Opinion

Heroes of the NYPD

New York would be a safer place if police officers never had to prove themselves in the line of duty.

But there are armed thugs out there — and there are heroes like Det. Kenneth Ayala, who helped bring down a heavily armed ex-con in a shootout Sunday morning, even as he protected his fellow officers with a kevlar shield and was shot twice himself.

Shortly after midnight, Ayala led an Emergency Services Unit team into a Brooklyn apartment, where 33-year-old felon Nakwon Foxworth was holding his 4-month-old baby and pregnant girlfriend hostage.

When the girlfriend escaped with the infant, the NYPD went in, facing heavy fire. Four cops were hit in the melee: Officer Matthew Granahan, Det. Michael Keenan, Capt. Al Pizzano and Det. Ayala.

“We have now had eight — that’s correct, eight — members of the department shot in the last four months,” Mayor Bloomberg said Sunday at Brooklyn’s Lutheran Medical Center, where the officers were treated. The toll includes veteran Officer Peter Figoski, murdered in December.

But set against that harrowing number is proof of the NYPD’s success: New York’s murder rate has fallen yet again this year, thanks to excellent police work and gun-clearing techniques like stop-and-frisk.

Alas, that street-level work is not enough, as Sunday showed. That’s why it’s vital that lawmakers in Albany vastly enhance the penalties for using an illegal gun in any crime, and help keep violent convicts like Foxworth locked up for even longer.

The Post led a successful campaign back in 2005 to toughen the penalties for the possession and sale of illegal firearms.

But that work is incomplete — and Albany needs to finish the job.