Battered cop highlights yet another way local ‘justice’ is now just a system of revolving doors

“This is exactly what happens when the justice system cares more about coddling criminals than backing up cops on the street,” says Police Benevolent Association chief Patrick Hendry of the disgusting caught-on-video beating of a female NYPD officer while breaking up a fight Thursday in The Bronx, and he’s dead right.

After all, the thug in question, career criminal Ernst Delma, was only on the streets because he was out on probation in a New Jersey conviction.

And he seems to have a history of attacking police: A defendant with the same name and age pleaded guilty in 2012 to throwing a bodily fluid at a police officer, records show.

Delma’s rap sheet shows numerous arrests for assault and burglary in recent years, including a July 2022 case where he viciously slugged a female civilian near Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre.

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We’ll learn in coming days why he was out on probation; certainly, New Jersey’s justice system has suffered from “progressive” reforms as New York’s has, if not as extreme.

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And it was a New York court that this week cut loose the suspected arsonist in a Brooklyn fire last month. That blaze left nine people injured, including a child, yet Judge Christopher Whitehair ordered only supervised release, denying prosecutors’ request for $20,000 bail.

The “decarceration” craze of the last decade has led to  a host of other misbegotten progressive experiments from no-bail to Raise the Age, along with far more generous parole guidelines.

And the same approach has judges springing perps even when the charges, as in that arson case, allow for bail.

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Heck, progs in Albany and on the City Council are still at it, adding new burdens on cops (like the How Many Stops law that adds hours of paperwork to NYPD shifts) to fresh rationales for early parole.

All of which also has police morale in the tank, prompting early retirements and a rush to find jobs outside the city — shrinking the force and losing vital experience.

As bad, cops who stay inevitably grow more cautious: Why take a risk nabbing a perp who’ll all too likely walk, especially when most politicians are still gunning for the good guys?

How many more violent caught-on-camera attacks will it take to reverse these trends — to convince lawmakers to fix their disastrous reforms, or the voters to elect better lawmakers?

One way or another, this revolving-door injustice system needs fixing, or the criminals will own the whole town.

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