For a preview of NYPD-City Hall relations under a Mayor Zohran Mamdani, consider one ex-cop’s take on the tenure of Mamdani’s favorite former mayor, Bill de Blasio.
In her memoir, “And Then Came the Blues,” retired NYPD Detective Katrina Brownlee spills on her experiences on Blas’ security detail.
Spoiler: It was bad.
Once, she writes, while “on one of his typical power trips,” Blas called a sergeant to complain after a uniformed cop on his team briefly took off his hat.
Overall, the ex-cop “sensed that the mayor generally did not like police officers.”
That’s a diplomatic way to convey his open disdain for cops, so deeply rooted that late in 2014, de Blasio claimed he was teaching his black son, Dante, to fear his dad’s own security detail.
Yes, he wisely hired Bill Bratton as his first police commissioner, but Blas still never missed an opportunity to bash cops to score points with the left.
Brownlee recalls that de Blasio could be “genuinely caring” in private, but his public attitude was so toxic that New York’s Finest turned their backs on himrepeatedlyat the funerals of slain-on-duty officers.
If Mamdani, whose record and rhetoric is markedly more anti-cop, wins this fall, relations seem sure to get more dysfunctional.
He not only jumped on the “Defund the police” bandwagon in 2020, he called cops a face of “white supremacy” and the NYPD so “wicked & corrupt” that it needs to be dismantled, not just reformed.
De Blasio pioneered mayoral cop-bashing; Mamdani’s generation of lefties is far more rabid.
That he’s muted his hate for now simply means he figures he’s got the anti-cop vote in the bag; saying more before Election Day can only cost him support.
But he’d still be de Blasio’s heir in the worst possible way.
Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch are making steady gains against the crime crisis unleashed by New York’s anti-cop pols.
Electing a mayor whose relations with New York’s Finest are already poisonous is a surefire way to restart the downward spiral.
And the men and women who keep New Yorkers safe deserve better than a mayor who’ll never have their backs.
