NYPD Union Denounces de Blasio for Abandoning NYC During Failed Presidential Bid
The Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York (P.B.A.), the city’s largest police union, put out a statement Friday on Twitter excoriating Mayor Bill de Blasio for neglecting the city while running his failed presidential campaign.
“This campaign proved that it doesn’t really matter whether Mayor Bill de Blasio is speaking to empty rooms in Iowa or spinning his wheels in a Park Slope gym,” union head Patrick J. Lynch said in the statement. “What matters to New Yorkers is that he isn’t doing his job.”
"The only thing @NYCMayor's presidential campaign accomplished was the alienation of hard-working NYers & the deepening of serious divisions in our city, especially between his administration & NYC police officers. He needs to either step aside or be removed…" pic.twitter.com/HmrgzWSqo3
— NYC PBA (@NYCPBA) September 20, 2019
This is not the first time the P.B.A. has clashed with de Blasio, who announced Friday morning that he was ending his long-shot bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Late last month, union delegates unanimously approved a vote of no-confidence in the mayor following his firing of an officer weeks earlier.
Lynch’s Friday statement accused de Blasio of failing to address rising crime in the city and neglecting other issues such as health-benefit cuts and stagnating wages for city workers. In mid-July, de Blasio was campaigning in Iowa when a power outage plunged a large portion of Manhattan’s Upper West Side into darkness, emptying Broadway theaters and dimming the lights in Times Square. He decided not to return immediately to the city, flying in only the next day, as city officials and Governor Andrew Cuomo directed the government’s response to the outage.
According to a poll released August 6, de Blasio had a lower approval rating than President Trump within deep-blue New York City.
