Reporter’s Notebook
City Faces Crisis Following Police Funerals
Now that the city has finished burying its two martyred policeman, Mayor de Blasio‘s press conference at 3 p.m. today with NYPD Commissioner William Bratton promises high political drama.
Events leading to the press conference can be traced to de Blasio’s campaign for mayor, in which he campaigned against such heavy-handed police tactics as the overuse of stop-and-frisk, and particularly on its use in communities of color.
Upon coming into office, de Blasio’s relationship with rank-and-file police became acrimonious, in-part through having the perceived anti-police Rev. Al Sharpton appearence with Bratton at a news conference, allowing his wife and her assistant Rachel Noerdlinger to appear with him at an official police meeting, and de Blasio’s insistence on keeping Noerdlinger on the city payroll despite dubious answers on her application papers and her live-in boyfriend’s criminal background including a history of anti-police rhetoric on social media.
While de Blasio’s pick of Bratton, the father of the “broken window” theory of policing, satisfied many hard-line critics, the double-whammy deaths and grand jury exoneration of police of both Micheal Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in Staten Island led to mass protests. These protests, which included a minority of protesters chanting to kill all cops and attacks on police along the protest route led to further tensions, in which police perceived de Blasio to back the protesters.
Then the execution-style murders of police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, in which their killer Ismaaiyl Brinsley stated on social media his motivation was to avenge the deaths of Brown and Garner, instigated a very public police backlash against de Blasio. This included PBA President Pat Lynch stating that de Blasio had blood on his hands, and scores of police turning their backs on de Blasio at the funerals.
De Blasio called on protesters to refrain on protesting until after the funerals, and has kept a fairly low public profile addressing police concerns since the deaths of Liu and Ramos, with the exception of one meeting with police union officials.
Today’s press conference with Bratton is expected to address this growing crisis. What de Blasio says and does starting today could well determine de Blasio’s and the city’s immediate future. For the good of the city it is hoped that de Blasio gets this one right.
