While publicly trying to make amends, de Blasio has privately continued attacking cops

While publicly trying to make amends, de Blasio has privately continued attacking cops

While trying to repair his public image via meetings with police union heads, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has privately been urging his colleagues to blast those same union leaders for turning their backs on him in a disavowal of his incendiary racially-tinged commentary.

Police officers have been fed up with the mayor ever since he asserted that the death of Eric Garner was the end product of centuries of racism” and said he had counseled his son Dante, who is biracial, never to reach for his cellphone when interacting with police, who will assume the worst of “a young man of color.”

Last week, the situation came to a head as police officers united and turned their backs on de Blasio as he entered the hospital to pay his respects to their slain colleagues and again when he eulogized murdered patrolman Rafael Ramos. Police resentment of the mayor reached a new high on Monday, when he spoke at the Police Academy graduation, where he was booed and called a traitor by audience members.

Apparently none of this has sat well with de Blasio, who despite outward attempts at reconciliation, was secretly organized a smear campaign against NYPD higher-ups.

Via Fox News:

Top aides to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio reportedly urged his political allies to blast the city’s police union and rank-and-file officers for turning their backs on the mayor during the funeral for one of two NYPD cops assassinated earlier this month.

The website DNAinfo.com reported Tuesday that members of de Blasio’s government affairs staff began contacting Democratic state and city officials Monday asking them to publicly criticize Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch.

While this was going on, the website reported, de Blasio himself was setting up a meeting with the heads of five police unions in an effort to repair a relationship that has been stretched close to a total breaking point in recent weeks.

“City Hall wanted me to blast the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association for turning their backs on him,” one legislator told the site. “They … said they were calling all of us, and that it was our obligation to stand up defending the mayor.” The legislator described the tenor of the call as being “because they were calling that we should do whatever they ask.”

Prior to this report, de Blasio’s Press Secretary was touting a meeting with police unions as a way to heal the rift that had grown between them, calling it a way “to move forward together.”

De Blasio’s office denied that the phone calls made to attack police unions were politically motivated, claiming they were instead used to encourage support for families of the murdered police officers.

One of de Blasio’s colleagues who received a phone call called that assessment “preposterous” and “not reality.”

Cross-posted at the Mental Recession

Rusty Weiss

Rusty Weiss

Rusty Weiss is editor of the Mental Recession, one of the top conservative blogs of 2012. His writings have appeared at the Daily Caller, American Thinker, FoxNews.com, Big Government, the Times Union, and the Troy Record.

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