Saturday, December 27, 2014

A real peaceful protest

From NBC:

A group of retired and current NYPD officers say they flew a banner along the Hudson River Friday that said "de Blasio, our backs have turned to you" in protest of the mayor's policies toward the department.

The small banner, which traveled up and down the Hudson River Friday morning, was paid for by officers upset over what they called "the mayor’s incendiary rhetoric, and for facilitating the current hostile climate towards the NYPD."

The plane made several passes between Battery Park and the George Washington Bridge at about 9 a.m.

In a statement released Friday morning, the group of officers condemned the mayor for his comments about worrying about the safety of his interracial son at the hands of police following a Staten Island grand jury's decision not to indict an officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner. They said de Blasio's comments fanned flames of civil unrest following the grand jury decision "potentially to the deaths of PO Wenjian Liu and PO Rafael Ramos, as well as the continued threats against NYPD personnel."

"We no longer have confidence in Mayor de Blasio, nor in his ability to lead New York City and promote the values that both the NYPD and the good law abiding citizens of the city hold dear," the officers said. "Mayor de Blasio turned his back on us long before we turned our backs on him."

11 comments:

r185 said...

Opposing and protesting police who violate NYPD regs (I.e. the Garner case) and honoring those who sacrifice for us, are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are one and the same. Both respect the honorable dedicated cops, like my father and 99% of others on the job.

Anonymous said...

Furthermore, choke holds may violate NYPD protocol but what happened to Garner was not a chokehold. If he hadn't resisted, there wouldn't have been a asthma attack.

And the fact that one arrest went bad is really not justification for calling the NYPD the KKK. Before DeBlasio took office the NYPD had a 73% approval rating, so they must have been treating most people they came in contact with respectfully.

If you don't like the outcome of the grand jury, the protest the people who make up the rules and presented the case, not. Ops who had nothing to do with it.

Anonymous said...

I've served on Gand Jury. They are SUPPOSED to determine if there is a reasonable basis to charge, not guilt/innocence. I thought there was both a reasonable basis to CHARGE, but not enough evidence to CONVICT. There is that LARGE grey zone between reasonable beilief the person committed the charged crime, and guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and in fact to even the civil court standard of more than majority of the facts. At least that is the theory

Anonymous said...

Yes, and they determined that it wasn't done intentionally but accidentally, so they didn't charge. So we're going to call for the death of those cops not involved?

Anonymous said...

I think that city council should pass legislation that requires all uniformed services as fire and police live within the city limits.

Anonymous said...

Not at all - as I said, if there is reasonable BELIEF they are supposed to charge, and the jury is supposed to find them innocent. The Grand Jury the officers are not supposed to have council, and the DA is supposed to do his best to get it past the GJ. If the DA thinks there isn't reason to go past the GJ, it should be dropped BEFORE it gets to the GJ (and yes, I understand the politics of this - NOT good)
I'm talking in theory, and a perfect world (hahaha, snort, hahahahaha).
Do I believe the officers involved were guilty? NOPE, not one second! Do I believe there was reasonable grounds to charge them? I wasn't in that GJ room, but debating intent is something that should go to the Petit Jury IMHO. I'm just thinking about what the different roles the two types of juries have in out legal system (at least in theory)
I know we indicted folks who we all said "He is most likely innocent, but that is for the regular jury to decide, the DA has a case - weak, but a case".
The old expression is a Grand Jury will indict a ham sandwich holds.
As I said, convicting the officers (from what I saw) for anything would have been wrong - too much doubt. That said, indicting them (because there is a reasonable case...)
I'd say on a scale of 0-100, with 50+ being majority of evidence (civil cases) and 30 being "reasonable to charge" and 70 as "beyond a reasonable doubt" (probably higher IMHO, but just to make both sides even), I'd say this case was more than 30, but less than 50 - call it 35-40
That said, again, I was not in the GJ room, but knowing it is SUPPOSED to be the DA trying to get the case through

Jerry Rotondi said...

I love it! It reminds me way back when we all contributed money to have a plane fly over the Little Neck Memorial Day parade. It flew a banner which read..."Open up the Fort Totten hearings". This was directed at our former crooked borough president Claire Shulman who was holding closed meetings to discuss cutting up Fort Totten for developers like Mattone and St. John's University to build on. This was one fight the community won ...becoming public parkland as opposed to further enriching a handful of politically connected developers. Dump Di Blasio. I support impeachment hearings.

Anonymous said...

"the jury is supposed to find them innocent."

A jury can find a defendant guilty or not guilty. Not guilty does not equal innocence. Of course the DA did what he could to ensure it didn't get to that point.

Anonymous said...

Anon #5 - it frightens me that you have served on a grand jury, when you don't even seem to understand how the process works, nor can you form a cohesive sentence. A jury never decides someone is innocent. You are either guilty or not guilty. Your decision of whether one is "innocent" or not should not come into play when deciding on an indictment.

No wonder the system is broken, we can't even educate people as to how the most basic parts of our legal system work.

Anonymous said...

How do you know what the da did or didn't do? I can't wait till the savages start attacking the hipster/ urban pioneers.........

Anonymous said...

Its all about the right to protest, right? I protest this bullshit mayor. It's my right. F- him, and his wife and Al Sharpton and all of them.