Remember when New York believed in the “Broken Windows” theory — the idea that addressing minor crimes could prevent major ones?

Or when stop-and-frisk was the NYPD’s (controversial) tool of choice for proactive enforcement?

Well, those were the good old days — when the city at least pretended to believe in preventing crime.

Now, under Mayor Eric Adams, we’ve entered a bold new era: that of the Panic Button Doctrine™.

Why stop crime before it happens when you can just install a $3,200 plastic button to press after it starts?

Yes, the city will spend $1.6 million to place panic buttons in 500 bodegas — a plan so reactive, so symbolic, so perfectly on-brand for modern New York governance, it makes President Trump’s Oval Office Diet Coke button look like real infrastructure.

“Instead of just having the cats keeping away the rats, we’re going to have a direct connection with the police to keep away those dangerous cats that try to rob our stores,” Adams explained, proudly turning crime prevention into a confused feline metaphor.

Nothing inspires confidence like a mayor comparing armed robbery to a Tom & Jerry rerun.

These state-of-the-art buttons will connect directly to the NYPD’s command center, bypassing those pesky 911 operators who waste your time with trivial questions like “what’s your emergency?” and “what’s your location?”

Now you can just hit the button and hope for the best.

But wait — in a stroke of tactical brilliance, the city won’t reveal which bodegas have buttons.

Why? To create “the element of surprise,” Adams says.

Because criminals, as we all know, always check the Official Panic Button Registry™ before robbing a store.

“Hold up, let me Google whether this deli is buttoned-up before I commit this felony.”

But what if the Adams Panic Button isn’t just a floundering mayor’s desperate policy? What if it sparks a movement that spurs the rest of New York’s political class to get in on the button bonanza?

Imagine if Andrew Cuomo, as part of his political comeback, proposes panic button necklaces for all female employees, to ward off what he calls his “old-fashioned Italian charm.”

Hitting the Cuomo button would also activate a legal fund and a crisis PR firm.

After a beta test in Gaza, Zohran Mamdani could promise The Button of All Buttons™.

Press it and everything becomes free: rent, transit, groceries, facts. It would be solar-powered, 100% recyclable, and come with a free ‘zine about decolonizing municipal finance.

Curtis Sliwa would go full retro with a plan to embed buttons in every Guardian Angels beret, each hardwired to 1979.

Press it once, and Curtis appears beside you yelling about “quality of life” with a boom box and nunchucks. Press it twice and Studio 54 reopens.

And this could just be the beginning. Think of the possibilities:

Broken Windows once suggested cleaning up graffiti would prevent murder; Panic Button Policy waits until the murder is in progress, then drops a GPS pin.

Stop-and-frisk meant questioning suspicious individuals; Panic Button Policing just hopes someone hits the switch before the register is emptied.

We’ve gone from crime prevention to performance art.

There’s no replacing the hard work of public safety with a Life Alert.

“Help! I’ve fallen victim to municipal negligence — and I can’t get up!”

The truth is, there are no push-button answers to fixing New York City.

But we’re stuck with a political class more interested in optics than outcomes — more comfortable announcing tech gimmicks than in doing the hard, thankless work that real change requires.

New Yorkers deserve more than AI-generated housing plans, magical thinking or nostalgic bromides.

Old problems have new dynamics — and they demand real, creative solutions.

Not recycled slogans. Not reactive stunts.

Not the fantasy that everything can be had for free without consequence.

New York’s leaders can keep pushing buttons. The rest of us are pushing and hoping for something better.

David Catalfamo, president of Capital Public Strategies, was a communications director and vice president for economic development under Gov. George Pataki.