When NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA) President Ed Mullins disgracefully - and ever so publicly - undermined NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio's efforts to bring the 2016 DNC Convention to his beloved Brooklyn - NY Post, 8.26.14 - by declaring NYC unsafe for attendees, he was, by extension, declaring his officers unwilling to do, or incapable of doing, their jobs (take your pick; it matters not): in effect, unfit to serve.
Indeed, Mr. Mullins was not, and is not, the most visible, enduring, incendiary voice of the NYPD: that distinction goes to PBA President Pat Lynch, under whose tacit approval hundreds of police officers defamed the badge, and their own fallen, by turning their backs on Mayor de Blasio at the funerals of two tragically murdered officers; and under whose watch occurred a reckless, irresponsible work slowdown - their 'blue flu' - that served only to demonstrate the City's over-policing.
But by not publicly pulling back his words - by neither clarifying nor apologizing for his remarks - Ed Mullins to this day leaves festering the open wound that is the core integrity of the NYPD. It was he who declared the NYPD unwilling or incapable of protecting visitors. His were rogue remarks at a time when the NYPD was demonstrating particularly dangerous, insubordinate, unpunished rogue behavior. And presumably, his remarks stand to this day.
The escalating crisis in NYC policing is de Blasio's own self-inflicted wound. Bringing back Bill Bratton, one of Giuliani's two police commissioners (what became of the other?) - with draconian zero-tolerance, broken windows policing (vs. community policing) - seemed to almost assure events like the cold-blooded, universally witnessed murder on Staten Island of Eric Garner over the crime of selling single cigarettes. (Aren't the grand jury's findings still sealed?)
We won't know the extent to which Mullins' remarks caused the DNC to go elsewhere (Philadelphia, to this writer, the far better choice). But as long as his words stand, everyone connected to NYC has frightening cause to fear the NYPD. No one should remain silent.
NYC is in desperate need of Baltimore-style DoJ intervention.
Heard on the streets...
"Indict!
Convict!
Send those killer cops to jail!
The whole damned system is guilty as hell!"