Post by coots on Aug 25, 2014 0:23:20 GMT -5
Three Cheers For The NYPD
The Rev. Al Sharpton’s march today in Staten Island is meant to slam New York’s Finest. We’ll say it flat out: We support the cops.
UNEQUIVOCALLY.
Better The Rev & Co. turn their march into a parade to celebrate the NYPD — and how the department, almost single-handedly, turned this city around. (Notwithstanding efforts to the contrary by rabble-rousing self-promoters like Sharpton.)
How ironic that the reverend titled his bit of street theater a “We Will Not Go Back” march. Because that’s precisely what he wants the city to do: return to the ugly days when cops failed to control crime, chaos ruled and the city was barely livable.
Only two decades ago, the city saw 2,245 people murdered in a single year. That’s more than six lives a day — and most of those were the lives of blacks and Hispanics. Moms and dads had their kids sleep in bathtubs to avoid stray bullets.
Today, thanks to the men and women in blue, this year the average is less than one murder a day. Think of all the lives, minority lives, that have been saved.
Even beyond that, New York’s Police Department made the city livable. It has made it possible for people to run businesses here and live their lives without daily dread.
Are there some bad cops? No question. Are there police-related tragedies in a city where 35,000 uniformed officers interact with 8.5 million residents 23 million times a year? Who would expect otherwise?
But think about what the city asks of these men and women: To walk up a dark flight of stairs in some seedy building searching for armed bandits who might shoot at any moment. To break up gang violence and get weapons off the street from thugs who’d rather not give them up.
And, yes, to improve the quality of life for average New Yorkers.
For the resident who doesn’t want bums urinating on his stoop. For the tourist who doesn’t want to be shaken down for tips or fondled in Times Square. For the bodega owner who fears being undercut by freelancers selling untaxed cigarettes at a lower price right outside his shop.
In the course of their daily assignments, 44 police officers have lost their lives while protecting New Yorkers since 2000 alone — including 23 on 9/11.
Yet today’s NYPD stands as a model of restraint. In 1994, cops shot and injured 61 people and killed 29. Last year, just 26 perpetrators were shot and eight died.
Which is why the march makes little sense. It was supposedly motivated by the death of Eric Garner (who died after resisting cops who were trying to arrest him for . . . selling illegal, untaxed cigarettes).
It’s predicated on the cops’ guilt, which Sharpton wants folks to infer mainly on the basis of an edited video. Indeed, he wants folks to indict the entire NYPD on that flimsy evidence.
Sorry: Given all that cops do, we think they deserve at least the same benefit of the doubt that criminals get every day.
Yes, we feel terrible about Garner’s death (though he’d likely be alive if he hadn’t resisted arrest). But there’s no proof — at this point, anyway — that the cops trying to arrest him did anything unlawful.
Yet the march does make sense from another perspective. It makes Sharpton a “hero”: He’s the champion of “victims” of police brutality, you see. So what if that slurs the cops?
We don’t buy it. Nor should New Yorkers.
Rather, we prefer to raise a glass to New York’s Finest — and to remember all that they have done for this city.
nypost.com/2014/08/23/three-cheers-for-the-nypd/
