Mayor Bloomberg has dropped plans to slash nearly 900 cops from the NYPD’s budget — an abrupt about-face for which the failed Times Square car bombing “is a perfect excuse,” jubilant police said yesterday.
Bloomberg’s 2011 executive budget, being unveiled today, “won’t include a reduction in the number of police officers out on our streets keeping New York City safe,” said spokesman Stu Loeser.
The turnabout comes as the NYPD is being hailed for its heroics since officers discovered terrorist Faisal Shahzad’s explosives-packed Nissan Pathfinder in Times Square last Saturday.
Cops swiftly and safely evacuated Times Square, and city detectives helped the FBI wrap arrest Shahzad within 54 hours.
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There were these other developments in the terror probe:
* The bomber’s father said he wants to know “the truth.”
Air Vice Marshal Baharul Haq, the former Pakistan Air Force Commander, told Britain’s Sun newspaper in Peshawar, “How can I appeal for his release if he’s really involved in the terror plan? I need to see what happens and then I will contact the government. I don’t know the truth, but I’m not sure he’s doing all this.
“This at least is what I know. We are liberal people.”
* Phone records reveal Shahzad called a white supremacist near Philadelphia in early April, sources said. Details of their discussion were not immediately clear.
* Authorities said the Kel-Tec weapon found in the car Shahzad left at Kennedy Airport was legally purchased by the self-professed Taliban member about two months ago — after he’d just passed a 14-day background check — at a gun shop in his former hometown of Shelton, Conn.
* A photo unearthed yesterday shows Shahzad, his wife, Huma Mian, and a group of friends standing in Times Square more than a year ago within 100 yards of where he would leave the intended car bomb.
* A source told The Post that Shahzad made a dry run the night before the failed attack, laying out a route to the scene and leaving a getaway car for his escape.
* New information is pointing to Shahzad’s ties to the Pakistani Taliban, with one Pakistani official saying Shahzad was schooled by the group’s suicide-bomb trainer, The Wall Street Journal said.
* Terror jitters flared anew last night when the NYPD bomb squad was called to inspect an abandoned truck leaking gas on the RFK Triborough Bridge. The bridge was shut down in all directions at 11:30 p.m., but reopened by midnight when the truck was found to be empty. The driver — seen walking from the vehicle — wasn’t immediately identified.
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Earlier this year, Bloomberg had been preparing to slash 892 NYPD jobs through attrition to save $55 million in related costs.
But officials yesterday said higher-than-anticipated tax revenues gave Bloomberg the cushion to reverse that decision and keep the NYPD intact at about 35,000 members. As of March, revenues were running about $225 million ahead of expectations.
The grim early budget forecast was released in January.
The initial plan was to allow cops to retire and not replace them. With the increased funding, the plan is for the NYPD to have a new class at the Police Academy and hire close to 1,000 rookies.
Cops were ecstatic at the news.
“It’s needed, and this Times Square case is the perfect excuse,” one veteran cop said. “And they better start hiring quickly, because high attrition is coming.”
Meanwhile, a source said Shahzad’s mysterious call to the white supremacist was made from a prepaid cellphone that he also used to receive calls from Pakistan and to arrange the purchase of the SUV used in the failed bombing.
Investigators got the cell number from the person who sold Shahzad the SUV, and pulled the call history, the source said.
Shahzad, 30, who has waived his right to remain silent and be presented in federal court speedily, has told investigators he received explosives training in his native Pakistan after traveling there last July.
The naturalized American has also told them the car bomb, which did not detonate, was intended to slaughter hundreds of innocent pedestrians in retaliation for US drone attacks that have killed Pakistani Taliban leaders.
Shahzad’s plot failed because he put a non-explosive fertilizer in his homemade weapon of mass destruction, and used the wrong fireworks to ignite the potentially deadly device.
He bought the incendiaries two months ago from a shop in Matamoros, Pa., whose owner told The Post that Shahzad clearly had no clue what he was doing.
The fireworks — M-88 Silver Salutes — will explode only if they are individually lit, according to Bruce Zoldan, who owns the 55-store Phantom Fireworks chain. But Shahzad bought 152 of them and left them next to canisters of gasoline, propane and bags of fertilizer, thinking they’d all ignite if one were lit.
The plan would have worked had Shahzad gone to the black market for illegal M-80s instead, Zoldan said.
While registering to buy the fireworks in Pennsylvania, Shahzad gave his name in reverse order — “Shahzad Faisal” — to cover his tracks. Surveillance video from the store, which has been turned over to the FBI, clearly shows Shahzad, clad in blue jeans and a green jacket, spending about a half-hour selecting various fireworks.
At one point, he looks directly into a surveillance camera above the sales counter.
“He seemed very calm, just seemed inquisitive, wasn’t nervous and didn’t act in any way suspicious,” Zoldan said.
Zoldan was driving back from the Kentucky Derby on Sunday with his son when he heard about the attempted Times Square bombing — and he instantly thought some of his products might have been used.
He then called his head of security, a retired FBI agent, who reached out to federal agents. Shahzad’s name was discovered in a check of the customer database.
He said it was disappointing “we had someone who wants to destroy American life or American freedom . . . with our product.”
Additional reporting by Carolyn Salazar in Matamoros, Pa., and Murray Weiss, Jamie Schram, John Doyle and Jessica Simeone in NY