New York Times Blasts NYPD for Turning Backs on Mayor: ‘Squandering the Department’s Credibility, Defacing its Reputation’

“Mr. de Blasio isn’t going to say it, but somebody has to,” the paper’s editorial board writes

The New York Times
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The New York Times editorial board wrote a scathing piece Monday criticizing the NYPD for disrespecting Mayor Bill de Blasio and embarking on a “victimhood” campaign.

The paper’s criticism comes after hundreds of police officers attending the funeral of murdered officer Rafael Ramos Saturday turned their backs when the mayor spoke.

“Mr. de Blasio isn’t going to say it, but somebody has to: With these acts of passive-aggressive contempt and self-pity, many New York police officers, led by their union, are squandering the department’s credibility, defacing its reputation, shredding its hard-earned respect,” stated the editorial. “They have taken the most grave and solemn of civic moments — a funeral of a fallen colleague — and hijacked it for their own petty look-at-us gesture. In doing so, they also turned their backs on Mr. Ramoss’ widow and her two young sons, and others in that grief-struck family.”

After Ramos and his partner, Wenjian Liu, were gunned down in their patrol car Dec. 20th, the NYPD’s union head Patrick Lynch slammed anti-police protestors along with Mayor de Blasio: “There’s blood on many hands tonight,” he said then. “Those that incited violence on this street under the guise of protest, that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did everyday.”

The Times called Lynch out by name in the piece, acknowledging police might have valid complaints about treatment, but not enough to carry out a campaign of “victimhood.”

“But none of those grievances can justify the snarling sense of victimhood that seems to be motivating the anti-de Blasio campaign — the belief that the department is never wrong, that it never needs redirection or reform, only reverence,” the piece continued. “This is the view peddled by union officials like Patrick Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association — that cops are an ethically impeccable force with their own priorities and codes of behavior, accountable only to themselves, and whose reflexive defiance in the face of valid criticism is somehow normal.”

The animosity between the NYPD and Mayor de Blasio has been a hot media topic as of late.

In the aftermath of the choking death of Eric Garner in Staten Island and the more recent murders of officers Ramos and Liu, cable news and digital outlets have covered the conflict at length.

It will continue to be a heavily-covered story in the New Year as the protestors calling for action against police brutality continue to butt heads with police.

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