NYPD Police Commissioner Bill Bratton on Sunday disapproved of the police officers who turned their backs on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) during the funeral for slain officer Rafael Ramos.
“I certainly don’t support that action,” Bratton said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“That funeral was held to honor Officer Ramos. And to bring politics, to bring issues into that event, I think, was very inappropriate,” he added.
Hundreds of New York police officers on Saturday turned their backs on a video broadcast of Mayor de Blasio during his eulogy of Ramos at the policeman’s funeral in Queens.
Officers made the same gesture as de Blasio entered a press conference at Brooklyn’s Woodhull Hospital after Ramos and his fellow officer Wenjian Liu were fatally shot by Ismaaiyl Brinsley on Dec. 20.
On NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Bratton issued a general call for “a lot less rhetoric and a lot more dialogue.” He also told host Chuck Todd that the current turmoil in New York “goes beyond race relations” and brought up a contract dispute currently embroiling the NYPD and City Hall.
“It’s going to be a painful process. It has to be an open process,” he said. “But the process that has to be engaged in, my mayor, myself, we are committed to engaging in it.”
This post has been updated.
I look at that photo and the first thing that comes to my mind is, monkey see, monkey do.
The police commissioner is right and even Mayor 9/11 agreed with him. Yes, it’s very inppropriate. Yes, the police have the right to turn their backs on the mayor but in light of this:
“He [the police commissioner] also told host Chuck Todd that the current turmoil in New York “goes beyond race relations” and brought up a contract dispute currently embroiling the NYPD and City Hall.”
it looks like they are using a murdered fellow cop’s back on which to mount their show of pique over contract beefs with the city. They prolly aren’t happy with a liberal mayor, either, but it wasn’t their call, then, was it? Very disgraceful display on the part of NYC’s “finest” egged on by their union.
It is up to good cops in the NYPD to rectify this situation from within. These thugs are shaming the entire department by demanding the right to kill unarmed black men with impunity. They must be shunned and publicly excoriated.
They’ve really come to believe that they’re absolutely entitled to respect simply because they do the job rather than as a result of how they do the job and that the slightest failure to receive that respect regardless of how they do the job will inevitably lead to cops being killed.
…And that they’re allowed to protest, but civilians aren’t.
I really wish someone would explain to these police officers that they impression they’re giving off is, anyone that dares to disagree with us deserves shunning, and we can be so petty as to make a fallen comrade’s funeral about us. All I can see when I see this, is police officer’s widening the gulf between themselves, and the citizen’s they are tasked with protecting.