At the heart-rending funeral service for Officer Wenjian Liu, the persistent tendency of some police officers to turn their backs on Mayor de Blasio underscores the depth of the problem that the mayor faces with the NYPD. Going back to the La Guardia years, every liberal mayor who has tried to reform the department has been at best rebuffed and at worst battered. Part of the problem is the NYPDs cultural and institutional resistance to change: the unique working world of policing PLUS the power of unionization under the PBA create formidable obstacles. Also important, to a lesser but still significant degree, is the difficulty that liberal mayors face when trying to develop their own philosophy of policing. In general, since at least the 1960s, the issue of policing has been monopolized by conservatives. There have been exceptions to this in New York, such as Mayor Dinkins embrace of community policing and, as the historian Fritz Umbach has shown, the work of housing police. Mayor de Blasios challenge is to affirm his elected authority, get cops to think differently about how and why they do their jobs, and produce policing that is both effective and morally legitimate throughout the city. From all I learned from the speeches at Officer Lius funeral, thats what he did throughout his time in a police uniform. It would be a tragedy if New Yorkers, and the NYPD, did not learn from his example.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 18:06:05 +0000
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