The radicalized Maine teenager charged with attacking NYPD cops with a machete on New Year’s Eve told police he tried to grab one of their guns “to kill them,” Manhattan prosecutors revealed Wednesday.

Trevor Bickford, 19, who allegedly attacked police in an extremist Islamist rage, also allegedly said he waited for the right moment to lunge at the cops working the holiday security detail near Times Square on Dec. 31, leaving three injured.

“I wanted to kill an officer in uniform,” Bickford  told a detective with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, according to the criminal complaint against him.

Bickford allegedly admitted he waited until he saw an officer alone, said “Allahu akbar” and then set upon him with a “Kukri,” a type of machete-like knife, the detective wrote in the complaint.

“I charged another officer but dropped the knife and I tried to get the police officer’s gun but couldn’t,” he allegedly said.

Assistant District Attorney Lucy Nicholas said during Bickford’s arraignment that the suspect “waited until he saw a moment when the officer was isolated and not near any civilians”  before he launched his attack. 

“He said that after he dropped his knife after attacking the first officer, he wanted to grab the other officer’s firearm to kill them but was unable to get the gun out of the holster,” Nicholas said in Manhattan Criminal Court.

“He specifically targeted a uniformed police officer because an officer is a man in a uniform with a weapon.”

Bickford was arraigned from his bed at Bellevue Hospital, where he is recovering after one of the cops shot him in the shoulder during the attack.

Bickford said only “Yes, I can” when the judge asked if he could hear and “Yes, please” when consenting to move forward virtually.

Prosecutors said the accused slasher made the trip to New York as part of a misguided jihad.

“He indicated that after he left New York, he intended to travel across the United States and had an Amtrak ticket purchased to travel to Miami,” Nicholas said.

“He indicated that he had initially wanted to travel internationally but then decided to come to New York first in order to kill people and carry out Jihad.”

He arrived to the city from Boston about three to four days ago and has no contacts in the Big Apple or the Empire State, Nicholas said.

Bickford — who was ordered held without bail — is facing a mandatory life sentence if convicted of the charges of attempted murder of a police officer. He did not enter a plea and has another court date on Friday.

In court on Wednesday, his Legal Aid lawyer, Rosemary Vassallo-Vellucci asked that he be released under supervision, but Judge Marisol Martinez-Alonso ruled otherwise, deeming Bickford to be a flight risk.

In a statement Wednesday, the Legal Aid Society described Bickford as “just a teenager” with “no prior contact with the criminal justice system” and asked that the public “refrain from drawing any hasty conclusions and to respect the privacy of our client’s family.” 

The resident, of Wells, Maine, had been on the FBI’s radar since Dec. 10, when his mom tipped off local cops about his obsession with Islam and the department passed it on to the feds.

Sources told The Post the troubled teen toyed with the idea of traveling overseas to join Islamist militants but instead boarded an Amtrak train to New York on Dec. 29 by himself.

Investigators believe Bickford spent “several hours” in Times Square on New Year’s Eve before the attack, according to sources.

Authorities say he shouted “Allahu Akbar”before he lunged at the cops — the battle cry co-opted by jihadists, which means “God is great.”

The machete-wielding madman allegedly approached Officers Louis Iorio and Paul Cozzolino at West 52nd Street and Eighth Avenue — near a post where cops were screening revelers — around 9:30 p.m. and slashed them with the 18-inch weapon. 

Cozzolino — a rookie who just graduated from the Police Academy on Friday — suffered a fractured skull and Iorio, an eight-year veteran who is stationed in Staten Island, was gashed in the head. Both were released from the hospital Sunday.

A third officer, Michael Hanna, also a rookie, shot Bickford after he and the other cops were attacked, sources said. Hanna, who joined the force in April, was treated at Mount Sinai West and he too has been released. 

Bickford has been hospitalized at Bellevue since his arrest.

Sources said he was carrying a diary calling on his family members to “repent to Allah and accept Islam” at the time of the attack, as well as a last will and testament.

Prior to becoming radicalized about a month ago, according to sources, the teen was a state champion wrestler who was also once recognized in a scholastic art contest, and a member of a championship high school football team, local reports said.

He was placed on the FBI’s terrorism watch list after his mother and other aunt had reported the newly radicalized man — who allegedly had an interest in traveling to Afghanistan and other locations overseas — to the feds, sources said.

Sources said the alleged attacker may have been looking for a foreign extremist group that was aligned with his radicalized beliefs to join.