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.
