A bleeding-heart Brooklyn judge has given a thug who shot two men a slap-on-the-wrist sentence — and justified it by saying, “We are failing as a society” because the gunman “substituted a gang for a lack of family.”

Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Michael Gary even cited Francis Benjamin’s low status in the Crips gang to explain handing him just 3¹/₂ years behind bars instead of the 22 years prosecutors sought.

“You turned to a gang for family support, for support in your life. And that is where we are failing as a society,” Gary said last week at the sentencing. “You are a nobody in terms of that gang. You are literally an instrument of somebody who has far more power than you.”

Benjamin, 21, had been charged with two counts of attempted murder after firing a .43-caliber handgun 11 times at a rival gangbanger and two other men sitting on a stoop in East Flatbush, court papers say.

He hit one man in the scrotum and leg and another in the chest, but also sent bullets flying into nearby homes where children were present.



Benjamin said afterward that he had just wanted to “put in work” so he could rise up the ranks of his gang, court papers state.

He could have faced 50 years in prison for the two attempted-murder charges, but Gary acquitted him of both after a two-day nonjury trial in September.

Over prosecutors’ objections, Gary gave him 3¹/₂ years for remaining assault and gun charges, paving the way for him to be released in February 2016.

Gary also noted Benjamin, a native of Trinidad, wept on a police video.

“Mr. Benjamin, as I said, is a boy, not a man yet,” the judge said. “I also must certainly take into account the fact that Mr. Benjamin will be deported. And, so help me, I can’t think of any other sentence more serious than that of being deprived of the ability to live in this country.”

Gary has faced other controversies.

He released an ex-con, Julio Acevedo, without bail — and without suspending his license, as required — after the man was busted for drunken driving in 2013. The next month, Acevedo was allegedly speeding when he struck a van carrying a couple, killing them and their unborn baby.

As a Brooklyn prosecutor in 1978, Gary created a bogus document in a failed attempt to trick a witness into incriminating a suspect in a deadly blaze at a Waldbaum’s supermarket in Sheepshead Bay. Six firefighters were killed in the suspected arson.