News Scan

NY Cops At War With de Blasio:  Following the enactment of several measures keeping criminals on the streets and last weekend’s shooting of two New York police officers by a repeat violent offender,  one police union has declared war on the city’s Mayor.  Greg Norman of Fox News reports that a fiery tweet from the head of the Sergeant’s Benevolent Association declared “NYPD cops have been assassinated because of you.”   The most recent shootings targeted police in a patrol vehicle, injuring one officer, then the same suspect walked into the precinct and began firing, injuring a lieutenant, only to surrender when he ran out of bullets.  The suspect, habitual felon Robert Williams, was free on parole after a 2002 attempted murder conviction, and had been rearrested in 2018 for fighting with police, and was released from custody pending trial.

Recent laws supported by de Blasio to eliminate cash bail and end “stop and frisk,” and his seeming support of anti-police demonstrators have been widely criticized for undermining respect for police and spurring an increase in violent crime in New York City.   Shootings targeting officers in recent years, including the 2017 murder of Officer Miosotis Familia  and the 2014 assassinations of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu as they sat in their patrol cars, and more recent attacks on officers in the subway and on the street indicate that respect of the police is at a low point in the Big Apple.