Hey Frustrated Performance Artist: Not Funny!

Like we’ve said before, please let this be someone’s lame idea of an art installation:

Cops are investigating whether a slew of unattended bags found around Brooklyn yesterday afternoon was a hoax, police sources said.

About 3 p.m., police started spotting suspicious briefcases, luggage and duffel bags in Park Slope. A grid search of the area turned up bags on Eighth Ave. and Carroll St. as well as spots on Union St., Montgomery Place and Berkeley Place. About nine bags had been found as of last night. “The more we’re investigating them, the more we are seeing them,” a police source said.

The bags were all empty or, in at least one case, contained another empty bag inside of it, sources said. So far, none of the bags contained anything hazardous.

Note To City: Coordinate Message!

You can either downplay the report (“‘We were aware of the plot and took the appropriate precautions,’ Paul J. Browne, the New York Police Department’s chief spokesman, said . . .”) or claim that it proves once and for all that Homeland is too chintzy, but you can’t do both. That is, except when it behooves you to do one or the other:

The chilling al Qaeda plot to release deadly cyanide gas in city subways makes the federal government’s decision to slash anti-terror funding for the Big Apple all the more insane, two powerful New York pols charged yesterday.

House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King (R-L.I.) said the newly detailed poisonous-gas scheme “makes it all the more ridiculous and dangerous and inexcusable” that Department of Homeland Security cut the city’s funding by 40 percent.

“Police Commissioner [Ray] Kelly laid out 17 attacks or attempted attacks against New York that we know about. DHS knows it, and this is absolutely disgraceful,” he said.

. . .

President Bush is likely to get an earful about the cuts when he visits the metropolitan area today.

King, who will be traveling with Bush aboard Air Force One, plans to quiz the president about the cutbacks.

And Mayor Bloomberg, who has strongly protested the cuts, will greet Bush when he lands in New York on his way to speak at the Merchant Marine Academy commencement in Kings Point, L.I. — and can be expected to join in the criticism.

That Ought To Be Easy To Locate

All points bulletin for a stolen truck containing 500 gallons of bleach:

The NYPD yesterday issued an alert warning cops to be on the lookout for a stolen truck containing a deadly industrial bleach capable of being used to make explosives.

The vehicle — a white 24-foot box truck — was stolen Thursday morning from the parking lot of the Savol Bleach Company, in East Hartford, Conn., police said.

Inside the truck are canisters containing 500 gallons of hypochlorite, a highly concentrated chlorine-based bleach used in the chlorination of residential swimming pools, police said.

Save Those Stamps

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff pleads with New Yorkers to stop sending him postcards:

. . . [C]ontrary to news media reports, significant landmarks like the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge were included in our deliberation over where money would go. It is true that they were not classified as national monuments and icons. Why? To help New York’s application.

We purposely placed these structures into other categories: the Empire State Building into the large office building category and the Brooklyn Bridge into the bridges category. We did so because those categories generate a higher complete risk grade for New York’s financing proposal than icons like Mount Rushmore that, while important symbolically, would have fewer human and economic consequences in case of an attack.

But What If It’s Not A Mistake And The Horrible Truth Is That The Empire State Building And Brooklyn Bridge Are Actually Just Really Lame?

New York City is miffed that Homeland won’t fund overtime pay for the police:

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, who is chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said the allocation formula was flawed.

“This is indefensible,” Mr. King said. “It’s a knife in the back to New York, and I’m going to do everything I can to make them very sorry they made this decision.”

He said senior department officials who had briefed him about the grants made clear that they were unimpressed with the city’s plan.

For example, New York spends a large share of its grant money to cover overtime costs for police officers who are guarding high-risk targets, like bridges or the subways, a recurring expense.

New York, in the coming year, also intended to spend about $80 million in grants to install a security camera system in the Wall Street area, allowing the police to monitor details as small as license plates, an approach similar to the so-called Ring of Steel in London, said Paul J. Browne, the deputy police commissioner.

But the emphasis on spending on recurring costs — like overtime — was cited as a factor in the relatively low rating the city’s application received, one federal official said.

Then there was the national monument/icon issue:

The risk-assessment scorecard used to distribute federal homeland security funds lists New York without a single national monument or “icon” — stunning mistakes that critics yesterday blasted as bewildering.

The single-page document, released yesterday by officials critical of the feds, also reports that the city — home to many of the nation’s largest financial institutions — has only four “assets” in the banking and finance sector.

“It’s outrageous that these bean counters don’t think the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge are national monuments or icons,” said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg.

“It looks like they came to a conclusion first then filled it in,” fumed Sen. Chuck Schumer, referring to the 40 percent cut for the city in the latest allocation.

“To say that there are no national monuments in this city that are vulnerable to an attack is . . . an insult to every New Yorker.”