NYC mayor, police signal truce

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and police unions are signaling a truce until after the burials of two officers killed Saturday by a gunman who was apparently motivated by police killings of African-Americans.

Police union chiefs have blistered New York City’s mayor with criticism since the murder of the two police, with one leader saying de Blasio has “blood” on his hands.

{mosads}Some lawmakers have also criticized President Obama, saying that his rhetoric inflamed tempers around the nation.

De Blasio at a Monday press conference said he believed it was a “mistake” for Patrick Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association in New York, to have made the “blood” on his hands comment.

But de Blasio also sought to soothe tensions by urging protestors to put a temporary halt to their demonstrations as funerals are planned for officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjin Liu, who were gunned down as they sat in their patrol car in Brooklyn.

“We need to honor the families by not getting into a back and forth,” de Blasio said Monday.

“There’ll be a time for me to talk about my own personal views. I will simply say I think what he said was a mistake, and it was wrong,” de Blasio said of Lynch’s comment.

New York City police commissioner Bill Bratton, who attended the press conference with de Blasio, also sought to cool tempers and said that police unions in New York are “standing down” amid tensions stemming from the murders of the two officers.

Bratton said that the groups will hold off on engaging in political battles over policing policies until the funerals, “and then we can continue in the dialogue that had begun about issues and differences that exist.”

Bratton also pointedly asked reporters if they could name a mayor in the last 50 years who had not tussled with police unions.

De Blasio is the first Democratic mayor to lead New York City since David Dinkens, and in his mayoral campaign he criticized some aggressive police tactics that have come under greater and greater scrutiny in the city.

The criticism inflamed his relationship with police even before an officer in Staten Island used a lethal chokehold this summer on Eric Garner, an African-American accused of a misdemeanor of illegally selling loose cigarettes. Further protests erupted in New York and other cities after a grand jury in Staten Island failed to indict the officer involved in Garner’s death.

Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who allegedly killed himself after shooting the two officers on Saturday, left messages on social media indicating he wanted to take violent action against police in response to the deaths of Garner and Michael Brown, a black 18-year-old shot to death in August by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo.

A grand jury in the St. Louis suburb did not indict the officer who shot Brown.

Some police have argued that demonstrations and protests of the Brown and Garner decisions have created an atmosphere making it more likely that police would come under attack.

Police officials said Monday that they had found video recorded by the man who killed the two officers at one of the protests in early December. They said he appeared to be a spectator, not a participant. They had previously said he may have been motivated in part by anger over the Missouri and New York cases.

De Blasio on Monday excoriated the press for its coverage of the protests.

When asked about protests where demonstrators have used chants that appeared to compare the police to the Klu Klux Klan, he said that the majority of protests had been peaceful and the majority of officers had been respectful of the demonstrations.

“So yes, there are some bad people who say inappropriate things. There are people who say hateful things. They are not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the vast majority of New Yorkers, like the vast majority of Americans, who believe in peaceful democratic process,” he said, his voice rising for the first time during a mostly subdued press conference.

“I don’t see reports on the many decent good people. I don’t see reports on the everyday cops who do the exemplary thing and hold the line and show restraint and discipline no matter what invective is hurled at them.”