- BitsBlog - https://bitsblog.com -

The Problem with Mayor Bill

New York City’s finest, the New York Police Department are engaged in a work slow down and all the Mayor Bill de Blasio seems to care about whether he getting his full ration of respect, from Murray Weiss, DNAinfo [1]:

NEW YORK CITY — While Mayor Bill de Blasio was personally coaxing the city’s police union presidents to meet with him, his top aides were on the phones with lawmakers urging them to blast PBA President Patrick Lynch and other officers for turning their backs on the mayor following the assassinations of two of New York’s Finest, DNAinfo New York has learned.

As late as Monday afternoon — the same time de Blasio was speaking with police union leaders to set up Tuesday’s détente to possibly mend their fractured relationship — the mayor’s government affairs honchos were privately cold-calling the city’s Democratic delegation of city and state elected officials, asking them to publicly criticize Lynch and those officers who dissed the mayor.

From the New York Post, via Moe Lane [2]:

It’s not a slowdown — it’s a virtual work stoppage.

NYPD traffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses have dropped off by a staggering 94 percent following the execution of two cops — as officers feel betrayed by the mayor and fear for their safety, The Post has learned.

The dramatic drop comes as Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio plan to hold anemergency summit on Tuesday with the heads of the five police unions to try to close the widening rift between cops and the administration.

Moe’s reactiopn:

I’m not really fond of this kind of strategy, mind you. ‘Course, ‘traffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses’ have remarkably fewer connotations of ‘inchoate dread and low-grade apprehension’ for me than they do for the average cop; as I understand it, the sheer randomness of a violent encounter springing from a traffic stop is particularly disquieting to law enforcement personnel. Whether or not the first sentence is more important than the second is something that I’ll leave to my readers. Certainly everybody has an opinion about the cops these days

I believe much, too much, law enforcement is not done to protect public safety but rather as a revenue stream for government. In Gotham’s blue flue is not impairing public safety, New York City may well be over policed.