New York City honors two of its finest: some thoughts...

My first blog of the year concerns the actions of the NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT (NYCPD) in the wake of the shooting of two police officers sitting in their cars by a deranged shithead with a gun trying (in his sick mind) to avenge the killings of black men by white police officers in the nation.

The last of the funerals for the two slain officers is taking place today and once again (as in the last funeral) some officers turned their backs as Mayor De Blasio delivered the eulogy even after the police commissioner asked them not to do that…yes, I have a problem with that action.

We are currently going through a national discussion about the killing of unarmed black men by white police officers and there are many factors to consider in that discussion but the specific incident in New York City as caught on camera where police officers wrestle a large black man to the ground for selling (illegally) single cigarettes and in so doing killing him is something that the nation could not justify in its collective mind and so the New York police were criticized.

The idea, on a national level that all white police officers have it in for black males is absolutely absurd and I will address that type of thinking in a later blog.

The mayor of New York who has a biracial family and is a flaming liberal added his words to the criticism of “his” police department and that did not sit well with members of that police department hence the insult and show of disrespect to the mayor by turning their backs on him.

We can talk about how hard and complicated a policeman’s job is and how they place their lives on the line on a daily basis to protect us all from the bad guys but does that make them into some kind of gods or saints that can never be criticized because they never make mistakes?

This is like saying that police officers are never corrupt, never incompetent, never mentally off and never do the “wrong” thing.

I love the TV series BLUE BLOODS that tends to address some of these issues.

The practice that all police officers bleed blue and never step over the blue line has its limitations no matter how we respect the comradeship they all share; sometimes an officer commits a crime or fails to perform as expected of a police officer; we are all humans and have human failings.

The anger and disrespect the police officers feel towards their mayor is understandable; he should never question their actions…really? But to publicly show that disrespect at such a public affair as the funeral of a fallen officer is beyond childish and sophomoric; it’s ignorant and dumb and speaks volumes about their intelligence.

I have to add that not all police officers turned their backs towards the mayor. Others know that to truly show their displeasure, they can just vote him out of office.

I am pro-police and understand how difficult it is to make life or death decisions in micro seconds under all sorts of conditions and that is why I believe they should always be given the benefit of a doubt in most cases involving a death as in the Ferguson case.

But I also believe that more care should be taken when hiring people to be policemen and especially in the training they receive.

I will have more to say about policing in general and the “broken windows” policy in a later blog but for now I just wanted to show my displeasure at the actions of a few New York cops.