New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has rejected the idea that he apologize for contributing to an anti-police environment,
The Wall Street Journal reported.
Following the death of Eric Garner — an African-American who was placed in a chokehold by police while resisting arrest and died on the way to the hospital — the mayor said he and his wife had told their biracial son, Dante, to be wary of the police.
Critics said that de Blasio's inference was that law-abiding black youngsters had reason to fear the police. He also seemed to back anti-police demonstrations over the incident.
His remarks came after a grand jury decided not to indict a white police officer involved in Garner's death.
After NYPD Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were
killed execution-style by Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, ostensibly in revenge for the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch said that the mayor had their blood on his hands, the Journal reported.
The mayor's alliance with
Al Sharpton, who has a history of racial incitement in metropolitan New York, has further exacerbated tensions with police.
Asked if he would express regret for his remarks following Garner's death as a way to heal tensions with the police, the mayor declined. "I respect the question, but the construct is about the past. And I just don't want to do that. I think this is about moving forward," the Journal reported.
The union leader has said that a de Blasio overture could improve the climate between cops and City Hall instead of "constantly putting gasoline on the fire."
"We don't believe there's a willingness on the part of City Hall to solve these problems," Lynch said after meeting for two hours with Police Commissioner William Bratton on Wednesday.
"The problem was not created here in headquarters, it started in City Hall."
Lynch may have been alluding to the fact that de Blasio did not take part in the meeting, according to the
New York Daily News.
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