The cabbie beat up by thugs dressed as Super Mario Brothers spoke out about his ordeal Sunday and demanded tougher laws against assaults on taxi drivers.

“I was really scared. . . . At the time, I really think I’m going to die,” said Ndiaye Serigne, 48, of Harlem, who was robbed and pummeled by four men dressed as Mario, Luigi and other characters at a gas station.

Manhattan prosecutors on Thursday accused the Luchese crime family of infiltrating the Buildings Department, saying that three of the family’s associates found jobs as building inspectors and that others in the family, including top bosses, committed a wide range of crimes.

In all, six building inspectors were accused of taking bribes to grant building permits, expedite inspections and overlook building violations. The three inspectors said to be Luchese associates were also accused of more traditional mob-related offenses, including bribery, gambling, drug trafficking, extortion and loan sharking.

Jovan Ming, 32, of the 300 block of Clove Road, shattered the front and rear windshields of a silver Acura in the lot of Forest Avenue Motors, at 2141 Forest Ave., on Sept. 11, a law-enforcement source said.

Not content with that, the 6-foot, 2-inch, 200-pound Ming allegedly telephoned the salesman “multiple times” four days later and threatened to kill him and torch his business.

They came to clear overgrown brush from the yard in what they might have thought was an abandoned building in Tompkinsville.

But the building’s owner says workers from the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene were filching copper pipes, tools and whatever else they could grab from the former American Legion post at 43 Van Duzer St.

One Health Department worker, Edwin R. Torres, 54, of Queens, was arrested this morning, according to a law enforcement source, after building owner John Galarza called police when he said an employee saw the men begin hauling their alleged booty into a private van as well as a city Department of Health vehicle.

Three other Health Department workers were questioned as well.

“All the copper pipes are gone,” said Galarza as he walked through the building, which smelled of urine, where the toilet and boiler had pipes removed. He pushed his toe against a buckled wood floor, showing how it had sustained water damage after the pipes were removed. “I’m going to talk to the legal department of the Health Department.”

Their comic-book adventure went awry when cops approached the dynamic duo on 43rd Street to see whether they had the required license to perform in costume in public . . .

There are probably too many police officers.

Cops arrested Toure Mahamadou, 25, Sadabe Sekou, 39, and Latil Serge, 21, all of Newark, whose truck allegedly continued 37 bundles worth $5,550 when sold to recycling centers.

“I wasn’t scared when they pulled the knife,” [Milton Williams Supermarket manager Milton] Rivera said.

Still, the prime time for murder is clear: summertime. Indeed, it is close to a constant, one hammered home painfully from June to September across the decades. And the breakdown of deadly brutality can get even more specific. September Saturdays around 10 p.m. were the most likely moments for a murder in the city.

The summer spike in killings is just one of several findings unearthed in an analysis by The New York Times of multiyear homicide trends. The information — detailing homicides during the years 2003 to 2008 — was compiled mainly from open-records requests with the New York Police Department, and a searchable database of details on homicides in the city during those years is available online for readers to explore at nytimes.com/nyregion.

. . .

Summer is when people get together. More specifically, casual drinkers and drug users are more likely to go to bars or parties on weekends and evenings, as opposed to a Tuesday morning. These people in the social mix, flooding the city’s streets and neighborhood bars, feed the peak times for murder, experts say.

And the trend occurs in other cities, in places like Chicago, Boston and Newark, according to criminologists.

Some of the same trends are on display around Christmastime and are believed to be behind the slight increases in murder that occur then, criminologists say.

A subway dance troupe turned militant on May 25 when the dancers viciously mugged a 22-year-old straphanger on the J train.

The violent attack began when the victim started conversing with the dancers after they finished an acrobatic performance near the Lorimer Street stop at around 3:40 am.

That’s when one of the perps asked the victim if he would like to “see something mesmerizing.”

The victim said yes, so the perp pulled himself into the air on the train’s metal bars and unleashed a powerful kick to the victim’s chest. Two other dancers then joined in the attack and started punching and kicking the victim in the head and body.

The victim called out to the other two dancers for help, but his pleas only convinced the other performers to join in the walloping.

Eventually, one of the perps demanded that the victim hand over his belongings.

Police cracked down on rule-breaking bicyclists in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill last Friday, issuing tickets for running red lights and then slapping offenders with additional summonses for minor infractions, including one bicyclist who didn’t have a bell.

The dragnet snared 36 bicyclists on the popular DeKalb Avenue bike lane that links the two neighborhoods with Downtown Brooklyn.

Cops said the crackdown was long overdue.

“It was targeted towards enforcing traffic laws,” said a police source from the 88th Precinct. “Running a red light is not safe for the cyclist or anyone else in the street.”

The ticket blitz is a bitter irony for bikers who have complained since the lane’s creation last year that vehicles, including officers at the 88th Precinct stationhouse near the corner of Classon Avenue, but especially delivery trucks, regularly block the lane with parked cars along the busy corridor.

Or are bike lanes actually a backdoor way to balance the budget? Hmm . . .