With the state mandated catch and release law in effect, how will this help?

5th Avenue and 21st street

Admitting defeat, De Blasio orders 80 cops back on anti-crime patrol

Mayor Bill de Blasio finally realized that defunding the police didn’t work out as he hoped — and has now ordered the NYPD to make Midtown Manhattan safe again so workers will come back after more than a year of pandemic lockdowns.

At least 80 uniformed officers and supervisors are expected to flood the area within the next two weeks after being redeployed from around the city to combat violent vagrants and other safety issues, sources familiar with the plan told The Post.

An NYPD deputy inspector will be in charge of the newly created “Business Improvement Unit,” which will be based out of the Midtown South Precinct, sources said.

The plan didn’t originate from the NYPD but was developed in response to a series of recent meetings the mayor held at City Hall with his staff and police brass, sources said.

It followed months of pleading by business leaders and others for the mayor to crack down on criminals and vagrants running amok around Penn Station and elsewhere.

As an example of the long-festering problem, a Vornado Realty maintenance worker said there’s “a whole crew” of vagrants who lie on the sidewalk near 34th Street and Eighth Avenue “every morning.”

“The people come out of the stations shocked. You can see in their faces, they can’t believe what they see,” the workers said.

“I am finding vomit, feces, needles. There is no one here controlling them.”

Recently, the situation has raised concerns that it will keep people who’ve been working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic from returning to their offices.

“They are afraid for their safety walking from the train to work, and they are afraid to ride the train,” one source said.

The situation developed after de Blasio and the City Council agreed to slash $1 billion from the NYPD budget in response to demands by anti-cop activists who maintained an “Occupy City Hall” encampment for a month last summer.

As a result of the cuts, the NYPD disbanded its 86-member Homeless Outreach Unit.

Under the NYPD’s plan, the redeployed cops will be assigned to foot posts across Midtown and accompany workers from the Department of Homeless Services and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection when they go out into the field, sources said.

“The mayor and the local politicians didn’t want the police to deal with the homeless and peddlers but now that their plan failed miserably, the mayor is asking the police to help clean up the mess they created,” a Manhattan cop said.

Paul Dimino, third-generation owner of the Sea Breeze Fish Market on Ninth Avenue, called de Blasio “an idiot.”

“Defund the police in New York City, it’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” he said.

“We’re telling homeless drug addicts, ‘Come here, we’ll take care of you and you can do whatever the f–k you want.’ It’s stupid.”

Dimino, 46, said that before the pandemic, “it was all tourists here, little restaurants, the neighborhood was getting nicer.”

“Now, I wouldn’t advise anyone to come here. It’s dangerous as hell!” he said.

But there’s no point to this, except as theater, because New York Democrats abolished bail this past January, and criminals are now just removed from the scene of their crime, run through a booking process and immediately released back on the street. Couple that with a refusal to prosecute gun law violators and drug dealers, and the streets of New York will continue to look like those in the worst of the Lindsay and David Dinkens eras. Then again, this is what New Yorkers vote for, time and t again, so screw ‘em.