Opinion

CONSTABLES IN THE DOCK

Ideas to “fix” the NYPD are everywhere – but adopt ’em all and you can bet New York’s anti-cop obsessives will still be unhappy.

On Sunday, for example, the self-appointed Tri-Level Legislative Task Force rolled out 15 demands meant to shore up “public confidence in law enforcement and our criminal-justice system.”

And yesterday, NYPD officials released a $350,000-RAND Corp. study on the department’s firearms policies.

The report of the Tri-Level task force is a waste of time.

The RAND report is a waste of money.

Each is rooted in the death of Sean Bell in 2006, and that of Amadou Diallo in 1999.

That there’s room for improvement in most organizations is obvious; the NYPD is no exception.

But it is well known that New York already has one of the most restrained large-city police forces in America.

Consider: In 2006, Los Angeles’ nearly 10,000 cops fired 283 rounds, almost 29 per thousand officers.

Gotham’s 36,000 officers shot 540 times that year, about 15 bullets per thousand – half LA’s rate.

So where’s the crisis?

Indeed, the NYPD has grown more restrained: Just 10 years earlier, cops here fired 1,292 shots, more than double their ’06 figure.

The Tri-Levelers want cops tested for drugs and alcohol after they fire their weapons, videotaping of police interrogations, an end to arrest quotas.

But cops are already tested after a shooting, and there are no official arrest quotas – and a good-faith study would have reported that. Then again, a good-faith effort would have yielded the truth – not press-conference fodder.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly ordered up the RAND study – the non-profit Police Foundation paid for it – after the Bell shooting.

The 142-page document is the product of honest, scholarly effort – so it comes as no surprise that it found nothing seriously lacking in NYPD procedures or practices.

But wouldn’t it have been refreshing if the RAND authors had dedicated a foot-note or two to the obvious?

If they had put it down there in bold-faced type that the best way to keep cops from firing their weapons is to reduce the threats they face?

Threats that also confront ordinary New Yorkers – who all too often fall victim to gang-banging thugs who shouldn’t be on the streets in the first place.

You won’t find this in the two reports, either: There are people in New York City who won’t be satisfied until the NYPD’s threshold for the use of deadly force requires a cop to be lying face down in the street, mortally wounded.

And maybe not even then.

There’s room for improvement in the NYPD.

There’s more room for good faith among the critics. Much more.