Dozens of kids housed in a city-run foster-care center are labeled “emotionally disturbed persons” and hauled next door to Bellevue Hospital, where some get drugs to sedate them, The Post has learned.

“We call it ‘booty juice’ when they’re acting out,” said a 15-year-old girl at the Nicholas Scoppetta Children’s Center in Manhattan, using a slang term for medication typically shot in the buttocks to calm psychiatric patients. “Nobody likes to be sent to the hospital.”

Social workers and safety officers in the First Avenue holding pen, which is run by the Administration for Children’s Services, struggle to control outbursts and talk rebellious youths into cooling down. But in the last year, at least 50 kids were “EDP’d” and taken by EMS to Bellevue’s emergency rooms, internal reports show.

“They’re doping them up,” an insider charged.

‘We call it “booty juice” when they’re acting out. Nobody likes to be sent to the hospital.’ - a 15-year-old girl at the Nicholas Scoppetta Children’s Center

The Post’s findings come as Mayor de Blasio — who has pledged to protect the city’s most vulnerable children — fights a federal class-action lawsuit filed in Manhattan last year against ACS. It charges that children in the foster-care system suffer physical and mental abuse, and some get put on mind-numbing doses of psychiatric drugs.

ACS said it partners with Bellevue for mental-health services. “If it is determined by doctors that a child requires medication, families are consulted . . . Children are not medicated to sedate them, but only for medically necessary reasons,” said ACS spokeswoman Carol Caceres.

But ACS’s Psychotropic Medication Unit has the power to “override” parents unwilling or unable to consent to give drugs. And experts said drugs can be administered to kids in crisis.

“If someone is so agitated and out of control that they’re hurting themselves or others, they absolutely could be given an injection,” said Dr. Julie Holland, a psychiatrist and author of “Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych ER.”

She said kids or adults who refuse to take oral medication may get shots of an antipsychotic such as Haldol plus sedating drugs such as Ativan and Benadryl in the arm or buttocks.

The 55-bed Children’s Center houses wards of the city, from newborns to 21-year-olds. They can spend days to months in the chaotic and dangerous place.

ACS insisted the center sees “very few incidents that require the attention of the NYPD,” but incident reports document many cases of assault and vandalism.

Some kids kick, punch, bite, scratch and spit at staff. Some break windows, toss furniture and damage property. Most are physically restrained but not charged with crimes, even when a staffer is injured.

“They refuse to arrest because it makes it harder to place these kids,” the insider said. “The agency is covering everything up.”

Among the uncontrolled youths taken to Bellevue:

A girl who screamed and banged on the walls, igniting “a riot” with eight roommates. When cops arrived, one girl was pepper-sprayed. The girl who started the mayhem was sent to the psych unit.

A boy who ran through the building “in a state of emotional crisis” last December, ripped down a Christmas wreath and tossed garbage. He kicked a radiator, breaking it, and tried to shock himself with the inner coils.

A 20-year-old man who banged his head against the window in a sleeping room, then tried to jump out a second-floor cafeteria window to kill himself. He flipped tables and wrestled with cops who handcuffed him. He suffered an eye injury.

A 17-year-old boy told The Post he was sent to Bellevue after threatening to attack a worker who unplugged a TV he was watching.

“I wouldn’t do that to him. Why should he do that to me?” he asked.

He said he didn’t get any drugs, but other kids said meds given at Bellevue include Benadryl, which can help someone relax, and drugs for bipolar and anxiety disorders. A 17-year-old girl said she was sent to Bellevue and “they had to up the dosage of my medication.”

Kids warehoused at the center have been abused, neglected and removed from their parents but not yet placed in foster homes. They include children with autism, conditions such as diabetes, and pregnant girls or teen moms with babies.

“It’s not a jail, but it might as well be,” an insider said.

Kids, who attend public schools, are searched with metal detectors upon entry, must turn over cellphones and cigarettes and sleep in rooms with up to 12 beds. “Some kids come and go in the middle of the night,” one said.

Those who leave without permission or miss the midnight curfew and fail to return after 24 hours “go AWOL.” Since Jan. 1, the center has called 911 more than 600 times and filed 474 complaint reports — mostly for missing persons, NYPD Lt. John Grimpel said Friday.

Guards often break up squabbles and fistfights among kids.

“There’s some tension with me and a couple of the girls,” said a 17-year-old girl staying at the center for the second time. Three others tried to “jump” her because she spoke to one of their boyfriends, she said.

Marcia Robinson Lowry, the lead lawyer in the federal suit, says she is appalled that kids are sleeping in what was intended as an intake center.

“Foster kids don’t do well in shelters. These are troubled kids, and staying in a place like that is likely to exacerbate the problem,” said Lowry, who is also executive director of the advocacy group A Better Childhood.

She said she believes the wide use of psychotropic drugs on the kids are “a form of behavior control.”

The office of Public Advocate Letitia James said Friday that it has received numerous reports of “overmedicated” foster kids.

James, a plaintiff in the suit, faulted de Blasio’s management of ACS, which oversees some 10,300 children.

ACS, she said, “has failed at its singular responsibility, with persistent reports of children placed in harm’s way while under its watch.”

Gregory Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237, the union that represents ACS safety officers, blasted de Blasio for “a pattern” of going easy on kids who break rules and attack others.

“All that behavior is being excused by this administration,” Floyd said. “I’m not saying incarceration is the answer, but they need to acknowledge the problem and get them the appropriate treatment or it will only get worse.”

ACS said it’s trying to move older kids out of the downtown center. It has a 12-bed “youth reception center” in Brooklyn for those 14 and above, and aims to add 18 teen beds in Brooklyn and Staten Island by the end of September. It also plans to open “host homes” in each borough where 30 teens can stay while awaiting a permanent placement.