Mayor de Blasio's remarks about his dark-skinned son Dante echo, in a more personal way, the tragedy themes of the defense attorneys' closing argument for police officers in the Amadou Diallo shooting death (1999). Yet PBA head Pat Lynch calls the Mayor's remarks a slur against NYPD.
(a) The Mayor: “Chirlane and I have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face. Good young man, law-abiding young man who never would think to do anything wrong and yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers that he may face, we’ve had to literally train him as families have all over this city for decades in how to take special care in any encounter he has with police officers, who are there to protect him."
(b) Steven Brounstein, defense attorney for police officer Kenneth Boss, who fired five shots at Diallo: "They made a mistake. But they honestly believed this guy was shooting at them."
As we know, Diallo was an unarmed man engaged in no illegality, standing on the stoop of his home, but was perceived by four trained police officers as an armed criminal. The officers shot Diallo to death. And no matter how painful it may be, and setting aside the question of criminal culpability, I do believe, factually, that the police officers did think the unarmed Diallo had a gun.
The officers' defense, further: "It's not Pleasantville." The streets are dark and dangerous, and police can tragically mistake an unarmed lawful citizen for an armed criminal. That's what the Mayor said.
The New York Times summarized the officers' defense: "While acknowledging that they had made a mistake, the officers said Mr. Diallo was largely to blame for his death. He did not respond to their commands to stop, they said, and did not keep his hands in sight."
De Blasio counsels his son not to do the very things that defense attorneys argued were why police shot the unarmed Diallo.
How does the defense closing argument in the Diallo shooting trial turn into an 'Anti-Police Slur' when Mayor de Blasio says much the same thing, in more personal terms, in an effort to avoid full scale riots such as erupted in L.A. after the Rodney King verdict?
Pat Lynch has an extremist "Us. vs. Them" mentality. When 'Us' says it, it's a tragic truth. When 'Them' says it, it's an attack and a lie. This is the inflamed R-complex, blunt binary reptile brain reaction. Only the R-complex can think "special care" means de Blasio is counseling his son to resist arrest and disrespect cops. Lynch is one of the most divisive voices in this horrible chain of events.
P.S. I think it's necessary to say this, to try to steer clear of the R-complex: I have personally seen amazing, life-saving professionalism -- tactical virtuosity -- by NYC cops. I've seen cops make mistakes. I've seen lousy cops who should be fired. And I've seen other cops act like thugs and joy-riding sadists. No rhetoric decides my perception of NYPD. I see them with my own eyes.