Mayor Bill de Blasio leaves the Dec. 27 funeral for two slain NYPD officers.
New York City police continue the work slowdown they launched largely because Mayor Bill de Blasio had the damned nerve to talk about conversations he's had with his black son about being extra careful around the police. In an age of declining union militancy, this is a very successful work action by the numbers—criminal summonses, parking tickets, and traffic tickets have cratered. There are plenty of workforces we'd cheer if they launched such an effective campaign, against certain greedy corporate bosses or notoriously abusive companies, for example. The problem is that
this one is so wrongheaded, so reeking of entitlement, so disrespectful of not just the mayor but the people of the city. As the
New York Times editorializes:
The problem is not that a two-week suspension of “broken windows” policing is going to unleash chaos in the city. The problem is that cops who refuse to do their jobs and revel in showing contempt to their civilian leaders are damaging the social order all by themselves.
The
Times suggests some courses of action for de Blasio, beyond appealing to the public and ceasing to mince words with the police:
If the Police Department’s current commanders cannot get the cops to do their jobs, Mr. de Blasio should consider replacing them.
He should invite the Justice Department to determine if the police are guilty of civil rights violations in withdrawing policing from minority communities.
If what New York police want is what Baltimore police
publicly demanded—that "those in positions of power realize that the unequivocal support of law enforcement is required to preserve our nation"—they need to go back to social studies class. In a democracy, no one,
no one automatically gets unequivocal support. Not our elected leaders, not religious leaders, and certainly not public workers who happen to wear a specific uniform and work for a specific government agency. The concept of justice should get our unequivocal support, but we recognize that its execution can be flawed and that those flaws can come from many sources and have deep roots. Unfortunately, many New York police officers appear committed to showing just how deeply rooted some of those flaws are, and are so caught up in their own sense of infallibility that they don't begin to understand how bad they look. As the
Times editorial notes:
A video emerged this week of a New York cop, apparently with nothing better to do, horsing around on the hood of a squad car, falling off and hitting his head. It would be hard to invent a more fitting image of the ridiculous — and dangerous — place this atmosphere of sullen insubordination has taken us.