Guest Columnist… A View from Washington
New York is a tough town. Its ballplayers, performers, business moguls, and of course politicians are always under pressure, and often find themselves in real jams. Mayor Bill de Blasio, near the end in his first year in office, has found himself in one of those very difficult positions, and it is partly of his own making. He ran on an aggressively liberal platform which assailed police tactics in minority communities, as symbolized by the “stop [question] and frisk” practices, and called for reform of the NYPD. Too many police officers however, de Blasio’s approach was one-sided – he put the blame for strained relations and racial tensions on the police.
Citing a lack of police “accountability” in dealings with minority communities, de Blasio sought in particular a change in what he saw as an outmoded concept of punishing minor offenses, a practice implemented by former Mayor Giuliani. Liberals like de Blasio asserted that the “broken windows” theory of combating crime was responsible for the large-scale incarceration of young African Americans and Hispanics for relatively minor crimes which carried excessive sentences. There was, and is, need for analysis and reform of many aspects of the criminal justice system, and the Mayor’s arguments were not without merit. His intentions were good. He wanted to reduce the racial divide in New York City and in America. Alas, through his own mistakes, his political inexperience, and circumstances beyond his control, racial tensions in the city are at their worst point in years, and the ripple effects have been felt around the country.
What did the Mayor do wrong? For one thing, his aggressive campaign against the “stop and frisk” tactic of the NYPD misstated what those tactics were. Cops did not frisk unless, upon questioning, they had reason to do so. De Blasio ignored the fact that the city’s cops are assigned to neighborhoods on the basis of crime statistics: neighborhoods with statistically high crime rates are assigned more police units. This often meant more stops and questioning of persons of color since those communities had higher crime rates. Further de Blasio injected his bi-racial teenage son into the campaign in order to curry favor with minority voters and frequently made the point that he had to caution his son to be wary of and extremely polite to the police if he was ever stopped and questioned. The implication, though never quite stated so boldly, was that white officers were notorious for the use of excessive force on minority youths. The NYPD is the most diverse in the nation, with a majority of its officers in fact minority. De Blasio’s campaign charges amounted to a slander on the most professionalized police force in the country and were recognized as such by the police and by anyone except de Blasio’s most fervent supporters on the far left.
After he became mayor, de Blasio quickly announced that the NYPD would drop the stop and frisk tactics. Fair enough. He had run on the pledge to reform the police department and now followed through on his campaign promise. But he put his wife, who was a well-known advocate and critic of the police, in charge of devising a plan to improve police/community relations. She then hired, or tried to hire, another advocate to be her deputy. It turned out that this woman unbeknown to the mayor and his wife had a boyfriend who was a convicted murderer, and that the woman’s teenage son had recently been arrested on a breaking and entering charge. The leadership of New York City’s police unions raised alarms at the prospect of a mayoral adviser with this background. The woman finally withdrew as a candidate for the deputy post, but the mayor and his wife issued statements deploring character assassination by the media and smear tactics by the police union leaders. The Mayor’s reliance on the Reverend Al Sharpton, bête noire of the NYPD for his past incendiary tactics and current tax delinquency, as an adviser confirmed to many in the department the Mayor’s hostility to the police. The Mayor increased the budget of the NYPD for technology, safety, and training, but he remained unpopular with rank and file officers and the police union leaders.
After he became mayor, de Blasio quickly announced that the NYPD would drop the stop and frisk tactics. Fair enough. He had run on the pledge to reform the police department and now followed through on his campaign promise. But he put his wife, who was a well-known advocate and critic of the police, in charge of devising a plan to improve police/community relations. She then hired, or tried to hire, another advocate to be her deputy. It turned out that this woman unbeknown to the mayor and his wife had a boyfriend who was a convicted murderer, and that the woman’s teenage son had recently been arrested on a breaking and entering charge. The leadership of New York City’s police unions raised alarms at the prospect of a mayoral adviser with this background. The woman finally withdrew as a candidate for the deputy post, but the mayor and his wife issued statements deploring character assassination by the media and smear tactics by the police union leaders. The Mayor’s reliance on the Reverend Al Sharpton, bête noire of the NYPD for his past incendiary tactics and current tax delinquency, as an adviser confirmed to many in the department the Mayor’s hostility to the police. The Mayor increased the budget of the NYPD for technology, safety, and training, but he remained unpopular with rank and file officers and the police union leaders.
Fast forward to the events of November and December. Widespread protests and demonstrations erupted In Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere following the death of a black youth, Michael Brown, at the hands of a white officer. Protests and demonstrations also erupted the next month in New York City when a grand jury in Staten Island failed to indict a white officer in the choke-hold death in July of Eric Garner, a middle-aged black man, in the process of arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes. A video of the scene had been widely shown on television and passions in the city ran high.
Mayor de Blasio defended the rights of peaceful protesters, spoke with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder about a potential federal investigation, and generally viewed his role as that of trying to calm the justifiable outrage against what appeared to be a travesty of justice. The national attention fed the impression that police forces were under siege from the highest levels of the federal government. The New York City protests, unlike those in Missouri, were generally orderly and did not involve looting and destruction of property, but one protest march got out of hand. Two police lieutenants were jostled and slightly roughed up by angry protesters. Many police were enraged when the Mayor appeared to downplay the incident at a press conference when he used the word “allegedly” in response to a reporter’s question about the roughing of the police officers. This appeared to be a failure to defend his officers against the mob.
The next day the situation took a grave turn when a gunman with a long record of arrests and mental health problems shot and killed two officers, execution style, as they sat in their patrol car. On social media the murderer had declared that his motive in planning to kill two white policemen was to avenge the death of Eric Garner. The two “white” officers he killed were Officer Ramos, a Hispanic, and Officer Liu, a Chinese American, before the suspect killed himself. The normally astute Police Commissioner Bill Bratton did not help the situation when he initially in speaking to the press called the killings a “spin-off” from the climate of protests and anger directed against the police. The Mayor and the Commissioner later appeared at a joint press conference (this time no Al Sharpton) where the Mayor, alternately downcast and testy, scolded the reporters, telling them to “get real” and recognize that they were partly to blame for the crisis by playing up the extremists when most of the protesters were peacefully exercising their constitutional rights. The Mayor made the suggestions that protests and demonstrations be suspended until after the two officers were laid to rest. The protesters ignored him.
When the Mayor and Commissioner visited the hospital to console the families of the slain officers, police officers turned their backs in a gesture of contempt and disrespect for the Mayor. The head of the patrolmen’s Benevolent Association declared that the Mayor had blood on his hands. At the funeral service for Officer Ramos in Queens a few days later, scores of officers outside again turned their backs when the Mayor rose to give his brief speech. The Mayor, subdued and downcast, seemed to scrunch his 6’6” frame down to the height of the lectern. The Mayor in general appeared dazed and uncertain of what to do, perhaps concluding that the best thing he could do was to keep a very low profile and allow Commissioner Bratton and community leaders to rescue him and the city. No one rose to defend the Mayor. The Democratic politicians acted as if they had never heard of him. Former Republican Governor Pataki and former Mayor Giuliani piled on and blamed the Democrats from President Obama on down to de Blasio for creating a climate of hatred of the police. One acquaintance the Mayor turned to for advice told reporters that it was the Mayor’s political inexperience and lack of knowledge of the city’s complex constituencies that had caused his problems – not, perhaps, the most robust defense of the embattled Mayor. The Mayor’s only friend, it seemed, was Commissioner Bratton.
New York is a tough town, yes, but it is also a resilient town. One hopes the Mayor will regain his footing because it is not a good thing for the nation’s leading city to be leaderless. At the same time one hopes that the Mayor has learned something. It is not a good idea to charge into an explosive issue on an ideological high horse. It is a mistake to see things only from one side and to appeal only to one’s base. There is a reason why politicians are usually cautious, even timid, and waffle on the issues – they always run scared, and properly so. They instinctively know that the body politic is like some giant slumbering monster which, once aroused, can thrash about and destroy its own habitat and everything in sight with its huge flailing tail. The politician’s ultimate job to make everybody feel he or she belongs and has a stake in society. Politicians who are cocksure and cater only to their political bases do not serve that larger end.
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Bruce L.R. Smith is a Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy of George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia. Professor Smith made his career principally at Columbia University in New York City and at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D. C. He lives in Washington, D. C. with his wife Elise, a health attorney and association executive representing and advising skilled nursing facilities. Mr. Bruce L. R. Smith has B.A. & M.A. from The University of Minnesota and a Ph.D from Harvard University.
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Please watch for Mr. Smith’s forthcoming book-biography of Lincoln Gordon. It is scheduled for release May 2015. Please see the following cover page and University of Kentucky Press catalog page. (Pending)
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