Though he agrees with their sentiments, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik says
police officers were wrong to turn their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio at the funerals of slain officers.
"I completely understand it," Kerik said Monday on Fox News Channel's
"The Kelly File." But, he added, it wasn't the right place for such a demonstration.
"They're there to show their respect for the family, for the deceased," Kerik said.
Kerik has been supportive of police against de Blasio's words, which Kerik said labeled the whole police force as racists. Kerik said de Blasio's comments after a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer in the death of chokehold victim Eric Garner was an attack on the whole department and fanned racial flames that led a man to kill officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.
"The cops are basically saying you disrespected us as a whole. You incited people around this country to despise us, to hate us," Kerik said. "You were involved in perpetuating hate and racism to the point that someone assassinated these two cops using that same rhetoric that the mayor was spewing prior. The cops have a right to be upset and angry.
"Look, if I was a cop, and I was out there, I probably would have turned my back also," he said, ".But, you know, the time I have on the job and being where I've been, you know, right now I just don't think that was the time."