A retired NYPD detective has come out swinging at New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for saying he worries for the safety of his biracial son at the hands of the police.
"Is he worried about the cops that are protecting him and his family?" Harry Houck, a 25-year-veteran of law enforcement, said Friday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
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"I mean, does he sit there and look at the police officers that guard him every day, that are willing to put their life on the line for him, looking at them that he can't trust them or he can't trust them with his kids?
"Mr. De Blasio made the wrong statement the other day out there. He should be protecting his police officers. He should obey the rule of law."
De Blasio made his controversial comments on Wednesday as he reacted to a grand jury's clearing of Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who used an unauthorized chokehold on Eric Garner, a man selling loose cigarettes, when Garner resisted arrest.
Garner, an obese man with respiratory problems, died after repeatedly telling cops, "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" His death was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner.
The mayor, who is white, and married to Chirlane McCray — who is African-American — said he worried about the safety of his mixed-race son Dante in interactions with police, just like parents of other black children.
"[He's] a good, young man, law-abiding young man, who would never think to do anything wrong," de Blasio said.
"And yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face, we've had to literally train him — as families have all over this city for decades — in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him."
Houck called the introduction of race into Garner's death "a manufactured crisis."
"It all started in Ferguson where Mr. Al Sharpton himself started this whole thing and made everything a racial issue. This is not a racial issue," Houck, a former Marine sergeant and Vietnam veteran, told Steve Malzberg.
"This officer did not use a chokehold. That move he made on that man I've done 100 times. It's called the takedown. You take a large man down like that.
"I don't know how anybody's going to expect the police officer, one, two or three, to take a man down that size that does not want to be arrested … When a police officer tells you you're under arrest. It's not a request."
Houck said he had no problem with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder launching a civil-rights investigation, but added, "I don't see any civil rights violation here."
"What if Eric Garner was white? None of this would be happening. What if the grand jury was all black? … If the grand jury was all black and he still was not indicted, they'd be calling them all Uncle Toms," he said.
"How is it that nobody trusts the grand jury? There isn't any iota of evidence that there's any misconduct here in this grand jury at all. But because the Rev. Al Sharpton and a couple other race baiters say it is, therefore it's true."
Houck — now head of Houck Consulting, which specializes in private investigations and counterterrorism training — said police officers put their lives on the line every day.
"When you're a police officer in the morning getting up to go to work, you know there's a possibility you might not come home that night," he said.
"The fact [is] that police officers are killed in little instances like this all the time, from minor things.
"Somebody will pull out a gun. Somebody will pull out a knife so an officer sees that and says to himself, you know what, I'm going to be super careful especially when you're dealing with a guy that size."
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