Borough President Adams butted heads with a police union rep on Monday over a plan to use the Borough Hall Christmas-tree lighting to commemorate the death of Gowanus native Eric Garner at the hands of officers.
Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Pat Lynch blasted the Beep after Adams announced he would dim the holiday lights at the ceremony, then beat a drum 11 times to mark the 11 times Garner said “I can’t breathe” as one officer choked him, then held him face-down with other officers’ help, killing him, as the city medical examiner concluded. Lynch demanded that Adams hit the drum another 80 times to honor each of the cops killed since 1999, including those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks and from subsequent health problems. The Beep, a former NYPD captain and co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, settled on seven additional drum hits for each officer who has died this year, saying that what New Yorkers need now is not strife but unity about the importance of life.
“Our city is going through a time of turmoil,” Adams said. “And really, conversations on both sides seem to be adding to the tension. And that is not our goal here at Borough Hall.”
Hours before the event, Adams publicly invited Lynch to join him at the ceremony, but the union rep was a no-show. A spokesman for the union said Lynch had other plans, though he declined to say what exactly he was up to.
“It was a late invitation and Mr. Lynch is extraordinarily busy,” said Al O’Leary, noting that Lynch recently appeared on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor.”
Nearly daily protests have rocked New York since Nov. 25, following a Ferguson, Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer who shot and killed unarmed teen Michael Brown, and gaining new momentum with a Staten Island grand jury’s non-indictment of Officer Daniel Pantaleo who, with help, ended Garner’s life.
In that time, Lynch has gone on the attack against politicians who he perceives as being insufficiently supportive of police officers. He has focused particular ire on Mayor DeBlasio, who Lynch said threw police “under the bus” by questioning the Pantaleo decision and relating how he cautioned his son Dante, who is mixed-race, to be extra-careful when interacting with law enforcement. Last week Lynch went so far as to draw up a form for rank-and-file cops to request DeBlasio and Council Speaker Melissa-Mark Viverito not attend their funerals, citing the two pols’ “consistent refusal to show police officers the support and respect they deserve.”
Adams spoke out against those efforts last week, saying Lynch is being unhelpfully divisive.
“As a 22-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, I understand better than most that PBA President Lynch has a job to protect and defend his membership,” he said. “But it should not involve action that may appear to indicate that the City is not united on public safety.”
