The social experiment with people’s lives is over. The defund-the-police mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, just did a 180 on Lombard Street. I hope the New York City Council is paying attention, but I doubt it. There are lessons to learn and pitfalls to avoid. 

San Francisco embarked down its disastrous defund-the-police, fund-other-agencies road last year, and it didn’t turn out well. Its police department shrank, and violence, thefts, open-air drug dealing and overdose deaths soared.

So now, the frustrated mayor announced — complete with expletives — her plan to reinvest in cops and get tough on criminals. What a novel idea. 

The re-fund the police movement isn’t new. Cities like Oakland, Portland and (ready for it?) Minneapolis are now scrambling to retain cops and replace those that left.

Lesson learned: Cops matter; experiments with people’s lives are dangerous.

Unfortunately, the departments in those cities, and many like them, will be unable to recapture the combined experience that was lost. Hiring a bunch of new cops simply won’t produce an immediate change.

And Mayor Breed has another huge obstacle in her way in trying to turn things around: District Attorney Chesa Boudin. San Franciscans accuse Boudin of being soft on criminals, and he’s now facing a recall. Indeed, he’s become the poster child for soft-on-crime DAs and is often pointed to by let’s-get-tough politicians across the nation. Voting has consequences, and so do policies.

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New York City has descended down a similar path, having defunded the NYPD last year and handcuffed its cops. Yet it’s not too late to turn things around.

Start with some immediate adjustments to New York’s criminal-justice reform laws. First, readjust the timeframe for attorneys to engage in discovery. Then, eliminate suspects’ access to crime scenes and provide judges with discretion to hold potentially dangerous defendants or, at the very least, force them to post meaningful bail.

Once Eric Adams becomes mayor, he needs to have a sober sit-down with the city’s district attorneys — and read them the Riot Act. Incoming Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has already posted a laundry list of crimes he won’t prosecute. Adams should make clear that tolerating lawlessness will have consequences for any of the DAs — look at Boudin.

Fact is, deterrence matters. Criminals are opportunists; if they aren’t deterred, they’ll take advantage of your leniency. We can’t have defense attorneys masquerading as DAs. 

Victims and their families are angry, and it shows. Want to know the definition of irony? The defund-the-police crowd just helped elect an ex-cop, Adams, mayor of New York City. Adams wants to bring back plainclothes units and usher in a new era of stop, question and frisk. He also chose a new police boss who believes in enforcing quality-of-life crimes.

All of which has landed him in the crosshairs of Black Lives Matter, and I can only imagine what other activists are saying now. 

Those who watch matters of policing closely sounded the alarm two years ago (that includes me, in a column in these pages, “Get Set for New York’s Coming Criminal Justice Disaster”). The pols didn’t listen; instead, they labeled us fear-mongers. Maybe they’ll listen now.

The problem is, we simply had too many criminal-justice reforms that went too far in too short a time. If lawmakers had consulted with informed people with different points of view before blindly following activists and academics into the great crime abyss, things could have been very different.

The mere perception that crime is bad keeps tourists away, worsening financial distress. A city struggling to come back after the pandemic doesn’t need more bumps in the road. As cities across the nation continue to struggle with the surge in violence, one-time crime deniers are finally coming around and realizing that fact, even as many try to place the blame on COVID.

They no longer deny crime is a problem. It’s a start. 

Joseph Giacalone is a retired NYPD sergeant, author and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.