The NYPD Crisis Is Getting Worse

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… and it’s the cops who are making it worse. The New York Post reports that Mayor de Blasio was booed and heckled at a police academy graduation by members of the audience.

Joan Walsh writes about New York’s white backlash. I don’t know what percentage of NYC’s white population is backlashing; most white people I know are liberals and are appalled at the way the patrolmen’s union has been behaving. My sense of things is that the city has moved on from the Crown Heights riots of 1991 or the Amadou Diallo shooting of 1999, when opinions tended to divide along racial lines. I think most New Yorkers were ready to end stop-and-frisk, for example.

The insubordination against the Mayor and the Chief of Police is utterly unnecessary and has gotten out of control, and is dangerous to the city and people of New York. The only interests it serves that I can tell are that of right-wing politicians trying to tear down Mayor de Blasio.

Walsh writes,

Although white New Yorkers may still be inclined to give the police the benefit of the doubt – as I saw on my Facebook page this year – the video of Eric Garner being killed has had an effect on their certainty that cops are always the good guys. The murders of officers Ramos and Liu may have changed that, at least temporarily.

But we should also remember that the officers killed were named Ramos and Liu. The NYPD has diversified enormously since my childhood, though its leadership has not. The families of the two dead officers haven’t joined in the denunciations of De Blasio, or the movement against police violence.

And Eric Garner’s family denounced the murders and expressed sympathy for the bereaved on the other side of the thin blue line. His daughter Emerald Garner laid a wreath at the site of the police murders two days later.

“I just had to come out and let their family know that we stand with them, and I’m going to send my prayers and condolences to all the families who are suffering through this tragedy,” she told ABC News. “I was never anti-police. Like I said before, I have family that’s in the NYPD that I’ve grown up around, family reunions and everything so my family you know, we’re not anti-police.”

Any group of people is going to include some hotheads, but as far as I can see the only people in positions of leadership or national prominence who are spouting inflammatory hate speech and stirring up enmity are on the Right.

21 thoughts on “The NYPD Crisis Is Getting Worse”

  1. “but as far as I can see the only people in positions of leadership or national prominence who are spouting inflammatory hate speech and stirring up enmity are on the Right”

    That statement can be applied to just about every crisis this country has ever faced, at least in my lifetime?

  2. The CIA.
    The NSA.
    The FBI.
    Among other government agencies.
    And now, the NYPD.

    All, have gone rogue recently.

    Who polices the people who police us?
    It’s supposed to be civilian leadership.

    But there seems to be a complete lack of respect for civilian leadership – be it the President, a Governor, a Mayor, or anyone else.

    This is not healthy if we’re to remain – in some form or other – a representative democracy.

    I can’t quite hear the goose-stepping of jack-boots yet.
    At least, not yet………………………………………………….

    But, let there be another major terrorist attack, or economic downturn in the near future, and we may all hear the march of goose-stepping radical Christian conservatives on our streets.

  3. I saw this comment over at another one of my favorite blogs:

    Complete list of groups who stage protests at funerals:
    1. Westboro Baptist Church, 2. New York Police Department

  5. It seems strange the right would be doing this because they so hate unions. I guess they hate DeBlasio even more.

  6. I have had enough negative run-ins with bullies with badges that I am infuriated by what seems to me to be attempts to shut-down criticism of the police, and I am white, male and relatively wealthy. I won’t ever pretend to understand the relationship of minorities and law enforcement in this country and if I had one wish to be granted right now it would be that other privileged white males would shut the hell up and listen when it comes to discussion of the relationships between the police and minority communities.

  8. I am white, I live in Manhattan, and even I am afraid of the NYPD. Their behavior (meaning the union and the back-turners) these past weeks has been appalling.

  11. When it comes to horror stories about the NYPD.. I think the one where they sodomized that Haitian guy with with a plunger handle. To think that something like that could go on in full view of the station house and yet nobody in the precinct house raised a word to stop it. Kinda gives you a sense of the overall attitude that is pervasive within the NYPD. Sorta like Abu Ghraib where they committed offences only because they knew or expected that the higher echelons of authority would look the other way or give them cover for what they did.

  12. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Sometimes translated as, ‘Who guards the guardians” The NYPD seems determined to maintain a standard that only the NYPD is allowed to question the conduct of the NYPD. They are the police and they will police themselves.

    The nerve that was struck by the mayors office was not anything he said against the NYPD – he simply made it clear that the department reports to him – and he doesn’t approve of unarmed citizens dying at the hands of the NYPD. That only makes sense to you and me, but it’s a policy in conflict with previous mayors who gave the PD a free hand to use force without ANY interference or criticism from City Hall.

    The NYPD wants the mayor to butt out – let the PD police itself and rubber-stamp any investigation the department does of itself. The ultimate battle is over authority – the NYPD does not recognize that any civil agency has power over them. The mayor is going to have to cave in or be prepared to bring in the National Guard to do police work if the PD goes on strike.

  13. Some heads need to roll here. I don’t know how many, but de Blasio can’t let these bastards get away with this. I mean, what’s next, a coup?

  14. Doug, it’s not clear to me that New York wouldn’t be better off if de Blasio fired the whole goddamn police department. Obviously you’d have to bring in the National Guard or somebody to keep order, but this kind of defiance of civilian authority is intolerable. If these assholes don’t understand who they work for, they should be in a different line of work.

    Well, they’ve accomplished one thing, anyway. I don’t think all cops are scum, and I wouldn’t have said the entire NYPD was scum until today. But now that’s what I think of them.

  15. Oh, one other thing. On top of everything else, anyone who genuinely and sincerely believes that de Blasio’s comments were anti-police, or that they caused the deaths of these two offers, is too stupid for police work. Or anything above the most menial duties.

  16. When was the last time you saw a squeegee man in NYC? When I was a kid squeegee men added to the ambiance of NYC, but since Giuliani’s gestapo tactics in cleaning up the city they’ve become as extinct as dinosaurs. Those were the days when New York was New York…when you had to go out of your way to get hassled by the police.
    Now it’s become a police state thanks Rudy and his former police commissioner.

  17. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/30/rep-michael-grimm-to-resign/

    Another one bites the dust! I love it how they get all contrite and only think of the great loss for their constituents. Sorta like the wide stance guy from Idaho who suddenly was overcome with the desire to serve the people who elected him once his petty distractions to his fully serving his constituents was brought to light.

    Grim news for Grimm… I wonder if he’ll see any graffiti on his cell walls saying..Bernie K was here!

  18. Complete list of groups who stage protests at funerals: 1. Westboro Baptist Church, 2. New York Police Department

    Oh, ouch.

  19. @Bonnie–I’m campaigning to stop referring to Police Benevolent Associations as unions. Many US police departments are represented by regular AFL-CIO affiliated unions, but the PBAs are local fraternal organizations with no connection to the labor movement and opposed to it in many ways. And it seems like the most abusive forces, and the ones that tolerate murderous officers–like St. Louis County, Cleveland, and New York–are represented by PBAs.

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