When it was “just” water being thrown on cops last summer, many of my Democratic colleagues in the state Legislature thought I was over-reacting when I introduced legislation to protect our hard-working law enforcement officers from such assaults.

After all, many figured, it was just water and challenging the notion that it was, again, “just” harmless agitators looking to vent some stress of summer heat was not necessarily a hill anyone was willing to die for, at least not then.

Then came the milk. Then came spit, bats, bricks, Molotov cocktails and a whole host of other deadly weapons being used, as recently as last week, against both rank-and-file and high-ranking officers.

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We went from water to serious if not grievous injury in a New York minute everywhere and the killing of police, including ambushes, in a number of localities.

My point in introducing the legislation last year was not merely to stop water from being thrown on cops. It was to restore what could already be identified as a growing disregard for the rule of law and those in blue who swear an oath to uphold the law.

Fomenting disregard for authority was being met with milk-toast response all the way to tacit and even articulated support for such mayhem from our local and state officials; frankly, it is hard to call them leaders at this point.

We are a long way from a pail of water.

We are watching not just a mob-rule in the making but an institutionalizing of it courtesy of legislators and executives throughout New York government.

Don’t arrest, the police are told, and if you do, expect them right back on the streets as a consequence of misguided and darkly-named “bail reform.”

Watch your back, they are being told, because you will be clubbed by either a shovel handle or the briefcase of a lawyer who takes rank advantage of the equally dangerous police “reforms” — yup, there is that word again — and take your house, your kids’ futures and perhaps your life.

One of my legislative colleagues even came up with the grand idea of forcing cops to buy liability insurance. There is not enough space here to even tackle that one.

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How bad has it gotten?

The New York State Troopers union, the only outlet to place any sort of check on Gov. Cuomo using the force as his personal army, is now demanding that troopers be removed from New York City specifically because of the blatantly anti-cop provisions of the recently enacted reforms.

The County of Westchester, it was reported this week, is actually prohibiting its police from entering the confines of New York City lest they get jammed up in the obvious traps set for cops in the new law.

And Nassau County, its nuancing notwithstanding, essentially has also ordered the same thing.

“You call, we come” is now not only very much in danger for the many hard-working people of numerous New York City neighborhoods who are now hostage to the lawlessness but also something that cannot be relied upon by the officers of the NYPD in the Bronx, in Manhattan or anywhere else where they have been previously supported and backed up by other police agencies.

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It was never about a pail of water. It was always about what we are witnessing today.

This movement towards anarchy started long before COVID-19 and George Floyd, and if our public officials couldn’t see it coming, well, maybe they should not be public officials.

There has been a steady and consistent effort to get us to this point today; the Floyd situation merely accelerated it and put a name to it.

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Unfortunately, so many in government responded to that increase in civil and criminal disobedience much in the same way they responded to the pail of water: they didn’t.

Watch out for the next pail of water.