NYC report: The curious standoff between Mayor de Blasio and the NYPD gets, well, a bit curiouser

NYPD Commissioner Bratton (right) is in a pickle: He needs both to support and be supported by both Mayor de Blasio (left) and the NYPD.

"If the [NYC cops] are trying to send a message by not working, whatever they decide that message is, perhaps they should save taxpayers some money and just go on strike."

-- Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell, in her
column "NYPD should go ahead and strike"

by Ken

Since my Wednesday report on the strange work non-stoppage by NYC cops, developments have sort-of-developed, though not in any especially clear way.

The headline on a report yesterday by DNAinfo New York's Gwynne Hogan read: "Bratton Admits 'Widespread Stoppage' of NYPD Work." NYC Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, after two weeks of wondering what NYPD work slowdown people kept talking about.

"We're coming out of what was a pretty widespread stoppage of certain types of activity, the discretionary type of activity by and large," Bratton told NPR’s Robert Siegel Friday. "We've been taking management initiatives to identify where it's occurring; when it's occuring."

As has been widely noted, throughout this peculiar sequence of events the commissioner has been stuck awkwardly in the middle. He's a mayoral appointee, and needs both to support and be supported by the mayor. But obviously he also needs to be seen as supporting the people who serve in his department to be assured that they continue supporting him.

Which, it seems, isn't at all a given. On Thursday, DNAinfo New York "On the Inside" reporter Murray Weiss quoted "a top police union official" (in "Bratton 'Dangerously' Close to Getting NYPD Backs Turned on Him: Sources") as saying, "Right now the commissioner is getting the benefit of the doubt, but if the tone he has continues in lockstep with the mayor, he is going to lose his beloved cops as well." Weiss reported "another union official" saying, "Things are very fragile, and [Bratton] has been getting dangerously close to losing us."

Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell has an unexpected thought: "NYPD should go ahead and strike."

Catherine starts with a sensibly bewildered survey of the odd ins-and-outs of this work-slowdown-that-isn't. "Everything about this seemingly coordinated (in)action has been disorienting," she writes, "starting with the fact that no one wants to take credit for it," including the facts that "it's not clear what the cops actual demands are" and that "rhetorical bedfellows" have been "peculiarly rearranged" of "rhetorical bedfellows." For example, "you have conservative pundits such as Bill O’Reilly -- typically so condemnatory of government waste [not to mention public employees and public-employee unions -- Ed.] -- pretzeling themselves to cheer on public workers who are being deliberately unproductive," while "a police commissioner who is one of the foremost proponents of the 'broken windows' theory -- the idea that aggressively pursuing petty law-breaking creates a sense of order and prevents more serious crime - offering potential excuses for why it's not such a big deal that cops have stopped enforcing certain laws."

Catherine declares herself "conflicted about the fact that police are turning a blind eye to (mostly petty and nonviolent) crime, particularly since many low-level fines and tickets exist not just for broken-windows reasons but also because they provide highly regressive back-door taxes." But, she says,

I am most disappointed by many cops' willingness to draw a paycheck while not doing their jobs. If they're trying to send a message by not working, whatever they decide that message is, perhaps they should save taxpayers some money and just go on strike. Of course, under New York law, striking by public workers is illegal and can be punished with two days’ wages docked for every one day on strike (a penalty cops endured when they struck in 1971). But these workers are already breaking the law by choosing not to enforce it. How about manning up and putting their money where their mouths are?

#