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The head of the NYPD’s sergeants union on Tuesday urged Democrats to choose anywhere but New York City as the site of their 2016 convention, citing surging crime and a lack of support for cops by Mayor de Blasio.
Full-page newspaper ads in The Post and elsewhere said the Sergeants Benevolent Association “cannot now in good conscience” join de Blasio in lobbying the Democratic National Committee to hold its political powwow at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
The open letter signed by SBA President Ed Mullins said that “while the Barclays Center is still new and glistening, the great city in which it stands is lurching back to the bad old days of high crime.”
“Mayor de Blasio has not earned the right to play host to such an important event,” Ed Mullins.
NY Post (a Murdoch property), 8.26.14
Whether it's NYC (Brooklyn), Philly or Columbus, a permanent asterisk to the DNC convention city selection process will be the NYPD SBA maintaining, as far back as August '14, that the NYPD is either incapable of, or unwilling to, keep attendees safe. Either way, extortion is contrary to
every concept of proper policing, rendering the NYPD untrustworthy, symptomatic of deeper issues.
Police work slowdowns - even if they proved NYC is over-policed - are unacceptable under any circumstance: the consequences of their 'blue flu' were unknown and untested. The very concept is antithetical to their existence. And if the US military turned their backs on the President the way the NYPD turned on the Mayor - is there a difference? - there'd be dire consequences.
Mullins and incendiary NYPD PBA President Pat Lynch will always owe NYC a very deep, repentant, unqualified apology. Their actions - not the Mayor's; not the public's - make the NYPD an untrustworthy, rogue force. Without those apologies, the NYPD remains disgraced.
Let the convention go to Philly: the historical optics are better and who needs the diverting backstory of an unwilling or incapable police force.