want to stay out of jail too bad. Hopefully, now that we’ve got him, he’ll stay locked up.”

Additional reporting by

Larry Celona