We’re puzzled by a local judge’s decision to reduce bail for a freshly collared criminal, allowing him to walk out of jail, leaving police angry and dismayed.

The suspect, Jesse Caron, faces numerous counts of aggravated trafficking in narcotics and firearms possession, and police were questioning him for an unsolved rape.

But here’s the kicker: Police spent the past month trying to track him down and they estimate it cost about $10,000 to do so.

District Court Judge Ralph Tucker reduced Caron’s bail from a requested $40,000 to $10,000, which is about what it cost taxpayers to get him back behind bars.

The 28-year-old Caron gained national notoriety last month when he was featured on the TV show “America’s Most Wanted.”

He was arrested on Feb. 14, after more than a month on the lam with local, state and federal police in pursuit. During that time, Caron wrote bad checks to pay for half a dozen different cars to throw pursuers off his trail.

The bail reduction might have been warranted had Caron turned himself in, but he didn’t. He was caught sneaking into a bar in Gray to ask his mother for money, and he was in the company of an 18-year-old woman and in the possession of a .45-caliber handgun.

The case against Caron began when cops went to his house in October to investigate a report from a woman who said she was drugged and raped at a party.

When they searched his home, they found powdered crack cocaine and an assault rifle, which sounds like a bad combination to us.

Clearly, Caron is a former felon with a likely drug habit and a fondness for high-powered weapons. He’s also a pretty good check-kiter facing some hard prison time.

If that’s not the profile of a bail-jumper, we don’t know what is.

We hope Jesse Caron shows up for trial. We also hope it doesn’t take another month of police work to get him there.