We were still reeling at the spectacle of meek NYPD cops being doused with water all over town when Officer Daniel Pantaleo’s home on Staten Island was besieged by protesters Satu😼rday night.
“He needs to feel fear wherever he goes!” chanted the small group. “We will find💙 you, Pantaleo! No justice, no peace.”
Five years after bootleg cigarette seller Eric Garner died durౠing a so-called “chokehold arrest” on Staten Island, Pantaleo has had no justice an💃d no peace.
He was a good cop doing his job. But his aba🐼ndonment by craven politicians and top brass has become the unspoken subtext of every police interaction in this city ever since.
His childhood friend Jo𒁏seph Imperatrice, founder of Blue Lives Matter, is one who calls it the “Pantaleo ef🌱fect.”
“Police officers cannot be afraid to do their job,”🌳 he said. “They have to understand the officers around th🗹em and the higher brass will have their back.”
Garner’s death was a tragedy, but even the medical examiner who ruled it a homicide found his health problems contributed. Garner was 6-foot-3 and obese, at 395 pounds. He had an enlarged heart and chronic asthma. The stress of struggling with cops triggered a fatal asthma att🌠ack.
Pantaleo is 6 feet and 220 pounds. He had been ordered to arrest Garner. When a man far bigger than him resisted, wha𒉰t was he me🌱ant to do, walk away?
Well, walk away is exactly what police are 𓃲doing now.
And not once has anyone in authority understood how their failure to defenꦅd Pantaleo has damaged police morale.
Instead they pander to ant꧂i-police bullies who use the poor grieving ♒Garner family as pawns.
The extraordinary passiv𒆙ity last week of those officers in Brooklyn and Harlem as jeering punks soaked them with water has been a long time brewing.
It began with race-baiting former President Barack Obama’s misguided criticism of po﷽lice in Cambridge, Mass., over the 2009 arrest of his friend Henry Gates. It came to a head in 2014 with the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie told about Michael Brown after he was fatally shot by police in Ferguson, Mo., just three weeks after Garner’s death.
Along the way, Obama gave succor to anti-police activists. The inevitable result of hostility to law enforcement was the assassination of two police officers in Brooklyn, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, just🤡 weeks after a grand jury cleared Pantal༺eo.
Vilified by pre🍬sident wannabe Bill de Blasio and hung out to dry by Commissioner James O’Neill, Pantaleo has s🥂een his actions on that summer’s day in 2014 after Garner resisted arrest scrutinized in every available jurisdiction.
A🍸 Staten Island grand jury found he had no case to answe⛄r.
The US Justice Department found he had no case to ﷽answer🧸.
Now🌞 we await the result of a police disꦚciplinary trial and the verdict of Commissioner O’Neill.
For police-haters, Pantaleo is a symbol of the “broken windows” tough-on-crime policing which so succ♔essfully cleaned up the city 25 years ago, and which de Blasio is doing his best to unwind while boasting of the low crime rates that are entirely its legacy.
Des♔troy Pantaleo and you destroy broken windows a♌nd, with it, the morale of the NYPD.
You can see how low morale has sunk in the resigned reaction of cops to egregious acts of disrespect, whether being doused by water in Harlem and Brooklyn, having buckets thrown at their heads, or just a foul-mouthed punk on the subway telling them to “suck my d–k”.
“Officers are not supported,” Ed Mullins, head of 🦋the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said on Friday.
“That’s the sentiment of the rank and fil൲e. They’re afraid to get inv🧸olved because they know they don’t have the backing of the commissioner or the mayor.”
He is furious that de Blasio used the national platform of the first Democratic presidential debate last month to repeat the racist slur that his biracial son, Dante, wasn’t safe around cops because he was a “child of color.”
Nothing has changed since th🐻ousands of officers turned their backs o🍒n de Blasio at the funeral five years ago of assassinated cop Liu.
Mullins warns that it was the soft-touc🌺h policing of the 1970s that led to the crime explosion of the 1980s, and says water dousing incidents are just “the appetizer” to lawlessness༺ to come.
“It won’🍎t be on [de Blasi🦹o’s] watch,” he says. “It’s going to be the next mayor and the next commissioner.”
Already, he says, “crooks are getting e🥂mboldened . . . Perps know they’re not being searched for firearms. When you talk to the people of the city, they don’t feel safe. They see homelessness, people urinating in the street, turnstile jumping . . . We’re not enforcing crimes anymore.”
“The cops are confused as to what you want 🍷them to do,” Mullins says. “The backing off of law enforcement is beginning to erode the city.”
President Trump’s intervention this week, when he voiced support for the embattled cops of his hometown, blasting the water tossing as a “total disgrace,” meant the world, says Mullinsꦿ.
But the only way to restore the morale of New York’s emasculated police force is for O’Neill to come out from behind his desk and defend Pantaleo𒐪.
🌠He♏ might owe his job to de Blasio but he doesn’t owe him his soul.
Twins’ dad tragic, not criminal
Spare a thought for Juan Rodriguez, the father of twin babies who were found dead in his car from heatstroke on Friday afterꦗ he forgot to drop them ༒off at day care.
He’s suffering enough without being 𝕴hauled through the courts.
It m🧸ight seem criminally negligent to forget your kids are in the back seat, but a lot of parents do it: 42 children died in hot cars last year.
Imperfect memory is not simply bad parenting but an ar🏅tifact of our primitive lizard brain, as a 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning article on the phenomenon of hot-ca🦩r deaths found.
Sensors on rear seats might work.
Pols’ ‘power’ trip will cost us all
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s renewable-energy fixation and Mayor Bill de Blasio’ꦑs war on Con Ed are only going to force up the price of power and make blackouts inevitable.
You’d think Cu🐬ꦗomo might have waited more than a week after the last blackout before signing his absurd new law requiring 70 percent of state electricity to come from renewables by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040.
Couple that with his plan to shut down the Indian Point nuclear-power plant, which supplies, at low cost, about one-fourth of the power consumed in New York City and Wes♍tchester County, and you just know trouble’s ahead.
Stock up on candles.
Trump tweets truth
President Trump’s Twitter attacks on his Democrat critics from “disgusting . . . rodent infested” Baltimore an꧃d San Francisco yesterday are spot on๊.
These politicians should read Jordan Peterson’s book “12 R𓄧ules for Life,” especially Rule 6: Clean up your own room before you start lecturing others.