de Blasio is using coronavirus as excuse to empty NYC jails at public’s expense

COVID-19 may be killing people and ravaging the economy, but for Mayor Bill de Blasio, it’s the perfect excuse to swing open city jail doors and free inmates.

That’s a fair conclusion anyway, given his recent boasts of reaching a “milestone,” with less than 4,000 people now behind bars after the city set more than 2,000 loose over virus fears. It’s “one part of the overall effort to create a system that is smaller, safer and fairer for all,” he gloats.

By “fairer for all,” he means “softer on those behind bars.” Which is why former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton — who helped engineer Gotham’s stunning drop in crime in the early ’90s, then came back under de Blasio to ensure crime kept coming down despite the mayor’s instincts — labels that “cukoo-land.”

“They are literally celebrating that they have less than 4,000 incarcerated,” Bratton fumed Sunday. He says in reality, the state’s botched bail reform, and the failed attempt to fix it this year, “created another virus”: a “criminal-justice virus.”