The Rev. Calvin Butts, the prominent black pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, thinks it's time for embattled Mayor Bill de Blasio to apologize to the New York Police Department for failing to support its officers.
"The mayor needs to say, 'I know you guys are working hard ... If I did or said anything that made you believe I was not with you, I firmly apologize,'" Butts told
the New York Post on Monday, saying that the mayor is getting advice that is "not working."
But Butts said he doesn't know who was giving the mayor bad advice, when asked if he was referring to the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose close ties with the mayor following the chokehold death of Staten Island resident Eric Garner have been heavily criticized.
"I don’t know who it is," Butts told the Post. "Whoever it is, [de Blasio] better start listening to someone else. Right now, it’s not working."
Butts called for de Blasio to meet privately with Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President
Pat Lynch, who has blamed the mayor for the murders of NYPD patrolmen Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, who were shot while sitting Saturday in their patrol car in Brooklyn.
Shortly after the shooting, Lynch stood outside the Brooklyn hospital where the two men were taken and railed against de Blasio for failing to support rank-and-file officers while enabling protesters, and said the mayor had created a climate of mistrust that allowed the tragedy to happen.
"That blood on the hands starts at the steps of City Hall, in the office of the mayor," Lynch said. "After the funerals, those responsible will be called on the carpet and held accountable."
Even before Liu and Ramos were killed, Lynch had suggested officers sign a petition barring the mayor from attending their funerals should they die on the job — a response to de Blasio having said that he had warned his biracial son about trusting the police.
Butts said de Blasio should sit down with Lynch, "whether his rhetoric is terrible, which I think it is, or not — he’s still the union leader," Butts said. "Do you know a union leader that doesn’t use inflammatory rhetoric at some point in time?"
Meanwhile, Butts told CNN on Monday that de Blasio is "not showing the leadership that a city like New York needs," reports the
New York Daily News.
"He needs to take Lynch in the backroom and say, 'Listen, you're about to make this city explode,'" Butts said Monday. "And the fact that he hasn't done it and the thing that bothers me about the mayor is, who is he listening to?"
Butts told CNN that he and others have been trying to meet with de Blasio, and that he's "tried to take distinguished business leaders to meet with him and his office has just not gotten back to us.
"This is a crisis. I mean it's like we've been shut out. This is, for me, worse than the worse days of dealing with Mayor [Rudy] Giuliani."
Former Gov. David Paterson told the Daily News that de Blasio needs to do a better job when it comes to building a relationship with Lynch.
"When something big comes up in your first year, you don't have the relationships that you may have gained over the years," Paterson said. "So it's not that he's been a bad mayor, it's that probably when he was public advocate he never realized the importance of having the relationships with people like PBA President Pat Lynch."