Thank God the feds have come to clean up Washington Square Park

New York City shouldn’t need the feds to help clear Washington Square Park of the pushers who’ve turned it into an open-air drug market — but it did.

With the eager cooperation of the NYPD, federal agents on Thursday nabbed 19 heavy-duty, career drug dealers with at least 80 arrests among them

Per court documents, drugs dealt by the crew that calls itself WSP Enterprise led to at least two deaths last year: an 18-year-old from Aspen, Colo. who’d just graduated high school and a 43-year-old homeless park dweller.

The busts follow years of Albany “decriminalizing” most crime, so that few of these dealers could actually be jailed — with an assist from shoulder-shrugging local authorities, notably feckless Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

The suspects have been riding a local criminal-justice merry-go-round: arrested, booked into jail, arraigned and then immediately released by tag teams of pliant assistant DAs and mawkish turn-‘em-loose judges.

It’s not like DA Bragg — whose infamous “Day One” memo demanded a “presumption of pre-trial non-incarceration” for virtually every crime short of murder — didn’t know what was going on in one-time jewel-box urban oasis.

But his answer to the gross dysfunction in Washington Square was — wait for it — watercolors.

That’s right. Bragg sponsored an “art of healing workshop” in the drug-infested northwest corner of the park last July, explaining, “It’s very intentional to pick that part of the park which has had some challenges.”

Challenges.

As the Post reported, Bragg meditatively painted a picture of a tree on a tiny canvas while drug addicts nodded off on nearby park benches.

Federal intervention, coming after years of reporting, community meetings and police patrols, is better late than never — and a strong proof-of-concept for President Donald Trump’s vow to send law enforcement into cities where the local authorities either can’t or won’t enforce the law.

The scene in Washington Square Park has been a vile hellscape for years, with addicts openly shooting up or smoking crack or meth, dealers openly soliciting potential customers and telling non-buyers to get lost.

A functioning, healthy city would’ve fixed this problem long ago: Its prosecutors would have worked with the police to develop strong cases against the degenerate vendors of venom, and its judges would have handed out some serious time, even despite Albany’s meddling.

Here’s hoping the feds have their eyes on East Harlem, the Hub in The Bronx and other neighborhoods where the drug scourge has been allowed to fester — and that the city continues to have a mayor and police commissioner who’ll welcome the help.