Welcome To Our World Mayor DeBlasio

[Michael Phillips]

Welcome to Our World Mayor DeBlasio

New York Mayor DeBlasio has a black wife. He has a black son. Now, the New York Police Department  (NYPD) has all but declared him an honorary black. Welcome to our world Mayor DeBlasio. The police obviously want to continue the harassment and killing of innocent  unarmed blacks. It is apparent they are trying to drum up white support and thus weaken the popular mayor politically. They have attacked him by turning their backs on him at the funeral of one of the two murdered police officers by a black madman and they are now on a go-slow, all because he said:

“Chirlane (his black wife) and I have had to talk to Dante (his black son)  for years about the dangers that he may face. A good young man, law-abiding young man who would never think to do anything wrong. And yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face, we've had to literally train him—as families have all over this city for decades—in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.”

The NYPD  ‘history that hangs over us” is probably the worst record of police brutality in the land. As I cite in my upcoming book, “Leave The Rat Race To The Rats – The Ghetto Goodwill Revolution”, lest we forget:

•  Abner Louima is a Haitian who was assaulted, brutalized and forcibly sodomized with a broken-off broom handle by NYPD officers after being arrested outside a Brooklyn nightclub in 1997.because the police officers claimed, “Oops we thought he was someone else”. A number of officers were convicted in the case.
• Unarmed Amadou Diallo was shot and killed in the entrance to his apartment house by NYPD police officers because the officers claimed, “Oops we thought his wallet was a  gun”. Four officers were indicted for second degree murder but later acquitted.

• Bridegroom Sean Bell was celebrating his wedding day with friends in  the New York City borough of Queens on November 25, 2006. He along with one Latino and two African-American men, all unarmed, were shot at a total of fifty times by a team of both plainclothes and undercover NYPD officers.
• The Central Park jogger case involved the assault and rape of a female jogger in New York City's Central Park, on April 19, 1989. Five juvenile males—four black and one Latino—were tried, villified and convicted for the crime and served their sentences fully ranging from 5 to 13 years. They had even confessed after long hours in a jail cell but later retracted claiming coercion.  They were actually  innocent, but these boys confessed to such a heinous crime obviously because of coercion. The convictions were vacated in 2002 when Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist and murderer serving a life sentence for other crimes, confessed to committing the crime alone and DNA evidence confirmed his involvement in the rape.
• In 2009, about 600,000 people were stopped and frisked by NYPD. Though blacks and Hispanics account for just over half the city's population, they represent about 85 percent of those stopped. The Center for Constitutional Justice, a civil rights group, says drugs or weapons are turned up in less than 2 percent of those stops. Stop and Frisk continues.

So, when  a New York grand jury failed to indict white NYPD  police officer Daniel Pantalone for the videotaped death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, it is just part of NYPD history that goes way back.

Welcome to our world  Mayor DeBlasio, but you have your work cut out for you. I worked for over 30 years in public service. Governors, administrators and top brass fought for a policy of equal opportunity in the workplace. But despite that and even laws and rules in support, discrimination in hiring, promotions, and job assignment persisted because many bosses down the line were defiant. It was simply the culture of the institution.  NYPD is also defiant, arrogantly defiant.

 There is talk about, “We need to have a conversation about race”. What nonsense!  In my opinion if I had a “ conversation about race” with my white former co-workers and even my white friends (with the exception of my white social-activists friends), a large majority would support the police believing too that the black innocent victims of the police killings are guilty until proven innocent without the shadow of a doubt. And, that doubt persists because the majority of whites  would not care enough to examine the evidence, even if it stared them in the face.  “Not my problem, man”. Of course, in the general population, that majority is much higher. I hope I am wrong but the NYPD is counting on that majority.

 The real problem, as I point out in my previously mentioned upcoming book, is the police culture. It is a macho culture that corrupts good cops and shelters, encourages and promotes bad cops. If you are a good cop who believes in equal justice for all including the black community, stay in the closet for your career’s sake. Do you remember Serpico? If not, google him. He was a good NYPD cop who wrote a book (later made into a movie) about how the NYPD hounded him out of the force for being a good cop.

 So welcome to our world, Mayor DeBlasio. Now that you are an honorary black, you have experienced just a small sample of the stresses that a black person has to endure here in America. I hope you can deal with it even though you are a powerful mayor. But, suppose you were  just a poor black teen in the ghetto.