Police abandon DA offices in NYC after ‘dereliction’ of duty
New York City police withdrew from several borough DA offices this week as the DAs moved to withdraw prosecutions of those arrested in recent demonstrations surrounding George Floyd’s death.
“The justice system shouldn’t be the first resort,” Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. (D-NY) told the Times in a recent interview according to the Hill. “It should be used only when necessary, especially for low-level offenses, which tend to fall on men and women of color and those economically less resourced.”
Cyrus Vance Jr. is the son of former Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, who served under Jimmy Carter. Vance Sr. resigned from the Carter administration because he thought foreign policy under Carter had become too militant.
Apparently, his son thinks the police in NYC are too militant as well.
While the city’s police commissioner denied that the withdrawals had anything to do with the DA’s decision, the head of the police sergeant’s union didn’t mince words.
“It is a dereliction of duty to their oath of office,” said Edward Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association reports WCSI radio. “More important than undercutting the work of the NYPD, it is undercutting public safety.”
Rank and file police are furious with city leaders for leaving them to face the consequences of the George Floyd protests alone.
The DAs also recently backed police reform legislation that seeks to modify the level of force that police can use when apprehending suspects.
“We have a moral imperative to enact public policies which assure all New Yorkers that in our justice system and our society, black lives matter and police violence is a crime,” tweeted Vance, whose Twitter motto is: “Moving justice forward.”
“If we put our hands on the criminal, we are going to jail,” President of the Police Benevolent Association Pat Lynch said of the proposed changes. “I am not being dramatic. That’s how bad it is. No one has read the bills.”
“Another leader of the association, Mike O’Meara, spoke out against the way the NYPD has been treated by the media and politicians amid the growing movement to defund or abolish police departments nationwide by imploring people to stop ‘vilifying’ police and treating them like ‘thugs,’” reports the Washington Times.
Vance has previously come under fire for ignoring high-level celebrity prosecutions of guys like Harvey Weinstein in favor of cracking down on little people, like cops.
“See, as much of a Casper Milquetoast as Cy Vance has been when offered the chance to indict people who appear on PageSix,” says abovethelaw.com, “he has been Judge Dredd when it comes to turning the screws on people who appear nowhere in the power pages of finance.”
Likely the rank and file police officers would agree with that assessment.
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