TICKING CRIME BOMB

Family warned others about ‘mad’ subway shover

Lamale McRae (above) is arrested yesterday for allegedly pushing a man onto the subway tracks Friday — and his family said he is a mentally ill repeat criminal. Though there has been a rash of such attacks, Gov. Hochul said the problem is a “sense of fear” from a few “high-profile incidents.”

But Hochul dismisses subway fears

Gov. Hochul says New Yorkers’ senses are working overtime when it comes to crime.

The governor on Monday became the latest Democratic politician to downplay Big Apple residents’ worries over subway and street crime amid a surge in violent attacks — chalking it up to a few “high-profile” crimes that have “created a sense of fear in people’s minds.”

Her dismissive comments came just days after Mayor Adams characterized the crime concerns as a “perception” problem.

“And what I can do is my New York Transit, MTA transit police — I can bring them in and have them be fortifying our main transit hubs,” Hochul said in response to a reporter who asked about the “Cops, Cameras, Care” subwaysafety program she announced Saturday with Adams.

“All it is, is a cooperative effort to respond to, you know, the high-profile instances which have created a sense of fear in people’s minds,” she said.

“I think that’s going to make people feel a lot better when they see that.”

The comments echoed last week’s controversial assertion by Adams that media coverage of recent subway attacks was causing riders to experience the “perception of fear” underground.

They also came two days after The Post revealed the chilling video of a wild melee on an A train in Far Rockaway, Queens, where 15year-old Jayjon Burnett was fatally shot on Oct. 14.

Three days later, Heriberto Quintana, 48, became the ninth straphanger killed this year when he fell in front of an F train after getting punched in the face during an evening rush-hour argument on a platform in Queens’ Jamaica station.

And on Sunday, the mother of server David Martin, 32, said her son was “completely traumatized” and “wants to kill himself” since getting shoved to the tracks in a random attack Friday afternoon in Brooklyn’s Myrtle-Wyckoff station.

Stats are no illusion

Citywide, major crimes are up 30.4% this year through Sunday, compared with the same period last year, although murders and shootings are down 14.3% and 14.6%, respectively, according to NYPD data.

But the governor — who now finds herself in a neck-and-neck race for a full term against gettough-on-crime Republican challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin — instead highlighted recent declines in the rates of murders and shootings statewide and “8,000 guns off the streets in one year” as reasons why New Yorkers shouldn’t be scared.

“I deal with real facts and I deal with people’s fear. And I address both,” she said.

“The real facts are, is that we’ve been so aggressive about this, driving down gun violence with getting guns off the streets and all these measures.”

At another point, Hochul became defensive when a reporter asked if she’d pivoted to the critical issue of crime so late in the campaign due to the ground she’s been losing to Zeldin in the polls.

“I don’t think it is accurate characterization to say we just started talking about crime,” she said. “I am not letting the political theater out there affect what we’ve done. This is not a new issue for me and I think that’s well-established.”

Meanwhile, at a nearly simultaneous news conference near the foot of the Queens bridge to Rikers Island, at which he was endorsed by the city Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, Zeldin blasted Hochul’s subway safety plan as “a day late, a dollar short.”

Zeldin accused Hochul of waiting to put more cops underground “until the day after” a stunning new poll on Friday showed him edging past her and plunging their race into a dead heat ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

“What Kathy Hochul should be saying is that what we need to do is to increase the ranks of the NYPD,” he said. “We need to have more people in uniform and we need more plainclothes people on the streets and subways, as well. But instead, she wants to half-ass it.”