Gallow’s humor to be sure, but Mayor Rudy Giuliani has a real problem this time around — and it’s not merely Hillary Clinton's or Al Sharpton’s doing.

What do we know? Early Thursday morning, March 16, security guard Patrick Dorismond and his colleague Kevin Kaiser were leaving a bar, getting ready to hail a cab. They were approached by an undercover cop, Anderson Moran, who either directly solicited them for drugs or asked if they knew where he could score some. Dorismond and Kaiser responded in the negative. At this point, the accounts diverge. No one can say for sure who started it. Either way, a struggle ensues. The cop’s back-up officers emerge (both plain clothes). At some point, Detective Anthony Vasquez’s weapon is discharged; Dorismond is dead.

Problem Number One is that this was the third shooting of an unarmed man by the NYPD in a thirteen-month period. The first was the now-infamous Amadou Diallo incident. Problem Number Two is that this is the second shooting of an unarmed individual in the month since the Diallo cops were found not guilty of murder. It goes without saying that all of the victims are black. Notable however, in terms of p.c. politics, is that the two most recent shootings involve Hispanic officers.

The shooting right after the Diallo verdict was difficult for Giuliani critics to attack. Malcolm Ferguson had a lengthy drug-dealing rap sheet. Furthermore, he was killed while running from a cop in the middle of a drug sweep in the same Bronx neighborhood as Diallo. He eventually engaged the cop in a fight, wrestled with him and the gun went off.

Problem Number Three — and the biggest — with the Patrick Dorismond incident is that Giuliani has utilized tactics from the Ferguson shooting to deflect the universal condemnation that came down on the cops following the Diallo shooting. Rather than call Dorismond’s family to offer condolences, Giuliani immediately released the 25-year old Dorismond’s arrest record — including his previously-sealed juvenile record.

Giuliani described the dead guy as having a “propensity” toward violence. Dorismond had been arrested four times. The juvenile infraction involved a then-thirteen-year-old Dorismond hitting a classmate. The adult arrests — 1996 being the most recent — included a pot bust and two “disorderly conduct” pleas. More recently, he was the subject of a domestic abuse complaint by the mother of one of his daughters.

Giuliani defended himself by citing the “public’s right to know.” A predictable firestorm has erupted over this series of events. The usual suspects — Sharpton, Rep. Charles Rangel, various local Democrat leaders — have vented their outrage. Sharpton has called for the feds to take over the NYPD.

Unfortunately for Giuliani, releasing the records doesn’t put him in the best possible light. Technically speaking, he is correct that the “right to privacy” (such as one exists) does not survive an individual’s death. But it appears to the casual (i.e. non-ideological) observer as a stunningly callous statement and tactic. Furthermore, selectively releasing records and demonizing someone who can’t defend himself raises comparisons that any politician running against someone named Clinton cannot afford to have raised.

Further complicating the situation, Officer Vasquez previously shot a neighbor’s dog, was disciplined for drawing a gun to break up a bar fight, and also had his wife threaten him with a restraining order. These were details Giuliani chose to let the media find out by themselves.

Though the full details have yet to come out, no one disputes that Dorismond rejected the drug offer. Regular Giuliani critic Lt. Eric Adams of the left-wing 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care (seriously, that’s their name) actually had the best line of the week when he said that New York City is now the only place where a black man can be shot dead for “just saying no to drugs.”

Further, no one disputes that Dorismond was unarmed. The question is whether he went to grab Vasquez’s gun — and why. The legal case will undoubtedly turn on whether Dorismond realized that the people he was in a street fight with were cops. A reasonable case can be made that a security guard seeing somebody with a gun will try to disarm the guy. Dorismond’s colleague says that at no time did the undercover crew identify themselves as cops. In fact, he claims that he didn’t even realize they were cops until after he had been released from police custody 12 hours later (he was never arrested).

Of course, the luckiest person in the world right now is Police Commissioner Howard Safir. As long as this remains a political slugfest, it distracts people from a laundry list of legitimate questions involving the training of what are supposed to be NYPD “elite” units. More than a year after the fact, Safir has yet to come forward with any explanation as to how a mistake such as Diallo occurs. Even the Post’s editorial page has asked the question why four cops who had never worked together on the Street Crimes Unit were thrown together. For all intents and purposes, Safir disbanded the unit over the last year, but never explained why he dramatically increased its size in 1997 without oversight to make sure that the people assigned to “stop-and-frisk” detail knew what they were doing.

At this point, it is impossible for politics to be separated from the incident — especially with the newest New Yorker, that walking Uncertainty Principle Hillary Clinton, present. She was remarkably restrained for the first 72 hours following the shooting. However, after attending a Harlem Town Hall on Monday, she opened fire on Giuliani, accusing him of “dividing the city” and questioning his leadership.

The conventional wisdom is that a Democratic candidate has to get at least 65 percent of the New York City vote to off-set the Republican advantage upstate. Giuliani has been one of the most popular Republican mayors in history. However, that popularity has been built upon liberals and Democrats who have applauded his anti-crime record. Hillary Clinton may appeal to those voters by suggesting that despite his record, Giuliani does not have the collegial temperament one needs from a Senator.

John McCain might prove that you don’t need that to be a Senator, but Giuliani is no war hero. The mayor may feel that presenting himself as a strong leader in control of the Big Apple will continue to pay dividends upstate. In addition, he is undoubtedly depending on holding onto his political base by continuing to link Hillary with Sharpton and Co.

Regardless, it is a dangerous game.