In recent days I’ve been razzing, pretty heavily, on the New York City Police Department. Recently, the New York Times ran a nice article by Michael M. Grynbaum, J. David Goodman, and Al Baker listing all of Mayor William de Blasio’s missteps with the police, strongly suggesting that de Blasio came into office as lazy, Clintonesque, “I don’t have to play by the rules” big guy who’s only now learning that he does have to play by the rules.
Like Clinton, de Blasio is often late, and in the past he had a not very classy habit of suggesting that it was his police escort that screwed up, not him. Tacky, but it was a lot worse when his wife chose as her chief of staff Rachel Noerdlinger, who formerly worked for Al Sharpton, despite the fact that Rachel’s live-in boyfriend Hassaun McFarlan was a convicted killer. Oh, and then Rachel’s son and her boyfriend have been trashing the police online, and there also was this thing about Hassaun almost running over a cop back in 2013. And then after Eric Garner was choked to death for selling loose cigarettes, de Blasio held a “come together” moment with Police Commissioner William Bratton, Al Sharpton, and himself, sitting as a table as equals. Sharpton took the opportunity not to come together but to blast the police department. De Blasio’s response to criticism of his closeness to Sharpton is to self-righteously insist on his right to hang with whom he pleases, regardless of any racially motivated attacks. Because that’s the kind of guy he is.
So, yeah, de Blasio has been self-righteously sloppy. But it wasn’t de Blasio who choked Eric Garner. It was a police department that, deprived of its “right” to harass “suspicious” characters at will, set out to rigorously enforce every trivial prohibition and revenue enhancer available to them. And thanks to New York’s nanny culture, they had plenty.
Afterwords
The list of complaints that the NYPD has against de Blasio is in fact pretty long. If only they hadn’t overplayed the victim card so hysterically and crassly after the Dec. 20 murder of officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.
