In my latest copy of the news magazine The Week, a short item caught my attention.

The subject was lard. It is a problem in Mexico City, with almost 50,000 members of the city’s 70,000-strong police force deemed overweight. It seems 1,300 of the heaviest cops have been forced into a dietary weight loss program.

I thought that my NYPD, with 36,000 members, was the largest police department in the world, but I was wrong.

Thanks to my research department chief, Terry Yacona, I learned that Mexico City’s population stands at 19 million people versus New York’s 8 million. No wonder they employ 70,000 cops!

But the idea of turning cops into lean, mean fighting machines is anything but new.

In the 1930s New York City’s Mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia — “The Little Flower,” as he was labeled — had been swept into office by an electorate that wanted honest government. He ran on what was called a Fusion ticket and his battle cry was, “I can beat these Tammany Hall bums on a laundry ticket.” And he did.

However, La Guardia was a fire buff and he didn’t like or trust the NYPD.

During a 14-week newspaper delivery strike, hizzoner began reading the Sunday comics out of the New York Daily News to millions of New York kids. The best-loved cartoon character of all, “Dick Tracy,” a slim sleuth, was his target. He’d taunt Police Commissioner Louis Valentine on the airwaves with, “Why can’t you put your pot-bellied cops and detectives on the same diet Dick Tracy is on?”

Nothing much changed as a result of the Little Flower’s barbs. That is, until the 1960s, long after La Guardia’s reign.

Throughout my time in the department, we’d be assigned one day a year to the huge police firing and tactics range on Rodman’s Neck in the Bronx. On those days, hundred of cops would report for all-day tactics and firing sessions, and we’d fire up to 300 rounds of ammunition with both our regulation and off-duty revolvers.

But one day in the 1960s, suddenly we were confronted by another obstacle: All cops, whatever their rank, would start the day by being weighed.

While there were hints of harsh penalties for being overweight, I can’t recall any cop being stripped of his rank or transferred to the department’s “Siberia” — Staten Island — for making it onto the department’s Lard Squad list.

Yet I do recall arriving at Rodman’s Neck one morning with my friend and partner Rocky Torre for our annual all-day firing and tactics sessions at Mock City, the maze of houses with dark hallways and apartments — with a couple of stores thrown in — that department carpenters had constructed.

Before we fired a shot or searched a single hallway, we unwillingly had to step on a scale and be weighed. Duh Noive!

I had no problem with the weigh-in, kept honest by the presence of Internal Affairs Officers who no cop ever liked anyway. But my pal Rocky was a big guy, well over 200 pounds, and at his urging I held his 12 bullets, as if that made any difference. It did to Rocky, so I held them.

The problem with the lard program — and I hope you’re listening, Mexico City PD — is that guys who were deemed overweight had to be counseled by their bosses back at their commands. Many of those superior officers, chiefs, inspectors, captains and sergeants, weighed 240 pounds and up.

So Mexico City’s Lard Squad program has me recalling a Sammy Cahn and Jules Styne smash hit, made number one on the hit parade in 1943 by Harry James and Helen Forrest. The title was “I’ve Heard That Song Before.” Are you listening, Mexico City PD?

Ev Parker can be reached at evjenpar@mailbug.com or 224-9956.