
Screen capture from press conference with NYCPBA President Patrick Lynch
Opposition against New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio by police officers is still high after the deaths of two New York Police Department officers on Dec. 20.
NYPD Commissioner William Bratton believes tensions are as high as in the 1970s, when the crime rate soared along with the deaths of police officers.
The night officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were killed by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who later committed suicide, de Blasio spoke at Woodhull Hospital where NYPD cops turned their backs to him before he spoke. It symbolized the divide between the NYPD and de Blasio.
Indeed, the decision of Patrick J. Lynch, the head of the police union in NYC, to blame protesters for having blood on their hands shows the response of the NYPD in general. De Blasio as well was blamedfor having blood on his hands too because he did not stand with the NYPD in response to the protests against police brutality when they first began.
Lynch was criticized for his inflammatory comments; in fact, he could be described as “completely nuts” as journalist J.K. Trotter writes.
Still, Lynch’s history, and the history of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, is one where they go against the status quo when it is not in their favor.
In March 2012, for example, Lynch criticized a plan to provide more power to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which is not very effective to begin with, in holding officers accountable. He said the CCRB had a “predisposition that police officers are always wrong.”
Offering such powers to the CCRB was also offered in 2010 by then-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. Lynch criticized it as “stunt” to “placate the usual police critics.”
But even in terms of getting it wrong, Lynch disregards the facts and prefers to side with officers. For instance, on Feb. 4, 1999, Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea, was shot 41 times after four officers assumed he had a gun. He held a wallet. The officers were found not guilty.
At the time, Lynch condemned the decision of the ACLU in running a full-page ad in The New York Times criticizing the four officers for using excessive force. Moreover, Lynch believed the four officers would be acquitted in a fair trial. Lynch said, after the trial finished, the not guilty verdict was what he expected and he did not believe race was a factor.
Kenneth Boss, one of the four involved in the murder of Diallo, had his gun revoked after the shooting, but it was reinstated in 2012. Lynch called the decision “appropriate and long overdue.”
With a shooting like Diallo, and the countless others killed by officers, there would be a need to address the “bad cops.” Indeed, Police Commissioner William Bratton pledged in October to remove officers who were “poisoning the well.” Lynch’s response was more of cautious than siding with Bratton:
Police officers are entitled, like anyone else, to due process. It is our job to ensure that every officer who is accused has the same opportunity to defend him or herself as any other American. We have defended police officers from rush to judgments in the past, we are defending them today and we will continue to defend them long into the future.
Even when reforms are brought up that are not necessarily harmful for the NYPD, the PBA is hostile to it. In 2011, some NYPD officers insulted people at the West Indian Parade in New York City online with comments such as “savages” and “filth.” There was outrage after it was discovered.