One area that will be spared, however, is public safety. Mr. Bloomberg has decided that the police force, which dropped to 35,641 last year from 40,285 in 2000, cannot absorb any more cuts, especially in the wake of the Times Square bomb scare.

So he will scrap his original plans, as sketched out in his preliminary budget address in January, to reduce the police force by 892 officers through attrition, city officials said.

Barely 24 hours after the Times Square terror scare, firefighters used a crowbar to break into a Flatiron District storefront after a passerby reported what looked like bombs set to explode.

The NYPD bomb squad was called in to make sure the display at 1133 Broadway was safe, and firefighters turned off the fog machine to make sure no more passersby would think the artwork was about to explode.

A homeless man is accused of tying his legless friend to the bed in a Grasmere motel, hiding his prosthetic legs so he couldn’t get up, and stealing his property as he lay bound.

When an officer told him he was being taken to Staten Island to answer for a robbery, Hughes blurted out, “Oh, the guy with no legs!” the law enforcement source recounted.

The handbag vendor who alerted cops to Faisal Shahzad’s car bomb is back at work, basking in attention, gratitude and a healthy jump in sales.

There’s a constant crowd around his booth. Tourists request autographs and snapshots. New Yorkers — and even some cops — offer hugs, handshakes and thanks.

After his speech on environmental reform, reporters and photographers literally chased him through the conference center halls. His words and picture ran in more than 100 publications. New York’s dailies sent reporters who relayed hourly dispatches back home.

All told, the five-day trip cost $11,220. You can add another $1,500 for a week’s worth of wages for the hard-working cameramen who had to hustle through airports and foreign streets. Net benefit to the city? Their video footage ran for awhile on Channel 25’s “City Scoop” program. Then it went on a shelf in the archives, where it remains today.