Deadly Silence

CRIME IN THE CITY

Shots ring out every night in New York City. Week after week. All five boroughs. Mostly at NYCHA housing sites. No, not Black Lives Matter protesters. Nothing to do with the cause of Black Lives Matter? Well, that’s another story..

Because this year a Black man in Minneapolis was murdered by a defiant white cop who kneeled on his neck until George Floyd died. And that was the trigger. Other shootings of black men by white police had occurred during the year but the Floyd incident was captured by an ever-present smart phone video in close-up and it was too much for many Americans. This time they couldn’t look away because what they saw sickened them and many took to the streets…as has happened before periodically…when the sight of white policemen brutally beating or shooting a black man seems too much to accept without protest.

Years ago the country was shaken when half of Los Angeles seemed to be burning and endless looting was rampant after the pictures of the police beating Rodney King swept across through media across the nation.

There’s a list…Eric Garner, Briana Cole, Michael Brown, Jacob..it goes on…Staten Island, Cleveland, Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Peaceful protests happen during the day. Even when opposing forces march and meet there may be echoes of violence but things seem under control. But when protesters march at night things happen. Suddenly the night is marred by looting and pure criminal behavior is let loose.

Where are the police in charge of stopping the inevitable? Why haven’t they been positioned to protect the areas where looting can best take place? If the marchers are on Fifth Avenue or 57th Street, why haven’t they been assigned to guard the people and the property?

These are not questions to be answered here. We are instead wondering why we are seeing nightly shooting, murders of innocent people even a year old child in areas around the city known for crime.

These nightly shootings are not about Black Lives Matter activities or anything else but pure criminal behavior.

And where are the Police? Where is the largest and best police force in the world?

Why have these crimes grown by 83% over last year while arrests have dropped 8%?

And where is the government leadership to answer these questions and stop the violence?

DEFUNDING THE POLICE

Bill de Blasio, the blatantly incompetent Mayor of New York has appointed three Police Commissioners during his almost seven years in office. He started big bringing back Bill Bratton…he didn’t stay that long nor did the guy that followed him and now a third. That kind of movement says it all about De Blasio’s abilities.

De Blasio, despite his lofty ‘progressive’ words which he wears constantly like a favorite necktie, has had a lifetime career nothing else but politics and government. Yet he is all about words and not actions; his dealings are often openly sleazy and self-serving and give lie to everything he says.

As Black Lives Matter marches filled TV and social media screens day after day, this is what De Blasio did to actually respond to demands that Mayors Defund the Police:

He cancelled a graduating class of 1,600 new police;

He removed the 600 person plain clothes, anti-crime force specifically assigned to getting guns off the City streets and stopping crime…they were the tough guys who were likely to be too tough;

He cut overtime pay by more than 50% taking active Police off the streets.

The NYC Council also led by an inept, uninformed Speaker trying to lift his “progressive” identity, then changed the rules of arrest limiting the ways in which Police could make a physical arrest of a suspect.

The cumulative effect of these decisions has led to a very real increase in criminal activity in New York.

Thanks to the information provided by Deputy Police Commissioner John Miller and Chief of Crime Control Strategies. Mike Lipetri on the Cats at Night Radio show here is what De Blasio’s actions have cost New York: less cops on the street, significant resignations and retirements due to lack of overtime which is counted on the record towards pensions for retiring police…take away the overtime hours, you lessen the amount of pensions…the ability to get rid of the guns causing violence before the violence begins.

LOOKING AWAY

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a retired policeman, insists that the anti-crime unit should never have been disbanded, that reform is necessary and important but that this was a bad decision and that the law limiting a cop’s ability to make a physical arrest, has produced a fear which has caused cops to pause or even look away.

Patrick Lynch, vocal head of the largest Police Union claims that there is no slowdown, no instruction to look away and ignore crime, no so-called Blue Flu that is causing cops to actually ignore what is taking place in the streets.

And yet despite this list of activities that are clearly limiting the Police from doing what they have done, the alarming jump in crime appears to make Lynch’s words hollow.

This is a man who made a deal with former Mayor Mike Bloomberg to drop the starting salary of a policeman to $25,000 a year in exchange for preserving jobs and increasing salaries for experienced staff. What do you get for $25,000 a year?

Because there is something else that is not being said. In New York there is a genuine Blue Bloods’ reality: the family ties within the department are like no other force in the US simply because no other city has such a significant Police Department.

Young cops are the sons and daughters. Grandsons and Granddaughters, Cousins, nephews and nieces, siblings of other cops. It is a family affair unmatched in any other job or profession.

Along with the pride of Protect and Serve comes the realities of Us against Them. And we all know who Them is.

It is fine for John Miller, a former TV newsman who is a fine spokesman for the Department, to say that police training here has not produced the crimes that now fill our lives…or at least not since the Pantaleo murder of Eric Garner five years ago in Staten Island.

Yet there is no way that he can claim that the training of Police is based on the fundamental idea that Us versus Them can no longer be part of a Policeman’s thinking or actions.

We doubt he would make such a claim.

But the murders we have seen around the country are due to just that Us versus Them belief.

And the crime we are seeing in NYC is not the result of new bail laws according to All Statistics and despite a GREAT NUMBER OF STATEMENTS TO THE CONTRARY.

Unless and until real training takes place that will erase previous beliefs within Police Departments here and across the country, we will not see an end to this behavior that comes right into our homes.

They are caused much too often by the very meaning of systemic racism…the thoughts and feelings bred into us by very Constitution which needed amendments to become more human, by our families…by those close to us…by our very society.

To deny the reality of it has become the kind of lie that exists all over America as a denial of truth too terrible to admit…a denial of a truth that genuinely reduces our greatness and the promise of our creed.