Mayor de Blasio: Do NOT resign!

The demagoguery of those politicizing the recent tragic death of two New York City police officers, and especially the inflammatory rhetoric of Patrick Lynch, President of the NYC Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, is reprehensible. We have a very dangerous problem in our society. It is obvious that the broad public perception of the police, nationwide, is increasingly negative. If this trend is not reversed, there will only be more tragic deaths of both civilians and police. Mr. Lynch’s shocking declaration of war on the civilian population is obviously NOT a step in the right direction. Police Commissioner Bratton’s blaming the overwhelmingly peaceful protests for the murderous ambush of Officers Liu and Ramos, as he did in a recent interview, is a worrying example of the hostile "Us vs. Them" mentality that civilians are protesting about. Demonizing those who call for better policing simply emboldens those few officers who are not policing well, which brings down the public perception of the whole police force. The result is the unfair, but pervasive image of police eager to employ violence and demanding impunity for it no matter what. The only peaceful way forward is for authorities 1) to acknowledge that civilians do have legitimate concerns about fairness in the enforcement of law and the administration of justice in our society and 2) to begin taking real action to fix the problems. That is why we condemn the inflammatory remarks of Mr. Lynch, Mr. Bratton, and others, and we especially condemn the deliberately divisive petition calling for the resignation of Mayor de Blasio. The Mayor knows that simply denying the protesters have any legitimate concerns is no longer an option and will only lead to escalating aggression between police and civilians. We applaud him for his wisdom, his courage, and his honesty. He is pursuing the most difficult path: the path of peace. We emphatically call on the Mayor NOT to step down, but to continue leading us in these difficult times.