There were three triple shootings in New York City last week, the last at 4 a.m. Sunday in The Bronx, and not one made the top of the news anywhere.
As opposed to the splash Al Sharpton’s lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein, made when he was accused of raping a ranking executive in Al Sharpton’s “civil rights” organization.
This, right after a former top Sharpton aide, Rachel Noerdlinger, severely embarrassed the de Blasio administration by getting caught lying on a key city employment form.
See the common thread here? Al Sharpton, Mayor de Blasio’s police-commissioner-without-portfolio, had a bad week. Thus, by extension, so did Hizzoner.
So, how long before de Blasio comes to understand that hanging with Rev. Al generates unhappy outcomes?
Like the still reverberating l’affaire Noerdlinger?
It’ll likely be a while yet. Ten months into his incumbency, the mayor still seems impervious to embarrassment. He doesn’t get that when mayors speak, people listen. That words matter. That a statement made today might have to be defended tomorrow.
Take Noerdlinger, now chief of staff to First Spouse Chirlane McCray. Having been Sharpton’s principal aide and chief trouble-shooter, she seemed purpose-built for de Blasio and McCray.
They’ve established a two-track mayoralty: He as ex-officio, she as co-regent — vested with power, perks and a staff that requires a $170,000-a-year chief.
By conventional standards, Noerdlinger seems an odd choice for a sensitive job. She comes with a huge downside — among other things, a cohabitating boyfriend with a criminal record that includes manslaughter, drug-trafficking and (just last year) attempted vehicular assault on a New Jersey cop.
But this is not a conventional administration. It clearly intends to make its progressive bones by publicly diminishing the NYPD — hardly virgin territory for Noerdlinger, the old Sharpton hand.
No surprise, then, that when news of the lady’s live-in broke, de Blasio was steadfast in her defense.
“We don’t care [about] someone’s boyfriend, we care what the public servant is about,” he declared. “I have full faith in her. I know what I value and she values the same things.”
That’s worrisome.
After all, de Blasio became mayor largely by demonizing the department — still, however temporarily, the finest urban police force in the land, and certainly among the most effective.
He did this by racializing the public-safety debate — capitalizing on a federal judge who had so prejudiced the so-called “stop and frisk” civil-rights trial that she was removed from the case by an appeals court.
And, of course, de Blasio enlisted the usual suspects — among them Sharpton.
The plan worked.
Then came this spring’s in-custody death on Staten Island of Eric Garner — a severely asthmatic petty criminal who was vigorously resisting arrest.
The incident not only generated the predictable protests, it also caused de Blasio to elevate Sharpton to a plane all but equal to Police Commissioner Bill Bratton.
One result: Rank-and-file cops, multiple sources say, are becoming fearful of protecting the public — worried that they’ll be thrown to the activists should an arrest go awry.
Another: Tensions between City Hall and its police unions, while not quite at Dinkins administration levels, are headed rapidly in that direction.
Then, in a flash, Noerdlinger last week was back in the news.
First, it was revealed that she, like Sharpton, doesn’t pay her taxes — and had acquired a hefty IRS lien of her own (though nothing on the magnitude of The Rev’s seven-figure encumbrances).
Then it was reported that she’d fibbed about her son’s health to gain a waiver from a rule requiring ranking municipal officials to reside in the city.
Moral misdemeanors, of course.
But then came the bombshell: Noerdlinger had lied on her Department of Investigation background paperwork — failing to report her felonious live-in. That is flirting with perjury: The law takes those DOI forms that seriously — even if the de Blasio administration itself does not.
That is, DOI Commissioner Mark Peters — the mayor’s campaign treasurer last year — quickly gave Noerdlinger a pass. She’ll pay no direct penalty.
But the administration itself has badly bruised its credibility — and severely compromised the moral authority it needs to discipline its 300,000-plus-member workforce.
Don’t think for a moment that the police unions haven’t noticed this. They won’t sit still when one of their own is held strictly to the rules — nor should they.
And what of the DOI’s integrity— now tarnished, and in danger of worse?
So that’s why Noerdlinger needs to go — before her presence becomes a crippling operational distraction.
Yet de Blasio says no. “Case closed,” he barked yesterday.
He may think so. You shouldn’t bet on it.
