Anti-cop “protesters” are out of control — but at least some local leaders are now refusing to drink the Kool-Aid.
Clergy and communities united against the escalating gun violence plaguing the city held a march over the Brooklyn Bridge on Wednesday. But the cop-bashers targeted it for a protest just because the Sergeants Benevolent Association cosponsored it.
The “peaceful” counter-protest resulted in NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan suffering a broken finger and two other officers suffering serious injuries. At least 10 protesters got themselves arrested for trying to block the clergy march.
March organizer Tony Herbert told The Post that the SBA regularly supports his United Clergy Coalition’s annual toy drive and other community events. He called the counter-protest “disrespectful” to the clergy coalition — and to the mothers who have lost loved ones to the growing gun violence around the city.
“You can’t unify the city if you don’t include the NYPD, who are key in taking the back city from the criminal element,” Herbert noted.
The tide of public opinion may indeed be turning as residents of the city’s hardest-hit communities mourn the senseless shootings, such as the one that killed little Davell Gardner and the brazen drive-by murder of Anthony Robinson as he held his 6-year-old daughter’s hand in a Bronx crosswalk.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has publicly criticized the decision to disband the NYPD’s plainclothes anti-crime unit — 600-plus officers reassigned to uniformed patrol, where the gun-toting bad guys can see them coming.
Other black community leaders have now joined Adams’ call to reinstate the unit (with new safeguards) to help fight the escalating violence.
Ideologues who cause bloodshed at a ministers’ march versus African-American officials who demand a pragmatic approach to rising chaos and bloodshed: How hard can it be for the political establishment to start making the right choice?