In the ongoing battle betteen NYPD and its critics, the P.R. advantage keeps seesawing

The tension between the New York City Police Department and Mayor Bill de Blasio has been an ongoing battle since his campaign.    Running on it as a major issue, de Blasio promised to get rid of the "stop and frisk" policy and to bring in other reforms.   And he was good to his word on that, bringing in William Bratton as his Police Commissioner to do for the NYPD what he had accomplished in reforming a badly functioning Los Angeles Police Department.

Things came to a head with the choke-hold death of an unarmed man accused of petty street crime (selling untaxed cigarettes) but who resisted arrest.    Let it also be said that he did not resist in any kind of violent way -- a bystanders' video tape shows that.   No, he questioned why they were bothering him, tried several times to walk away.    But, to my eyes, the escalation of violence came from the police, who could not tolerate his disobeying their orders and who tried to take him down and finally resorted to a choke-hold -- or what looked very like a choke-hold -- with several officers piling on to hold him down on the sidewalk, ignoring his pleas that he couldn't breathe.

Apologists for the police got very creative to blame anyone but the police officers holding him down in a chokehold:   if only he weren't obese, if only he didn't have a heart condition, if only he took better care of himself, if only he had cooperated with the arrest, if only he had not been committing a crime.    Those may all be true, but there are conditions police should be traied to handle some way other than killing a man who represents no threat and whose suppossed crime is petty.    Not everyone who resists arrest needs to be killed on the spot.

After a NY grand jury did not indict the officer (a repeat of the Ferguson, Missouri case) New York erupted in large street protests that were mostly orderly and peaceful.   As I remember, there was very little looting or vandalism, even from fringe people.    Mayor de Blasio spoke several times;  and there is no doubt in my mind that his sympathies seemed to be with the protestors and those who felt mistreated by the police.   As were mine.

However, he did not speak disparagingly about the police, and he often made sure to praise those who put their lives at risk every day for our common safety.   I thought his response was entirely appropriate to the situation.

At that point, it felt like the minority communities and the protestors had the advantage in public opinion and that we were experiencing too many unnecessary killings by police.   One news reported even cited the fact that an American citizen was 29 times more likely to be killed by a cop than by a terrorist.

But then a deranged young black man from Baltimore, after killing his girlfriend, traveled to New York with the express purpose of killing some police.    He ambushed and shot at close range two NYPD officers sitting in their squad car relaxing after lunch.

Some of the police unions -- especially one with the seethingly angry spokesman Patrick Lynch -- seized the spotlight to lash back at the mayor, literally blaming him in part for the killing of these officers because of his supposed helping to create a climate of hate for the police.    Public opinion then shifted to sympathy for the police and the risky lives they lead for our safety.

Then some of the police went too far in expressing their disdain and anger for the mayor, turning their backs to him when he came to participate in the funeral, speaking harshly about him to the press, and then in the work slowdown that they have engaged in during the week since then.     Public opinion began to shift against the police again;  specifically the New York Times denounced their unprofessional reaction.

But then a news release two days ago revealed that there has been a 56% increase in police office deaths in the line of duty.   And then a separate report a day later pointed out that the numbers killed by gunshots had not in fact increased, even though numbers of deaths had (for example in high speed auto chases).

So at this point, it's a little confusing which direction this is all going.   What is clear, however, is that people's feelings are very strong about our police forces and about whether they can trust the police to be for them rather than against them,  At the same time, it seems that many police officers feel that they do not get the respect due them for risking their lives for us all the time.   

There seems to be good reason for some people to feel that the answer, for them, is no, they cannot trust the police to treat them fairly.  In too many of these police shootings of unarmed black men, including a 12 year old boy playing with a toy gun in a city park, it does seem obvious that the police would probably have treated a white person differently.   In many cases this seems to be a systemic problem, an attitude infecting a city force that must come from the top.

And that needs fixing.   In a democracy, everybody's life matters.   

Ralph