Police want to help Mayor DeBlasio sweat every time he visits his Park Slope gym.
Dozens of officers picketed Hizzoner outside the Ninth Street YMCA early on Monday and Tuesday morning last week to demand a pay raise — and they’ll be back soon when he least expects it, according to their union spokesman.
“It’s going to be a pop-up thing unexpectedly,” said Joseph Mancini of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which represents around 24,000 of the city’s 36,000 officers. “We like to surprise him.”
DeBlasio relocated from the Slope to Gracie Mansion when he took office in 2014, but continues to lead a motorcade over to his old gym between Fifth and Sixth avenues most mornings so he can engage in a leisurely “workout”, often followed by a visit to a nearby patisserie — making him a sitting duck for foes and journalists hoping to catch his attention.
During their early-morning rallies, the protesting patrolmen waved signs reading “Just another dumbell [sic] in the gym” and “ ‘Workout’ contract with cops,” and parked a truck-borne billboard across the street from Y.
New York cops earn more on average than many of their counterparts in other large cities, according to the city, but union members argue that the cost of living here is so high that they’re actually worse off.
“New York City police officers — who protect the biggest city in the country every day — deserve and will fight for a rate of pay equal to other police officers locally and across the country as state law requires,” said president Patrick Lynch.
The city has cut a deal with other uniformed workers for an 11 percent raise over seven years, but union bosses say that isn’t enough for New York’s Finest.
The mayor is still open to negotiations with the officers, a spokeswoman said — just not, presumably, outside the Y.
“Our door has always been — and continues to be — open to the PBA to negotiate a long-term contract, as we’ve done with nearly the entire city workforce to date,” said mayoral press secretary Freddi Goldstein.
