Yes.
On Saturday, after two New York police officers were ambushed and slain by a deranged ex-felon and prison gang member, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio met privately with the officers’ families, and also went to the hospital where the officers were taken after being shot. As he arrived, a number of cops who had already gathered there turned their backs on the mayor as a deliberate show of disrespect.
We’re a democracy. Government is accountable to the people through free elections. Military and police authorities are accountable to elected officials. Back in 1951, when President Truman fired General MacArthur, he did so not because of personal animosity between the men, but because MacArthur had disrespected the civilian authority he was answerable to.
I don’t have a problem with these cops criticizing the mayor. That’s free speech, and they have a right to do that. But they don’t have a right to do it on duty, while in uniform. As a citizen, that makes me uncomfortable, because of what it implies for the lines of authority in the city’s structure of government.
These police officers have the same right to free speech as the ordinary citizens protesting against police brutality in Ferguson, New York, Seattle, and other cities. But they don’t have a right to be police officers, nor any right to associate their personal views with the badge and uniform they wear in the public’s name. No one should have difficulty understanding this, because nearly everyone is familiar with the principle that private companies don’t allow their employees to engage in political activity on company time or invoke the company’s name when expressing personal views.
In other words, these cops can criticize the mayor to their hearts’ content on their own time. But they can’t do it at work or in uniform, because the uniform doesn’t belong to them. The citizens of New York City who entrusted them with the badge and uniform did not give them permission to use it to further an agenda of undercutting the lines of authority that flow from citizens to elected officials to subordinates employed to exercise the power and authority of government in their name.
This has nothing to do with whether their feelings about Bill de Blasio as a person or politician. It’s about respecting the office and acknowledging their subordinate role to civilian authority.
I think NYDP administrators should seek to identify the uniformed officers who turned their backs on the mayor, using surveillance videos and other means, and then counsel them on the chain of command and place letters of reprimand in their personnel files so they won’t forget where authority resides in our system of government. These letters should make clear the officers are not being reprimanded for their opinions. They can simply be “reminder” letters of what the chain of command is, and I would be okay with making them temporary, i.e. removing them from the personnel files after a period of time if there are no further problems along these lines.