The Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York (NYCPBA) — the city’s largest police union, representing about 24,000 of the department’s 36,000 officers — released a statement on May 4 arguing that officers should not be required to enforce social distancing orders.
PBA president Patrick Lynch said in a statement,
The situation is untenable: the NYPD needs to get cops out of the social distancing enforcement business altogether. The cowards who run this city have given us nothing but vague guidelines and mixed messages, leaving the cops on the street corners to fend for ourselves. Nobody has a right to interfere with police action. But now that the inevitable backlash has arrived, they are once again throwing us under the bus.
Meanwhile, those same politicians are still watering down our laws, releasing real criminals and discouraging proactive enforcement of fare evasion and quality of life issues.
The NYCPBA’s statement was released soon after a video went viral on social media over the weekend showing NYPD officers forcefully apprehending a man on May 2 after the man allegedly “took a fighting stance” after being ordered by police to disperse.
The Daily Caller reported on May 4 that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio lashed out at the city’s Jewish community last week after large crowds congregated at a Rabbi’s funeral. An article posted by The New American on April 29 explained what happened:
When Jewish mourners came together [on the night of April 28] for the funeral service of Rabbi Chaim Mertz, it appears that not all the mourners practiced what the mayor considered proper social distancing. In a series of tweets, de Blasio expressed his outrage. “When I heard, I went there myself to ensure the crowd was dispersed. And what I saw WILL NOT be tolerated so long as we are fighting the Coronavirus.”
In a follow-up tweet, de Blasio was more specific: “My message to the Jewish community and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.”
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish, shot back in his own tweet: “I can’t imagine de Blasio saying this about any other community. It’s pretty amazing. And for the record, MANY of the leaders of the Jewish community have taken strong stands on social distancing.”
The NYCPBA has a long history of defending the interests of the NYPD again intrusions by the city’s liberal political leadership. It was successful in its campaign to defeat Mayor John Lindsay’s proposed Civilian Complaint Review Board in 1967. A major factor in the success of that campaign was the support of the NYCPBA’s efforts by Support Your Local Police (SYLP, an ad hoc committee of The John Birch Society, the parent organization of The New American). The Daily Worker, an official Communist Party publication, blamed SYLP, then headed by James Fitzgerald, a former police detective from Newark, New Jersey, for getting rid of the civilian review board in New York City.
Photo: AP Images
Warren Mass has served The New American since its launch in 1985 in several capacities, including marketing, editing, and writing. Since retiring from the staff several years ago, he has been a regular contributor to the magazine. Warren writes from Texas and can be reached at [email protected].
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