The tension didn’t just begin after two officers were assassinated in Brooklyn on Saturday — it goes back years and involves Al Sharpton, stop-and-frisk, and an inspector general. And the next battle — negotiating two major union contracts — is looming.
In mid-July 2013, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, then a candidate for mayor, was arrested by the New York Police Department for disorderly conduct after refusing to disperse at a Brooklyn hospital closing protest. A fellow supporter, actor Steve Buscemi, followed him into the symbolic lockup.
At the time, de Blasio was tied for fourth place in the polls, even trailing the embattled Anthony Weiner. For 20 years, New York City had been run by GOP darling Rudy Giuliani and the moderate-to-right-leaning Michael Bloomberg. The mayoral heir apparent, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, was already moving to the middle, betting on the electoral path of her predecessors.
De Blasio's candidacy — and liberal activism — was an afterthought.
That changed quickly. The other candidates began stumbling over themselves, clearly out of touch with simmering tensions in the Bronx and Brooklyn over policing practices such as stop-and-frisk. De Blasio, though, made reforming the NYPD his core message. He took a commanding lead in polls in early September 2003 and never looked back.
When NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were ambushed and assassinated in Brooklyn on Saturday, the rhetoric between the union and mayor was never more razor sharp. Patrick Lynch, the president of the NYPD's largest union, said the blood of the officers "starts on the steps of City Hall, in the office of the mayor." When de Blasio arrived at the hospital after the shooting, the assembled officers literally turned their backs on him.
De Blasio became the only mayor in recent history willing to openly challenge the NYPD (he also defends them, very frequently) and its various unions, a powerful, and loud, force in electoral politics. And while those tensions have only hit the boiling point this past week — gaining national attention — they have actually been simmering for years.
"The bad blood between police and de Blasio pre-dates his election," a police source told BuzzFeed News, adding, "standing before a microphone and saying he supports cops is not enough when his actions say otherwise."
Here's a short explainer on the feud, and how it came to be:
Former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly in 2013.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
One month after he was arrested, de Blasio showed strong support for two city council bills that were opposed by the NYPD, Bloomberg, and Quinn.
One bill would make it easier to sue the NYPD over discriminatory practices. (De Blasio, on the campaign trail, distilled the complex legal issue by saying the bill would "ban racial profiling.") The union at the time said the bill "starts with the belief that aggressively fighting crime to keep communities safe is a bad thing."
Another city council bill would create an NYPD inspector general, creating another potential set of eyes to investigate reports of police abuse. Raymond Kelly, who was NYPD commissioner at the time, said "another layer of so-called supervision or monitoring can ultimately make this city less safe."
Both bills passed.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1whQEvR
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