It’s as if New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wanted to give the New York City cops one more smack before the end of the year. Yesterday he announced the reappointment of Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Laura Johnson. If Johnson’s name sounds familiar, it is because she is the judge who memorialized the two recently executed New York City police officers by twice freeing people making new threats on the lives of New York’s Finest.
Her one-year, interim reappointment by de Blasio outraged law enforcement officials a day after he met with the heads of five police unions to heal his fractured relationship with cops.
Devon Coley was freed without bail by Johnson after making death threats against the NYPD on Facebook.
Coley posted this threatening photo [above] and message on his Facebook mere hours after a man executed two NYPD officers.
Obviously the police are not happy:
“The mayor’s actions of reappointing this judge are completely hypocritical to his argument that he’s pro-police and counterproductive to what he claims to be an effort to open dialogue going forward,” said sergeants union chief Ed Mullins.
“He had the opportunity to demonstrate good will and support for the police, and he once again has demonstrated the opposite.”
The head of the state court officers union, Dennis Quirk, called de Blasio’s decision “a disgrace.”
“It sends a strong message to every police officer and everyone in the law enforcement community that it’s OK to threaten the lives of cops,” Quirk said.
After the Judge ignored the prosecutions request of a $250K bail for Coley, de Blasio criticized her decision:
While the judge’s decision was in compliance with the letter of the state’s laws on bail — which focus almost exclusively on risk of flight — our judges must take into account all of the circumstances that contribute to the risk of flight, and that certainly includes the seriousness of the offense.
Judge Johnson responded to the mayor by freeing “a man charged with attacking a cop outside a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn.”
This was a missed opportunity for de Blasio. He could have demonstrated is support of the police force by not reappointing this anti-cop judge. Instead he demonstrated his insensitivity and political ineptness by giving her another year on the the bench. Whatever protest the cops mount is well-deserved because their boss, the mayor, is a fool.
Cross-posted at The Lid
