After Begging Blacks to Elect Him, Bill DeBlasio (D) Defends Racist NYPD & Pretends Protestors are ‘Outsider Anarchists,’ Not People w/Legitimate Outrage at Social & Economic Oppression
From [HERE] Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday blamed an organized group of anarchists for inciting violence and vandalism amid protests over the killing of George Floyd, but conceded some were from the city and the neighborhoods where demonstrations were happening — a shift from his message Saturday night.
“Some come from outside the city. Some are from inside the city,” he said. “Some are from the neighborhoods where the protests take place, some are not. But what we do know is there is an explicit agenda of violence and it does not conform with the history of this city in which we have always honored non-violent protests.”
Only hours before, on Saturday night, the mayor insisted the threat of violence was coming from “out of town” demonstrators, many of whom are “not from communities of color” and have a “warped ideology” that leads them to “harming working people who are police officers.”
De Blasio, who first came to office with a promise of police reform, has ardently defended the NYPD during the recent protests and insisted officers were exercising great restraint in the face of threats from demonstrators bent on attacking cops. He’s faced fierce backlash from criminal justice advocates and members of his own party.
“@NYCMayor your comments tonight were unacceptable,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted early Sunday morning. “Defending and making excuses for NYPD running SUVs into crowds was wrong. Make it right. De-escalate.”
Police officers drove through a barricade into throngs of protesters in Brooklyn Saturday evening. Video of the incident, which quickly went viral, shows demonstrators throwing cones, garbage bags and water bottles at the NYPD vehicles before they plowed into the crowds.
The mayor insisted again Sunday the officers were reacting to a dangerous situation caused by threats of violence.
“We’re going to fully investigate that incident,” the mayor said Sunday. “I don’t ever want to see a police officer do that. ... But I also know that it was an extremely dangerous situation and the one thing [police] couldn’t do was stay there.”
“There are protests, and there are mobs,” NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea added later in the conference. “A protest does not involve surrounding and ambushing a marked police car.”
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, speaking in a separate press conference that morning, criticized the mayor’s earlier remarks to the incident as “a terrible response.”
“We can’t have police officers who haven’t been trained on how to handle a panicked situation and are handling it through plowing protesters,” he said. “That’s not something we can accept.” [MORE]