NYPD Police-mayor tensions mount over chokehold death

Police have become increasingly at odds with Mayor Bill de Blasio over the appearance he is taking sides against them after the chokehold death of a black suspect last month — a conflict that has prompted the city's top law enforcement official to do damage control by calling the mayor "very pro-cop." 

What angered many was a recent forum in which the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the biggest critics of the New York Police Department, was seated alongside the mayor, a liberal Democrat, and the police commissioner as he lambasted law enforcement and suggested the mayor's mixed-race son would be a "candidate for a chokehold" if he were an ordinary New Yorker. The image was seized on by critics of the administration and plastered on the cover of the New York Post with the headline "Who's the Boss!"

"It is outrageously insulting to all police officers to say that we go out on our streets to choke all people of color as Al Sharpton stated while seated at the table right next to our mayor at City Hall," said Patrick Lynch, head of the powerful Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. Another union official, Ed Mullins of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, hinted at a work slowdown at the nation's largest police department.

Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani even weighed in, saying in a radio interview thatde Blasio made a "big mistake .... setting up a press conference like that and putting a police commissioner in that situation. That's extremely damaging to the police commissioner, to keep up the morale of the police."

In recent days, emails have circulated among police officers showing a mock identification card with a picture of Sharpton and the title "Police Commissioner." The activist has shot back by claiming he has the ear of federal officials who have the authority to bring civil rights charges in the death of Eric Garner.

"It is time to have a mature conversation about policing rather than immature name calling and childish attempts to scapegoat," Sharpton said in a statement.

Bratton responded to the uproar by giving a series of interviews Friday defending his department's record on race and de Blasio's attitude toward the department.

"We are not a racist organization," Bratton told The Associated Press. "And I will challenge anybody despite their perceptions of police on that issue. This is a department that goes where the problems are — whether it's crime or disorder."

De Blasio, he added, "is very pro-cop. ... This is not an anti-police mayor."

The rift stems from Eric Garner's arrest on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes in Staten Island. Amateur video appears to show an officer putting the asthmatic, 350-pound father of six in a banned chokehold after he refused to be handcuffed. He yells, "I can't breathe!" as several officers take him down.

A city medical examiner found that the 43-year-old Garner was killed by neck compression from the chokehold along with "the compression of his chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police." Asthma, heart disease and obesity were contributing factors.

The finding increased the likelihood that the case will be presented to a grand jury to determine whether any of the arresting officers will face criminal charges. It also has fueled the biggest crisis yet for de Blasio, who took office this year vowing to achieve two goals that, at times, can be contradictory: He said he would drive down crime and repair strained relations between police and the community.

"Every law enforcement official, every officer has to serve the people in this city," the mayor said. "The vast majority of people in the NYPD take that very, very seriously. If some individuals don't, that's a problem for us because we need people to go out there and do our jobs and do them well."

Some lawmakers and experts say the decades-old theory no longer applies to a city with far less crime, unnecessarily puts nonviolent people at risk and fuels tensions in the city's minority communities.

"Serious crime has decreased dramatically in New York City in the two decades that broken windows policing has been in force, yet the causal connection between that drop and huge numbers of arrests for minor transgressions is unproven to this day," Steve Zeidman, a law professor at City University of New York, wrote in a recent op-ed piece.

Bratton has insisted that the NYPD will stick with the tactic. He also has defended the powwow with Sharpton.

"Whether you like Al Sharpton or not, he clearly is a spokesperson, particularly for African-Americans, and that is reality," Bratton sai

2 Dead, 22 Hurt, Others Missing in NYC Building Collapse

Two people are dead, 22 are hurt and others are missing after two buildings collapsed following an apparent explosion triggered by a gas leak that rattled upper Manhattan on Wednesday morning.

The two five-story buildings at the northwest corner of 116th Street and Park Avenue in Harlem collapsed around 9:30 a.m., sources tell NBC 4 New York. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters at the scene that there are a "number of missing individuals" and every effort would be made to verify their safety and whereabouts. "From what we know now, the only indication of danger came 15 minutes earlier when a gas leak was reported to ConEd," the mayor said. "The explosion happened before that team arrived." "This is a tragedy of the worst kind, because there was no indication in time to save people," de Blasio said. Smoke billowed into Central Park and could be seen from miles away in midtown, and New Yorkers said they felt rumbles as far away as 10th Street. Closer to the collapse, groceries were knocked from store shelves and debris floated through the air. City officials said the buildings are destroyed. The cause of the apparent explosion is not known; members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force have responded to the scene out of an abundance of caution, authorities said. "I thought a train had exploded," said Marisa Aquino, who was at her apartment on 115th Street between Park and Lexington. "There are a ton of firefighters and a lot of smoke. Cops and first responders are everywhere." "It sounded like a bomb. That's what it really sounded like," Trey Dey, a laborer who was working in a nearby basement when the buildings exploded, told NBC 4 New York. One real estate website lists one of the buildings as having six residential units and one commercial space. Metro-North service has been suspended out of Grand Central because of debris on tracks.