Last night two plainclothes police officers were shot in New York City:
Two plainclothes cops were shot in the Bronx after trying to stop a robbery Monday night, police sources said.
The shooter and his accomplice are at large.
Officer Andrew Dossi, 30, was shot in the arm and back, while Officer Aliro Pellerano, 38, was shot in the arm and abdomen at about 10:30 p.m. in Fordham Heights, police sources said.
The two went to St. Barnabas Hospital, where they are expected to recover.
Dossi went into surgery and is in critical but stable condition, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said. Pellerano is in stable condition.
For more commentary and coverage on the incident see memeorandum.
It is not my general practice to criticize or even attempt to analyze state and local governments other than my own on the principle that people living in other states and towns are entitled to any blame-fool government they wish. However, I think it’s obvious that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio finds himself on the horns of a dilemma in the matter of his relationship with the New York Police Department. His election campaign was based in part on abandoning New York’s “stop and frisk” policy and police officers in New York took this as being anti-police. That’s not unreasonable under the circumstances. I don’t know what New York’s like in this regard but in Chicago last year alone here police officers experienced 7,000 incidents in which they were faced with firearms.
de Blasio’s dilemma is this. On the one hand his staunchest supporters are anti-police, at least as seen by the police. On the other New York is a tough place and the city probably needs the police more than it does Bill de Blasio. He’s bound to make somebody unhappy.
de Blasio’s dilemma is that the police as a whole have lost the ability to distinguish between their role and the power of their institution, and that they’re relying on decades-old propaganda that may work well elsewhere, but plays worse and worse in NY. They also seem to be very cut-off from reality. I.e., their outrage over de Blasio’s quotidian explanation of what he had to tell his son, or the upper management’s fear that NYC is heading right back into the 70s.
de Blasio is looking like Dinkens-lite. (No pun intended.)
“…de Blasio’s dilemma is that the police as a whole have lost the ability to distinguish between their role and the power of their institution, and that they’re relying on decades-old propaganda…”
I think that’s true for all professions dominated by public employee unions. They like to believe that what’s good for the union is what’s good for the public, but often that isn’t the case.