In a brief flashback to Central Park’s bad old days of the 1970s and ’80s, two marauding packs of hoodlums struck parkgoers in separate violent muggings on Wednesday.
In the first attack, at 6:10 p.m., four teens jumped a 31-year-old man who was walking near West Drive and West 75th Street, according to police.
The goons punched the man in the face, threw him to the ground and snatched his headphones, police said.
Four suspects were quickly busted and charged with robbery.
Police identified them as Bryan Urbaez, 18, Cameron Adams, 17, Josh Lopez, 17, and Diallyn Rios, 16.
Three hours later, a 56-year-old Central Park West resident was exiting the park near West 65th Street with his two small white dogs.
Three other young men confronted him, demanding his wallet, police said.
Despite his apparent lack of dogpower, the man refused.
The three men then pushed the man to the ground and threw a piece of wood, striking the man and his dogs.
They left empty-handed and were still being sought by cops as of Thursday night.
Still, despite the spate of violence, NYPD CompStat figures show Central Park is much safer than last year. Police investigated 13 robberies in Central Park between Jan. 1 and Dec. 10 of this year.
That’s down 43 percent from the previous year.
Overall crime in the park is down 22 percent over last year and down 38 percent over five years ago.
The park’s reputation for violence reached its peak in the late 1980s, with the high-publicity cases of the Robert Chambers “Preppie Murder” of Jennifer Levin in 1986 and the “Central Park Jogger” rape in 1989.
Additional reporting by Kevin Fasick, Stephanie Pagones and Emily Saul