Daniel Penny was acquitted — now fire DA Alvin Bragg

In a watershed moment for common sense, and against the soft-on-crime lunacy that plagues this city, a Manhattan jury on Monday acquitted Daniel Penny in the May 2023 death of Jordan Neely.

New Yorkers, rejoice: There’s hope for this town after all.

The “progressive” insistence that Penny was a vile vigilante, not a hero who stood up to protect his fellow straphangers from a threatening madman, has been rejected by a jury of his peers.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s effort to persecute Perry failed — and Bragg may, should, pay the ultimate political price for trying.

Bravo to the jurors, especially those who’d supported “guilty” on the more serious manslaughter charge — which the judge and prosecutors outrageously dropped on Friday, rather than accept a mistrial — but joined in a “not guilty” consensus after that blatant violation of the defendant’s rights.

This was the just outcome of a Kafkaesque ordeal: Penny never should’ve been dragged into court in the first place.

But Bragg did it anyway, playing to his hard-left, race-obsessed base.

Bragg’s prosecutors also pounded the race card relentlessly at trial, routinely calling Perry “the white man” and imputing racist motives to his actions, even as witness after witness confirmed that the entire car was terrified by Neely’s behavior on that F train.

In acquitting Penny, the jury resoundingly rejected Bragg’s progressive pro-crime agenda, which has turned Gotham into a playground for recidivist criminals and an open-air psychiatric ward for the mentally unwell.

The people harmed most by this madness are the very communities that progressives claim to want to help: low-income, minority New Yorkers.

Gov. Hochul, if she cares about crime, should take note, and finally remove Bragg from office.

And if she’s too cowardly, voters should remove him in next year’s election — and evict her in 2026.

Sadly, Penny’s ordeal isn’t over: With backing from the ideologues, Neely’s father is filing a civil suit over the death of the son he abandoned long ago.

We pray the courts toss that nonsense immediately, and let Daniel Penny finally move on.

The rest of us, meanwhile, must move on to freeing this city and state of Alvin Bragg and every other elected official who embraces his perverse philosophy.