Some of the worst moments in black history — including slavery — wouldn't have happened without the actions of police officers, New York's top police official says.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, speaking at a Black History Month breakfast on Tuesday morning, said while police have played an important role in maintaining civil rights and freedom of speech, "many of the worst parts of black history would have been impossible without police, too,"
DNA Info reports.
"Slavery, our country’s original sin, sat on a foundation codified by laws enforced by police, by slave-catchers," he said.
For example, Peter Stuyvesant, one of the original Dutch colonists of Manhattan, created a police force and encouraged a system of slavery, he said,
the Observer reports.
"Since then, the stories of police and black citizens have been intertwined again and again," he said.
Though Mayor Bill de Blasio and Bratton have vowed to strengthen the relationship between police and minority communities, the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, in police custody last summer, and a grand jury’s decision to not indict the officer responsible,
has created a bitter rift.
The situation was exacerbated last December with the slayings of two police officers, which angered police who felt
de Blasio was siding with protesters.
But Bratton said poor, nonwhite neighborhoods need police most — and the police need the community's support to be successful.
"We cannot change the past, but working together we can change the future," he said.
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