Stabbings and slashings are surging this year across New York City – skyrocketing 26% since 2019, according to disturbing new NYPD data obtained by The Post. 

Since Jan. 1 through Aug. 13, the city has seen 3,365 nonfatal stabbings, compared to 2,666 four years ago. The number is also up 5% from the same period last year, which saw 3,208 nonfatal incidents of knife violence.

So far this year, 53 people have died by blade — a shocking 29% increase from 41 in 2019. The tally is down 23% from 2022, which saw 69 people killed by knives.

“Everyone carries them now,” according to a Brooklyn cop with more than 20 years on the job, who also said knives are simply easier and cheaper to get than a gun — and far less risky.

“You stop [someone with a knife] and they say, ‘I carry it for work.’ It’s probably a bullsh-t answer. . . . It’s like they know what to say to avoid being arrested. And they know even if you do arrest them, it’s a summons. . . . They know no one’s going to jail for that.

“You see it all the time lately. It’s insane.”

Experts blamed left-wing reforms enacted pre-pandemic for the soaring stats.

In 2019, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law a bill to end the criminal prohibition of gravity knives and certain folding pocket knives.

“It’s the same old story over and over again. Bad policy, lack of enforcement because of that bad policy and this is what you’re dealing with. . . . Now everyone’s trying to figure out, ‘Why do we have so many attacks with knives?’ Gee, go figure,” said Joseph Giacalone, a former NYPD sergeant and John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor.

Another reason criminals like knives is because they can be hidden — up until the moment of attack.

“The knife is easily concealed and you don’t see it until they pull it out,” said Robert LaMonica Sr., a retired NYPD sergeant of 23 years. “It’s kept cupped in your hand. It’s very difficult to see it coming unless you know what you’re looking for.” 

A Brooklyn victim, who was impaled in the leg by a knife-wielding madman on a Brooklyn-bound 4 train on June 18, recounted the terror.

“To just be sitting on the train and minding my own business…for someone to just walk by and do what he did is mind-blowing,” she said, choking back tears. 

The 28-year-old woman, who wished to remain anonymous, was riding the subway around 4:30 p.m. when she noticed a man walk through the emergency exit at the end of the car. The next thing she knew, she was bleeding profusely from her leg. 

The gash was so severe that cops wrapped the limb in a tourniquet before rushing her to Bellevue Hospital, where she received 30 stitches.

She was one of three women targeted in a subway slashing spree that day by a man police have since identified as Kemal Rideout.

Rideout, 28, was arrested on June 20 and is currently being held without bail in Rikers on three felony assault charges.