New York City police and city hall on a war footing (Toronto Star)

[inanna]

People in New York City are suddenly 10 times less likely to be ticketed than they were a year ago. Call it NYPD backlash. Call it a semi-strike with pay. Just don’t call it orchestrated.

WASHINGTON—It is quietly morphing into one of the most portentous American police protests in generations, a near-total collapse in arrests and summonses for low-level offences throughout New York City.

For a third week running, people in the five boroughs are suddenly 10 times less likely to be ticketed than they were a year ago and less than half as likely to be detained.

Call it backlash. Call it reverse-flexing of NYPD muscle. Call it a semi-strike with pay. Just don’t call it orchestrated, lest you invoke the wrath of Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of New York, by far the largest of the labour unions representing the city’s cops.

<snip>

Lynch has led a headline-grabbing war of words with New York’s mayor, going so far as to say there is “blood on the hands” of Bill de Blasio in the wake of the Dec. 20 slayings of two NYPD officers. And later, a prime motivating force behind the mass turning of police backs on the mayor as he eulogized those police deaths.

continued...

Link: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/01/06/new_york_city_police_and_city_hall_on_a_war_footing.html

I admit it: I'm obsessed with this story and I don't even live in NYC.

[4dsc]

1. I don't think this bodes well for the police.

I don't support this action but I support the police personal everywhere.