DeBlasio And Bratton Pushes Back At Disrespectful Out Of Control Cops

Mayor de Blasio gave the cops who turned their backs on him a good smack Monday. Speaking for the first time about the pub­lic diss­ing he endured at the funer­alsof hero cops Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, de Blasio said “they were dis­re­spect­ful to the fam­i­lies involved.” “I can’t under­stand why any­one would do such a thing in the con­text like that,” an angry de Blasio said. “And I think it defies a lot of what we all feel is the right and decent thing to do.” “I also think they were dis­re­spect­ful to the peo­ple of this city, who in fact hon­or the work of the NYPD,” he added.
De Blasio declined to dwell on some of the sharpest barbs that have been hurled at him, par­tic­u­lar­ly from Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association boss Patrick Lynch. Lynch ear­li­er accused the may­or of hav­ing “blood on the hands” after Ramos and Liu were mur­dered. “My feel­ings don’t mat­ter here,” de Blasio said. “What mat­ters is the peo­ple of this city who I think expect more from all lead­ers than those kind of unfair and inac­cu­rate state­ments.” “Obviously it was a total­ly inap­pro­pri­ate state­ment, total­ly inac­cu­rate. It’s evi­dent. So I’ll leave it at that.” De Blasio was fol­lowed by Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who brand­ed as “self­ish” the hun­dreds of offi­cers who turned their backs on de Blasio at the Liu funer­al on Sunday. “I share the may­or’s con­cern about the idea of what’s effec­tive­ly a labor action being tak­en in the mid­dle of a funer­al,” he said. “I think we need to focus much more on the vast major­i­ty who did what was expect­ed rather than the few who embar­rassed them­selves and effec­tive­ly took so much atten­tion, so much attention.”

Deeply upset, Bratton lament­ed that the front pages of The Daily News and oth­er news­pa­pers “focused on them, the self­ish­ness of that action, the self­ish­ness of it.” “The funer­al is no place for that,” he said. “Come demon­strate out­side City Hall. Come demon­strate out­side police head­quar­ters, but don’t put on your uni­form and go to a funer­al and engage in a polit­i­cal action.” Bratton had explic­it­ly asked offi­cers not to engage in a repeat of the back-turn­ing that hun­dreds of cops had done ear­li­er ear­li­er at the Ramos funer­al. But hun­dreds defied Bratton any­way. In Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Obama has got Bratton’s back. “The part of Commissioner Bratton’s let­ter I think that res­onates most strong­ly here at the White House is that those who are attend­ing those funer­als are there to pay their respect for the ser­vice and sac­ri­fice of the two offi­cers who were being laid to rest,” Earnest said. “And cer­tain­ly the President believes that their ser­vice and their sac­ri­fice is wor­thy of cel­e­bra­tion and respect and should be afford­ed all the out­ward sym­bols of the hon­or that they’ve been given.”

The bit­ter words from de Blasio and Bratton came at a press con­fer­ence to tout a dra­mat­ic 4.6% drop in city­wide crime in 2014 — and amid reports that the rank-and-file have been engag­ing in a word slow­down to show their dis­plea­sure with the may­or. “Rather than get lost in the dai­ly back and forth by the loud­est and most dis­re­spect­ful voic­es, those that have been so loud in this debate in recent weeks, let’s talk about where we need to go as a city,” de Blasio said. “Let’s talk about a pos­i­tive vision, let’s talk about what the peo­ple of this city want us to do togeth­er.” There was no imme­di­ate response from Lynch, but Roy Richter, head of the Captains Endowment Association, defend­ed the offi­cers who turned their backs on de Blasio. “It is a pal­pa­ble anger amongst the mem­bers of the NYPD that led many to turn their back out­side the funer­al,” he said. Michael Palladino, who heads the Detectives’ Endowment Association, com­plained they were being held to a dif­fer­ent standard.

“When cops make arrests and give sum­mons­es they are accused of being robot­ic with no feel­ings,” he said. “When cops exer­cise dis­cre­tion and express feel­ings they’re accused of being polit­i­cal and dis­re­spect­ful. You can’t win.” Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins’ reac­tion revealed how deep the rift was between his mem­bers and the may­or. He said Bratton’s request that offi­cers refrain from demon­strat­ing at the funer­al read “as if he was doing the may­or’s bid­ding.” “They know, deep down inside there is a feel­ing this may­or does not sup­port police,” he said. “They know there was nev­er an attempt to dis­re­spect the fam­i­ly of Officer Liu. They are using a slain police offi­cer to deflect from the issues that were pre-exisit­ing, long before these offi­cers were killed.” Earlier, in a radio inter­view, Mullins said the cops were exer­cis­ing their right to free speech. “They did­n’t break a sin­gle law and they did­n’t utter a sin­gle word and yet their actions made a state­ment that was rec­og­nized nation­al­ly and has nev­er been done before that I’m aware of to any may­or in this nation,” Mullins said on Joe Piscopo’s radio show, AM 970 The Answer.

Mullins also accused de Blasio of cre­at­ing the cli­mate that prompt­ed dou­ble cop killer Ismaaiyl Brinsley to leave Baltimore and come to New York City to mur­der Ramos and Liu. “He could have killed police any­where along the line in those 3 ¹⁄₂ hours in any city in the coun­try, but he chose New York,” Mullins said. “Why? Because the atten­tion to the demon­stra­tions and the law­less­ness that was occur­ring enabled that type of an atmos­phere.” Brinsley killed the offi­cers as part of a twist­ed plan to avenge the choke­hold death of Eric Garner by an NYPD offi­cer and the killing of Michael Brown by a cop in Ferguson, Mo. De Blasio has tak­en heat from the NYPD for express­ing sym­pa­thy for pro­test­ers demon­strat­ing against a Staten Island grand jury’s deci­sion not to pros­e­cute the cop who killed Garner. He has also angered many offi­cers by embrac­ing the Rev. Al Sharpton, a police crit­ic, and reveal­ing that he told his son Dante, who is bira­cial, to be wary around cops. Last week, de Blasio held a sum­mit with Mullins, Lynch and the heads of the three oth­er police unions aimed at end­ing the cold war between the NYPD and City Hall. When it was over, both sides agreed to keep talk­ing, although Lynch said their first sit­down was most­ly a bust. http://​mmsc​.NYdailynews​.com