NY mayor calls for halt to police protests

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio called for a temporary halt to protests over police conduct as he faced a widening rift with a force preparing Christmas time burials for two of its own and decrying the demonstrations as a factor in the officers’ cold-blooded executions.

“I think it’s important that, regardless of people’s viewpoints, that everyone step back,” de Blasio said in a speech yesterday at the Police Athletic League. “I think it’s a time for everyone to put aside political debates, put aside protests, put aside all of the things that we will talk about in all due time.”

De Blasio’s relations with the city’s police unions have tumbled to anew low in the aftermath of Saturday’s shooting in which the gunman claimed was retaliation for the deaths of black men at the hands of white police.

In a display of defiance, dozens of police officers turned their backs to de Blasio at the hospital where the officers died, and union leaders said the mayor had “blood on his hands” for enabling the protesters who have swept the streets of New York this month since a grand jury declined to indict an officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.

De Blasio, in his first extensive remarks since the killings, called for “everyone to put aside political debates, put aside protests, put aside all of the things that we will talk about in all due time.”

Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were ambushed on Saturday by a 28-year-old who vowed in an Instagram post that he would put “wings on pigs.” The suspect, Ishmaaiyl Brinsley was black; the slain New York Police Department officers were Hispanic and Asian.

The killings came as police nationwide are being criticised following Garner’s death and 18-year-old Michael Brown’s fatal shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.

Protests erupted after grand juries declined to charge officers in either case. Yesterday, a prosecutor said a white Milwaukee police officer who was fired after he fatally shot a mentally ill black man in April won’t face criminal charges. Lawyers for the slain man’s family urged any protesters there to be peaceful.

Investigators are trying to determine if Brinsley had taken part in any protests, or simply latched onto the cause for the final act in a violent rampage.

He started off Saturday in Baltimore, shooting his ex-girlfriend in the stomach before coming to New York and killing the officers. He then ran into a nearby subway station and killed himself.

The police unions blame de Blasio for fostering an anti-police sentiment.

Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch declaring that there was “blood on the hands” on the “steps of City Hall and the office of the mayor.”