What actions can land someone behind bars in New York City?

Last month, two men allegedly made off with a Dodge Charger muscle car, leading police on a high-speed chase through The Bronx. The pursuit saw them mounting sidewalks, putting pedestrians in harm’s way, and colliding with other vehicles.

When the officers finally apprehended the duo, one was found with a loaded and unlicensed firearm tucked into his waistband.

The entire harrowing incident was caught on camera.

In a surprising twist, after appearing before a Bronx Criminal Court judge, both men were released within hours, without having to post bail.

 “The cops clearly risked their lives,” former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told me.

And the judge’s decision “shows a total disregard for their bravery.”

Too many of the city’s lower court judges are ideologically opposed to locking up alleged offenders before trial or requiring cash bail, even when the state’s pro-criminal laws allow it.

That will worsen if front-runner Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor, Kelly fears.   

It’s one of the most significant yet underappreciated powers of the mayoralty: The power to appoint, for 10-year terms, scores of judges to the city’s courts. 

It can be a mayor’s most lasting legacy, extending influence far beyond his term.

Mamdani is intensely anti-incarceration, at times questioning if jails have any purpose at all — and the pro-crime industrial complex is elated at the prospect of his victory.

Legal Aid Society lawyer Susan Elizabeth Light represented one of the two accused Dodge Charger thieves in court.

“Mamdani has made a lot of promises,” she told me, including “more bail reform and social workers with cops.”

“We’ve been the victims of wrong-headed judges in the past, but it could get much worse,” Kelly predicts.

New Yorkers are still suffering the consequences of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s appointments of “let ’em go” judges.   

Among the worst: Queens Criminal Court Judge Wanda “Wendy” Licitra, an ex-Legal Aid attorney whom de Blasio named to the bench in 2021.  

She lets violent perps walk before trial a shocking 85% of the time, The Post found in March.

Blame the so-called bail-reform law passed in Albany in 2019 for some of the recidivists walking our streets. 

Under the law, judges are barred from jailing accused criminals before trial or requiring cash bail for nearly all misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. 

Never mind how dangerous the defendant may be.

That has done real damage:  After the law went into effect, the city’s pretrial prison population fell by over 40% over two years — while major crimes rose by 36.6%. 

But even when the law allows judges to set bail or detain a defendant, many, like Licitra, do not.

Another is Manhattan Judge Robert Rosenthal, a onetime de Blasio appointee later elected to a judgeship.

In January, he cut loose on supervised release a 37-year-old man charged with violent robbery, requiring the accused merely to place a daily check-in phone call.  

The very next day, the man went on a sexual-assault rampage, attacking a 12-year-old girl, then a 14-year-old girl, then three women. 

“He shouldn’t have been out on our streets the next day,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told The Post at the time.

Mayor Eric Adams, de Blasio’s successor, vowed to appoint judges who would require bail or jail whenever the law allows it.

 “That’s the power of appointing the right judges,” he declared.

Or the wrong one: The judge who released the two Dodge Charger speed demons was an Adams appointee, Judge Ralph L. Wolf.

Yet Adams has appointed far fewer of the glaring extremists that de Blasio chose — or that Mamdani would likely favor.

A Mamdani mayoralty will mean more dangerous criminals on the streets.  

Mamdani is vowing to close the Rikers Island jail complex, reducing the city’s jail capacity by thousands. 

Every previous reduction in the Rikers population has led to a crime surge. 

Worse is Mamdani’s zeal to free the most hardened repeat offenders.

In 2022, Assemblyman Mamdani co-sponsored the “Less is More” Act, which exempts parolees from having to return to prison the first two times they get in trouble with the law.   

As a result, 85% of parole violators stay free after re-offending — up from 57% before the law was passed.

Another result: Maureen and Frank Olton of Bellerose, Queens, are dead.  

The elderly couple were butchered in their home in September by repeat parole violator Jamel McGriff, who then set their house afire with them in it.

More gruesome news to follow if Mamdani wins the mayor’s race.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of SAVENYC.org.