File- In this file photo of Oct. 28, 2011, Patrick Lynch, head of the nations largest police union, speaks at a news conference in support of the police officers indicted in a ticket-fixing scandal at the Bronx Supreme Court in New York. Theatrics arent a new tactic for Lynch, but an ongoing war of words with Mayor Bill de Blasio is a notch up even for Lynch, who is usually the most outspoken, the most amped up in the room. The 51-year-old has lead the Patrolmens Benevolent Association since 1999 and is up for re-election next year. (AP Photo/David Karp, File)
“New York City police union chief Patrick Lynch said Tuesday it’s “irresponsible, unjust and un-American” to criticize cops for wrongfully slamming retired tennis star James Blake to the ground outside his Manhattan hotel. In a scathing open letter addressed to “all arm-chair judges,” Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, tears into public condemnation of Officer James Frascatore’s tackling of Blake, who was mistaken for a suspect in an identify theft ring. The former tennis great was arrested, handcuffed and detained for about 15 minutes before police realized their error last week.”
Geez, I hate this guy, and I’ve never even met him.
NYC police are infamous for, among other things, randomly grabbing citizens and slamming them onto concrete sidewalks or into brick walls. The cops Lynch represents also gained a dubious global notoriety for strangling to death a black guy who committed the heinous crime of selling cigarettes on a street corner without a vendor’s license. Lynch hyperventilated in defense of those murderers, too. He’s also the union boss who ordered his brownshirts (blueshirts?) to turn their backs on the mayor — a symbolic rejection of civilian authority over the police. In most places, that’s considered mutiny, and for thousand of years, most civilized societies have dealt with mutineers by hanging or shooting them.
(Warning: What follows is NOT safe for work or little children’s eyes!)
Fuck this guy. He’s an asshole. He can’t be fired, at least not by the citizenss representatives, because he’s a union employee, not a city employee. Getting rid of him is up to the cops whose dues pay his salary; and if I were them, I’d vote him out, because he’s discrediting the entire NYC police force. For that matter, he’s instigating contempt for police throughout America, so cops everywhere ought to hate him.
The city can and should fire the bully cop who blindsided Blake from behind instead of just approaching him and calmly asking for his ID. And Blake should sue the city and make its taxpayers pay big money for the privilege of bashing him around. Blake also should sue the witness who fingered him as a criminal. Yeah, the guy was trying to be helpful, or maybe not, he might be just a smartass who thought he was being funny by getting the cops to slam another black guy to the pavement. That’s for a jury to decide.
Lawsuits don’t directly impact on bad cops or jerk union officials, because they don’t pay out of pocket for this. But that doesn’t mean socking it to cities for the bad behavior of their cops is ineffective. There are only two ways citizens can get to misbehaving cops. One is by voting out mayors and city councils who tolerate them. The other is putting pressure on voters who tolerate indifferent politicians by hitting them in the pocketbook. What the city ought to do is add up the legal expenses and judgments, and deduct equivalent amounts from the cops’ pay raises in every subsequent contract negotiation. If the cops have to pay out of pocket for the bad behavior of their colleagues, they might choose different union leadership, and they also might resolve some of these problems themselves in the precinct locker room.