Mayor Eric Adams couldn’t say Thursday when his delayed rollout of the new NYPD anti-gun violence teams will happen.

Asked by The Post when the NYPD will deploy the new hybrid plainclothes police units to combat gun violence, Adams wouldn’t provide a specific timeline as he acknowledged the postponement of a key pillar of his gun violence reduction plan. 

“The unit is going to roll out — the [police] commissioner will give you the exact date, but let’s be clear, without the unit in place executing now, we are still removing hundreds of guns off the streets, because there is an operation that is in place and that will continue to be in place,” he said following a press conference in Sunset Park about an offshore wind hub.

“So, regardless of any new unit that we’re going to unfold, we still got a job to do that the NYPD does, and we are doing that job,” the mayor added.

Big Apple cops have made 770 firearm arrests  so far this year as of Sunday, according to NYPD data — down nearly 12 percent from the same time in 2021.

The mayor’s answer means New Yorkers still don’t know when the officers tasked with curbing gun violence — dubbed Neighborhood Safety Teams — will begin their duties with Adams putting it on Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, who has dodged reporters for weeks. 

As The Post reported Tuesday, a memo about the new uniforms for the teams doesn’t include a firm timeline for when they’ll begin patrolling the five boroughs, even as gun violence continues to surge.

An earlier version of the NYPD’s 90-day crime plan detailed that seven of the 30 commands set to add the teams will be “able to start as early as February 22” after their training began Feb. 8. But the details on the commands and start date were deleted in a subsequent version of the crime plan, obtained by The Post in February.

Police sources said last week the team would hit the streets “any minute” after cops completed their seven-day training.

An NYPD spokesperson previously did not answer questions about the delay or say when the units would be up and running, insisting there is no “stall” in the rollout of the new crews.  

“There is no snag in the NYPD’s ongoing work to eradicate gun violence in New York, anchored in part by forming and training new Neighborhood Safety teams,” said Al Baker on Tuesday, adding that the NYPD is conducting “deliberate training of the officers selected for these teams.”

“What New Yorkers are seeing is not a stall, but the hard work of a real-time civic response to the crisis of too many victims on our streets and in our neighborhoods,” Baker said. “Even the best-written plans are malleable and evolve with time, as these certainly have.”

Councilman Joe Borelli (R- Staten Island) stressed the “urgency” of getting cops in the anti-gun squads started, while acknowledging the “tough balance” of quickly rolling out the initative with finding the best officers for the job. 

“I imagine it’s tough to balance the fact that there needs to be the right cops screened for this type of work, but at the same time, we can’t ignore the urgency of the problem, as shootings continue in high crime neighborhoods,” he told The Post. “The mayor knows that the majority of New Yorkers overwhelmingly support him in this move, and the quicker we see results the better for all of us.”

The prior iteration of the anti-gun unit was disbanded in 2020 by then-Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, because he said plainclothes officers in it were responsible for a “disproportionate” share of complaints and shootings — an assessment shared by the current mayor.

After announcing his anti-gun violence plan in January, Adams repeatedly promised that the new version won’t “repeat” past mistakes.

“We are going to learn from the past so we don’t repeat the past, and we will never use, under my administration, any abusive targeted tactics that goes after people based on their ethnicity and where they live,” Adams, a former NYPD captain, said Jan. 25 on MSNBC.

“If you don’t follow the law, you’re not going to serve in my police department,” he said five days later during a radio appearance. “We know what was wrong with the unit. It was an abusive unit. It targeted and profiled.”

The uniforms of Adams’ new Neighborhood Safety Teams will be different from those of the controversial anti-crime unit that was axed under Mayor Bill de Blasio, according to photos of the approved uniforms in a police memo obtained by The Post.

Cops in the units will wear navy blue tactical pants, black boots or shoes with a polo shirt, quarter-zip sweatshirt or Neighborhood Safety vest that has “NYPD” emblazoned on the back and front, along with patches bearing the officer’s name, shield, rank and command, according to the memo.

Officers assigned to work in the old version of the plainclothes anti-crime units wore street clothes and were only identifiable as police by the badge hanging around their necks or on their belts.

Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy