Pat Lynch, President of New York City’s Patrolman’s Benevolent Association had harsh words for Barack Obama, Eric Holder and Mayor Bill DeBlasio in his interview on NewsMax TV.
Lynch told Steve Malzberg,
“It seems like they’re running a revolution rather than running a city or running a country… It’s your actions that lead to interaction with the police, not what you look like.”
The Patrolman’s Benevolent Association of New York City represents 50,000 active and retired New York City police officers.
Via NewsMax TV:
NewsMax TV reported:
The powerful police union boss came out swinging against allegations of racism and excessive force that have been lodged against the NYPD in the case of Eric Garner. Garner, an obese man with respiratory problems, was selling loose cigarettes on the street when he was confronted by cops. He died of a heart attack after a police takedown, in which many described Officer Daniel Pantaleo as employing a chokehold as Garner gasped “I can’t breathe.” A grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo, despite the medical examiner labeling Garner’s death a homicide.
Reaction from Washington and the New York City mayor’s office was swift.
Obama said the decision not to indict underlined the need for increased efforts to improve relationships between cops and communities of color. Holder is beefing up restrictions on racial and other forms of profiling by federal law enforcement.
De Blasio — who is white, and married to Chirlane McCray, who is African-American — infuriated cops by saying he worries about the safety of his mixed-race son Dante in interactions with police, just like parents of other black children.
“[He’s] a good, young man, law-abiding young man, who would never think to do anything wrong,” de Blasio said. “And yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers 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 the police officers who are there to protect him.”
But Lynch insisted to Steve Malzberg that in no way does Garner’s death have a racial element to it.
“We have a majority, minority police department here. We’re out there doing the job color blind, the way we’re supposed to do it and we get no credit for it,” he said.
“You have the whole grand jury, mixed-race grand jury, mixed-gender grand jury … [looking] at just the evidence, not the emotion of the street.
“No one will dispute it’s a terrible tragedy when there’s a loss of life and we don’t just say that, we mean that. We’re police officers, we go out to preserve life.“
Read the rest here.