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SEARCHThe low-boil contempt for de Blasio, which has been building for months, erupted publicly on Saturday when dozens of cops turned their backs on the mayor as he arrived at the Brooklyn hospital where the bodies of officers Wenjian Liu, 32, and Rafael Ramos, 40, had been taken.
You can’t be big-city mayor and alienate the cops — and that’s just as true now as it was under three-term New York City Mayor Ed Koch, or even a century ago.
“Koch was loved by the cops and always told all his successors that you must have the support of the cops, that the cops can be your best friend. If Koch were alive today that’s what he would tell Bill de Blasio,” said George Arzt, former press secretary to Koch, whose election in 1977 election greatly improved City Hall-police relations.
De Blasio “needs to press reset in his relationship with the cops,” Arzt said.
Good luck with that. The bad blood between the NYPD and de Blasio is nothing new — it dates back to an election campaign centered on de Blasio’s withering criticism of the Bloomberg administration’s stop-and-frisk policy, and his close alliance with the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has organized scores of protests targeting cops over their behavior toward urban blacks.
The low-boil contempt for de Blasio, which has been building for months, erupted publicly on Saturday when dozens of cops turned their backs on the mayor as he arrived at the Brooklyn hospital where the bodies of officers Wenjian Liu, 32, and Rafael Ramos, 40, had been taken.
Read Full Story at Politico.com
