A friend’s experience and prediction are ominous. “I’m waiting in a car at the light on 37th and Lex,” he writes. “A guy comes up with rag and starts wiping the windshield. It’s all coming back.”

The email arrived not long before Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council agreed to hire nearly 1,300 more police officers. In theory, the added cops should cut into the increase in shootings and murders and calm jittery New Yorkers who, like my friend, are worried about squeegee men and other signs of public disorder.

In reality, I’m not persuaded more cops will make a difference. It depends on whether they are charged with enforcing the law, or whether keeping the peace is now defined as keeping Al Sharpton happy.

The key unknown centers on “Broken Windows.” Is that still the NYPD’s guiding light, or has proactive policing been gutted in exchange for the feel-good image of extra cops?

The idea that more cops would mean less policing would be a contradiction in normal times. But Gotham is living in decidedly abnormal times, thanks to the “progressive values” de Blasio keeps chirping about.

He was at it again yesterday, boasting about the new hires in ways that made it seem like arresting bad guys and preventing crime were secondary. He told reporters that while some 300 of the added officers would go to anti-terror duties, as top cop Bill Bratton wanted, the bulk would be used in a “pioneering neighborhood policing strategy.”

“This will be a brand new thing in this city — something that’s been talked about in various forms for decades, but will now happen for the first time in a full and high-impact way,” de Blasio said. “We believe it will help us achieve our shared vision of bringing police and community together while keeping crime low.” He called the vague plan “a comprehensive new approach that revolutionizes the way we bring police and community together, and the way we police our streets.”

That confection of hyperbole is about as informative as cotton candy is nutritious. Another report fleshes it out: It says that about 30 percent of cops’ time will be spent “away from radio calls” so they can get to know residents.

If true, the report means that in those times at least, the cops aren’t really cops. They’re somewhere between welcome-wagon greeters and blue flowerpots. For this, taxpayers will pay about $100 million annually.

The mayor’s embrace of extra cops, then, after months of resisting any increase, doesn’t tell us whether he is committed to enforcing the law. All he did was join Bratton and Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito in wanting more cops without resolving their impasse over “Broken Windows.”

The deadlock suggests City Hall is prepared to accept somewhat higher levels of serious crime and a decline in the quality of life.

That’s not something any mayor would admit to, of course, but the lack of a clear commitment to keep pushing crime lower can be seen as an unspoken admission that some increase is acceptable. For example, de Blasio prefers to compare current murder stats to several years back, to argue the city is safer than it was three or four years ago.

That’s true, but beside the point. The increase in shootings and murders is making people feel less safe now, and the mayor’s anti-police rhetoric and his care and feeding of Sharpton fuel doubts about where the city is going.

The problem for de Blasio is that ordinary New Yorkers understand the miracle of the last 20 years and don’t want to go backwards. They saw with their own eyes that crime is dynamic, and will rise or fall over time largely because of policing strategies and the courage of political leaders.

Neither crime nor public safety is inevitable, and results are not as closely tied to the economy as even criminologists had believed. The two-decade miracle taught New Yorkers that there is nothing “normal” about gunshots, car thieves and burglars.

It all starts with the squeegee men. If they’re free to smear your windshield and shake you down for a buck, chaos is coming.

Phoney relief

We can’t say we weren’t warned.

Retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who served as head of the CIA and the National Security Agency, was asked at a Wall Street Journal conference whether legislation ending the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records makes Americans safer.

“They are definitely not safer,” Hayden answered. “They are more comfortable, but they are definitely not safer.”

It’s climate Papa-cock

Reader Felicia Dorste, who describes herself as a Catholic over 60 years old, is no fan of Pope Francis’ environmental treatise.

“I cannot believe what he is doing,” she writes. “He is a socialist, and wants a global world order. He is doing more damage to his Church than I have ever seen in all the years I have been around. Thank you for the truth.”

O is hard of jeering

Two headlines on Drudge:

“Obama laments ‘distorted impression’ of Muslims”

and

“Iranian Parliament Chants, ‘DEATH TO AMERICA.’ ”

Bam’s use of race slur is n-acceptable

Proving again that he has a gift for making everything worse, President Obama used the n-word in a radio interview. It was gratuitous use of the most hateful slur in the English language, and served only to further inflame racial divisions.

His point, that racism is not cured just because people stop saying the n-word in public, is correct, but could have been made just as well without saying the word.

That he chose to go down that road, and later reportedly said he had no regrets, illustrates his astounding poor taste and judgment. His decision recalls his happy-go-lucky golf outing immediately after an American hostage was beheaded by the Islamic State.

Obama gets no license because of his biracial heritage. The South Carolina church massacre was a racist act of hate, and the president of Hope & Change added only another dose of hopelessness.

Oddly, he initially conceded America had made enormous strides on race relations. What he didn’t say, but could have, was that the broad consensus to banish the n-word by nearly all media organizations, along with the way the use of slurs is evidence in hate crimes, was proof of that progress.

Instead, by using the word, he undermined the advance. Like others, The New York Times, which had refused to publish the anti-black slurs of the alleged white South Carolina shooter, broke its ban to quote the president. Such is the power of his decision.

Notwithstanding the use of the word by rappers and many non-white teenagers on the subway, it is off-limits to most people and certainly most parents. Now, none other than the president of the United States has set the absolute wrong example. Shame on him.