The NYC Police Shooting Fallout

I nominate this for not necessarily the best statement put out about NYC's police shooting last night, but probably the most correct, by NYC Councilman Robert Cornegy:

"This sets us back 1000 percent. I don't even know how you come back from this. If you wanted to articulate what the worst case scenario could be at a time when the city is trying to get back on track with police and community relations, this is it."

Councilman Cornegy is spot on. The shootings of officers Liu and Ramos will be cited to discredit the thousands of Americans protesting with a legitimate gripe about the relationship between the community and police officers. This shooting will be used to discredit all positive (and really any at all) dialogue over the recent cases in Ferguson, Cleveland, and Staten Island. It's not right, nor fair, but you know it's coming.

Leading to our worst statement of the night, beginning that march:

Yes, he said this:

The head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, blamed the mayor for the shootings as he addressed officers outside Woodhull Hospital after the bodies of Officer Liu and Officer Ramos were borne away.

“There is blood on many hands, from those that incited violence under the guise of protest to try to tear down what police officers do every day,” Mr. Lynch said. 

“That blood on the hands starts on the steps of city hall in the office of the mayor.”

Now is a time of grieving, Mr. Lynch said. “We’ll mourn for our city and we’ll mourn for our brothers,” he said. “We’ll straighten our shoulders, we’ll stiffen our backs and we’ll wipe our tears.”

But he warned, “When those funerals are over, we’ll raise our heads and those who allowed this to happen will be held accountable.”

Earlier in the evening, police officers turned their backs on Mayor de Blasio when he entered the hospital.

Yes, that's the head of the NYC PBA basically saying that the Mayor's encouragement of peaceful protest caused some lunatic from Baltimore to come up to New York and kill two cops. I'm not sure what he means about "those who allowed this to happen will be held accountable," but I do think this is a troublesome statement. It's like dumping gasoline on an already tense situation. Mr. Lynch is implying protests and public leaders speaking positively of protest is dangerous. That is in and of itself, dangerous.

I lied though, that's not the worst statement put out last night. This is:

Sickened by these barbaric acts, which sadly are a predictable outcome of divisive anti-cop rhetoric of #ericholder & #mayordeblasio. #NYPD
— George E. Pataki (@GovernorPataki) December 21, 2014

Hoooollllllyyyyy shit! This guy was Governor of New York as late as eight years ago. I'm not even sure what statement from Holder he is talking about, but again, none of these guys went out said the NYPD is a bad force, or anything like that. Pataki went full on partisan-politics in this statement, literally hours after two cops were killed.

For his part, Attorney General Holder and Governor Cuomo were much more appropriate, and not partisan at all:

“This deplorable act of violence is the opposite of what New York is and what New Yorkers believe in,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in a statement.

“Tonight, we all come together to mourn the loss of these brave souls,” he added.

The U.S. Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, also issued a statement.

“I condemn this afternoon’s senseless shooting of two New York City police officers in the strongest possible terms,” it began. “This was an unspeakable act of barbarism.”

Some more PBA statements:

The head of the Policeman’s Benevolent Association in New Jersey said that the shooting of the officers was “spurred on by so much recent hatred aimed at officers everywhere.”

“Our society stands safer because of the sacrifices officers make everyday, but the hatred that has grown over the past few weeks in this country has gone unchecked by many elected leaders,” the official, Patrick Colligan, said in a statement posted on Facebook.

There is a longer version of Mr. Lynch's statement out there as well which refers to the department as a "wartime department," and I will not re-print it because the PBA is saying it is not legitimate at this time. If he did say that though, it's very troubling.

For his part, Mayor de Blasio:

Mayor de Blasio, appearing beside Mr. Bratton, said, “Our city is in mourning.”

“Our hearts are heavy,” the mayor said. “We lost two good men who devoted their lives to protecting all of us.”

He added, “When a police officer is murdered, it tears at the very foundation of our society — it is an attack on all of us.”

He said, “Our entire city was attacked by this heinous individual.”

Mr. de Blasio said that he had met with the officers’ families, including Officer Ramos’s 13-year-old son, who “couldn’t comprehend what had happened to his father.”

And of course, President Obama:

 And last of the linking, but not least, from the New York Times reporting on this tragedy:

The double killing comes at a moment when protests over police tactics have roiled the city and other parts of the nation. Since a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges in the case of Mr. Garner, a black Staten Island man who died after a police chokehold in July, protesters have filled the streets on numerous occasions. Those protests followed more violent ones in Ferguson, Mo., after there were no charges in the police shooting of Mr. Brown, an unarmed black teenager.

The mayor has taken care to praise officers’ work repeatedly since the grand jury decision, but he has stressed the rights of protesters to express themselves and spoken of his personal experience instructing his biracial son, Dante, to “take special care” during any police encounters.

Some union leaders suggested the mayor had sent a message that police officers were to be feared. Cries for the police to use more restraint have been buttressed by historic drops in violent crime. The city has seen roughly 300 killings so far this year, a number so low as to be unheard-of two decades ago.

Alright, my take:

The issues raised by the Ferguson, Staten Island, and Cleveland shootings are not new. In each event, a white cop kills an African-American suspect, and a white District Attorney then does not bring charges, using a grand jury to deflect the decision. This is not new. I'm old enough to remember Rodney King's saga in Los Angeles, and I remember the racial divide over O.J. Simpson. There is a Gulf of Mexico sized divide between white and black attitudes on policing, and often times the results are resentment.

White people get a lot wrong in this debate, and I say this as a white person. Here's reality- the relationship that African-Americans have with our legal system is not fair, or even healthy for the country. They are profiled, including in New York City until recently with "Stop and Frisk." They are several hundred percent more likely to be shot by police officers in a dispute, and if they are arrested for a violent crime, much more likely to be given the death penalty. The "War on Drugs" has been an unmitigated disaster in urban communities, which are a lot less white, wiping out large chunks of generations from having a shot at success, after they're slapped with a felony conviction. Even down to how African-Americans are sentenced, they get a much worse deal. Their relationship to the law is a source of frustration, and I'm not even going to get into perceptions of them that they have to deal with every day.

The current discussion isn't even that in depth though. We're just talking about generally young, unarmed black men being killed by police officers, sometimes on video, and nothing being done about it. Doing the dangerous thing of leaving out the individual facts of each case, I totally get why African-Americans and others would find something odd about the fact that it's so common for the dead African-American male to be declared "the aggressor," or their killing "justified" in court.

So with that, I get the protests. I get the "I Can't Breathe" shirts on athletes, I get the people shutting down roads, I get the whole confrontational attitude that is in these protests. Forget the process here for a minute, the outcome of a bunch of African-American men getting shot by cops is unacceptable. That has to change. I'm not sure exactly how that happens, as each of these cases bring up different nuances, and different solutions, some of which are negated in other cases (body cameras come to mind). The point is that the idea here is not to have cops shooting civilians of any kind. It obviously is going to happen sometimes, but you have to address the inequity of our current situation.

Which is I guess where I'm so bothered by the police union response here. The level of rhetoric, be it in St. Louis County, Cleveland, or New York City, is way overheated. Whether it's St. Louis cops being mad that Rams players voiced an opinion, Cleveland cops mad at a Browns receiver for voicing his opinion, or New York City cops blaming Bill de Blasio for the actual killing of cops, it's not really acceptable. Yes, police do a great job defending the American streets almost every day, but that doesn't mean the First Amendment rights of those with grievances should be intimidated by the police unions. There is absolutely, positively, nothing wrong with Mayor de Blasio being encouraging of protestors, or even meeting with Eric Garner's widow. To suggest that these actions alone are an insult is really troubling.

However, let's not twist that into actual opposition to the police and their feelings here either. They have every right, in each of these cities to have an opinion back. They have every right to be mad at the Mayor, at LeBron James, or at the Rams for their actions. My father is a retired PBA member in New Jersey, and he thinks Mayor de Blasio looks like a complete fool right now for how he's handled this in the press. In some ways, he's right. The Mayor has allowed himself to be cast against the NYPD officers, one of the best and bravest police forces in the world. From a purely political viewpoint, I can tell you that's insane. From a policy standpoint, that's really, really troubling. Let's not forget that the Mayor is their boss, and if he's totally lost their confidence, it does call into question his ability to lead and set policy. The Mayor may have really damaged his tenure in a matter of weeks. He did so by being seen as "on a side," rather than seeking the best possible outcome. He did so by being seen as against the cops, and not giving these public employees their due-deference, as 99% of them are doing their job honorably and effectively every day. In short, the Mayor allowed himself to be seen as less nuanced, and too far out in a heated debate.

I think there's a lot of people who probably should take a step back after tonight and re-evaluate their positions in all of this debate. It is completely probable to assume that we both have problems in community policing, and have really good police officers all over the country. As of 2008, there were about 1.2 million people working in law enforcement in America. If 99% of them are good and doing their job well, that still leaves 12,000 who aren't. That's not a negligible number. It also means that 1,188,000 cops are out there doing their jobs correctly, and they probably get tired of hearing about how awful they are to people. I can see their point.

I think the bottom line is that a lot of people need to chill out. Perhaps some on the union side need to realize that they don't get to blame the Mayor for a violent lunatic killing two cops, just because he didn't crack down on protests against them. On the elected officials side, perhaps they need to be a bit more cautious (as I believe the President and Attorney General Holder have been) when weighing in on these issues. This is obviously complicated as an issue, and finding solutions is even harder, but once you start cutting at the person across from you's intent, there's no way to find common-ground.

In any event, a lot of people will try to use this event to fit their version of events. Let me keep it simple for you- the responsible party for the death of these two officers is the loser who shot them. It's not the protestors. It's not the DA. It's not the Mayor. Let's try to keep that perspective.