Ex-Officer Steven Osborne's piece is titled: "Why We’re So Mad at de Blasio The N.Y.P.D. Protests: An Officer's View", published on Wednesday 1/7 in the New York Times.
You can read it here if you haven't yet: http://www.nytimes.com/...
I assume Mr. Osborne won't see this but I'm posting it anyway because the issue is serious, and seems to me to warrant a deeper discussion. Osborne strongly endorsed the actions of a number of NYPD officers who are protesting the leadership of Mayor Bill DeBlasio. I'm a lifelong New Yorker, born in Queens, now living in Brooklyn (32 years and counting). By displaying open contempt for their elected civilian "Commander," these officers -- "soldiers" -- show equal contempt for the citizens who elected him. If Osborne believes in democracy, he has to believe in civilian leadership of soldiers and police. These officers claim to hold their vow to "protect and serve" sacred. But in presenting themselves as victims they seem to have thrown it away. Mr. Osborne goes on to call the nightmarish murder of two cops "assassinations," implying that the Mayor is partly responsible. The claim: by publicly questioning certain tactics, and discussing ways he plans to change them, then by empathizing with protestors upset about Grand Jury decisions not to indict officers involved in the deaths of prisoners, the Mayor created an atmosphere that encouraged the killer. But the killer was by all accounts psychotic: a loaded gun waiting to go off. My letter follows (I'd love to hear comments from anyone with an opinion - particularly, of course, Mr. Osborne.)
Officer Osborne: the people in my Brooklyn neighborhood (myself included) feel enormous gratitude and respect for police. My guess is the Mayor does too. He was never "anti-police" but pro-Constitution. Stop-and-frisk was a policy of the last commissioner; a lot of cops hated it because it set them up as neighborhood adversaries. Their natural local allies -- working people -- want criminals arrested even more than police do, but become mistrustful of police if they feel their own rights are being violated. The courts supported this growing perception by ruling that stop-and-frisk was a violation of Constitutional search and seizure protections. But again, this wasn't a ruling "against police;" it was a ruling against a particular police practice.
Now crime is at an all time low, and police sensitivity at an all time high.
We live in a civilian republic. The elected Mayor is Commander In Chief. Police enlist as soldiers under his command, and work at the discretion of the citizens they serve who hold them to high standards. Recent NYPD behavior -- officers turning their backs on their leader (against the pleas of a fallen officer's family), and then refusing to do their jobs -- are acts of flagrant insubordination, a kind of municipal treason. In the Army they'd face court-martial; in a corporation, immediate dismissal for cause. But your own comments reveal a bigger danger: when police begin to believe they have the right to actively rebel against their civilian leadership we really are moving towards a police state.
No-one is above accountability or criticism. Calling these killings "assassinations" is an abuse of language -- an incendiary manipulation of emotions that are already inflamed. The killer was psychotic; the killings were cold-blooded murders. Using such a tragedy to argue that the Mayor has no right to publicly question police actions, or acknowledge that peaceful protestors have a point, or reveal his own anxieties about his children -- that is Orwellian. Police have hard, dangerous jobs. But putting on the uniform means accepting the risk / reward terms of your contract. If that becomes untenable, the solution is to resign. Mandatory overtime rules ensure that many officers are better paid -- with greater potential for longer, much more lucrative pensions -- than most other public servants. Violent crime is way, way down largely thanks to police -- but that cuts both ways; it also means the risks police face are much reduced. Yet perhaps counter-intuitively we've increased, rather than proportionally reduced, their rewards. Why, Officer Osborne: for the privilege of being publicly blackmailed?
When someone as obviously thoughtful as you is also blinded by self-righteous emotion -- "If I feel hurt I must be right" -- I see evidence of much deeper risk. Police must remember that in a democracy the citizens they serve routinely entrust them with the practical, moment-to-moment power to suspend their civil rights and invade their private lives if there's reasonable suspicion of crime. As a necessary protection, those citizens arrogate to themselves the responsibility to publicly investigate and debate any -- any -- possible misuse of that power. If police can no longer abide by that social contract, it's time for mass, mandatory early retirement. Job burnout is a serious -- understandable -- risk. That seems to be what we have here. I empathize with officers who feel that way. I also believe they've now earned our respect, our thanks, and our lifetime pension payments.
Burned-out, bitter cops, furious at having risked their lives for citizens they've decided don't sufficiently appreciate them, are scary -- especially if they (and you) believe their service places them above reproach and above the law. I don't want them carrying guns anymore, not around me, my family, my friends, or my city. Respect and accountability? It's time to show some for the rest of us, please. Your Commander and the citizens who elected him and depend on you, have been very generous in giving you room to ventilate. Now we expect you to go back to being the hero's you've been and want to be. Alternatively, if you're sick of all the heat there's no shame in getting out of the kitchen. Retirement awaits. Again with respect: enough is enough.
If you believe your work puts you beyond reproach and above the law -- for any reason -- you've become a real danger to the people you're sworn to protect and serve. You've made the clearest case I've seen that peaceful protests and citizen investigations are mandatory actions through which citizens protect themselves from falling under the control of an apparently deeply misguided police force.