In Gotham’s struggle to fight crime, state and local Democrats are aiming not to stop the criminals, but to handcuff the police. How else to interpret Attorney General Letitia James’s effort to curb, via a punitive court settlement, the NYPD’s ability to control protests? Plus, too, the city council just overrode Mayor Adams’ veto of the “How Many Stops Act,” which will bury police officers under paperwork from nearly every interaction they have with the public.

On the litigation front, General James has negotiated an agreement by anti-police activists and left-wing organizations like the New York Civil Liberties Union. It is meant to wrap up a series of lawsuits that followed the George Floyd protests in 2020. The deal was set to go into effect until the Police Benevolent Association entered the fray in court. Its president, Patrick Hendry, tells the Sun the pact “ignores the dangerous realities we face on the streets.”

Many of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 descended into violence and lawlessness, including looting that had nothing to do with any concerns raised by the death of Floyd. Mr. Hendry tells us that “nearly 400 police officers were attacked and injured” in the protests, while “untold amounts” of property was “destroyed because violent agitators used the protests as cover for mayhem.” The city has already agreed to shell out millions to protesters.

The protesters, the Guardian reports, say they were “arrested, detained and subjected to excessive force.” The settlement pending in federal court in respect of the BLM violence now threatens to hamstring the NYPD from keeping order in future protests. It would give a green light to the anti-Israel hooligans who today are blocking traffic — including vital arteries across bridges and to airports — and fomenting disorder in the streets.

General James and her lawyers are counting on New Yorkers forgetting the gravity of the situation that befell the city in the summer of 2020 while liberals in the press cheered on the protests and hapless public officials wringed their hands. It was Senator Cotton who, on June 5, summed up in a New York Times op-ed what was happening: “rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s.”

While the riots were a nationwide threat, Mr. Cotton observed, “New York City suffered the worst” of it, even as, he contended,  Mayor de Blasio “stood by while Midtown Manhattan descended into lawlessness.” Mr. Cotton lamented how “bands of looters roved the streets, smashing and emptying hundreds of businesses.” He called the riots “carnivals for the thrill-seeking rich as well as other criminal elements.”

Now the state civil liberties union stresses that the settlement’s “primary goal” is “protecting the rights of protesters.” In future protests, it adds, the settlement would “minimize police presence” and “require NYPD to use de-escalation methods before increasing its response.” That legalistic doublespeak means police would have to stand back and let disruptive, possibly violent, protesters run amok before officers could step in to restore order.

Such events in recent weeks have already provoked the ire of law-abiding New Yorkers as anti-Israel protesters are blocking highways and bridges in their campaign to stop the Jewish State’s war against terror from Hamas. So we wish our officers well in court. If their last-ditch effort fails, count on the protests to escalate. As for the city council, its imposition of new paperwork burdens on the NYPD will only make the war on crime harder to win.