New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is hearing it from all sides today as he pays the consequences for his ill considered remarks following the failure of a grand jury to indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner.
De Blasio enraged police when he told a crowd of supporters in Staten Island earlier this month that he feared for his bi-racial son’s safety when dealing with the police:
Chirlane and I have had to talk to Dante for years about the danger that he may face … how to take special care in any encounters he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.”
De Blasio added, “We are dealing with centuries of racism that have brought us to this day. That is how profound the crisis is.” The implication was clear that he thought the officer’s actions were motivated by racism.
Needless to say, the police unions were livid over these remarks, as well as the general tone of de Blasio’s support for the protestors.
The whole thing now has blown up in his face because of the execution style murders of two officers in Brooklyn yesterday. The police unions, politicians, and pundits are letting him have it.
Rudy Giuliani didn’t pull any punches:
Critics of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) and President Obama claimed the two stoked hostility against law enforcement by empathizing with protesters who have bemoaned the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, two black men killed by police this year in New York and Missouri.
“We’ve had four months of propaganda — starting with the president — that everybody should hate the police,” former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) said in an interview on “Fox and Friends Weekend.” “I don’t care how you want to describe it: That’s what those protests are all about.”
Authorities said the man who shot the officers on Saturday later took his own life.
Giuliani added that he thinks “it goes too far to blame” de Blasio for the deaths of the officers. But, he added, “I don’t think it goes too far to say the mayor did not properly police the protests.”
That’s for sure. Just ask Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who was spattered with fake blood in Times Square during a protest against grand jury decision.
Former New York Governor George Pataki said that he was “sickened by these barbaric acts, which sadly are a predictable outcome of divisive anti-cop rhetoric” of the mayor and Attorney General Eric Holder.
But the real venom was unleashed by Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch:
“There’s blood on many hands tonight,” Lynch said Saturday, adding, “That blood on the hands starts at City Hall in the office of the mayor.”
Lynch’s members showed their utter contempt for de Blasio when he came to pay his respects to the dead officers at the hospital:
Believing City Hall has betrayed them, cops demonstrated their anger Saturday by turning their backs on Mayor de Blasio as he entered a Brooklyn hospital to pay his respects to two murdered officers.
A startling video shows a hallway at Woodhull Hospital filled with officers silently facing away from de Blasio as he walks a blue gantlet.
The demonstration, captured by WPIX11 News, included the presidents of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association and the Sergeants Benevolent Association.
New York Rep. Gregory Meeks defended the mayor:
“I think the tone that the mayor is trying to set is a tone that brings people together,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) said on “This Week.” He called comments made by Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch criticizing de Blasio “unfortunate.”
“We stand with the police department. No one has ever given up on the police department or said we were anti-police department. What we were crying for was just saying how African Americans feel — how their communities are policed,” the congressman said.
Protestors aren’t anti-police. When New York protestors chanted “What do we want? Dead cops!” and when they threw fake blood on Commissioner Bratton, they were only spreadin’ the love, man.
President Obama, AG Holder, and de Blasio have been the three major enablers of these protests. They speak piously of peaceful protestors when most of the demonstrators are visibly and vocally anti-police.
What has made their actions and rhetoric so despicable over the last few months is that they know exactly what they’re doing. They claim to want to unite people, when they deliberately try to drive a wedge between the races.
They are the ones who have exacerbated this issue so that the nation is split along racial lines. I wish I could give them the benefit of the doubt and ascribe noble motives to their actions. But we’ve all been watching these people for six years and doubts are all that’s left.
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