Michael Bloomberg and Ray Kelly may be upset about yesterday’s City Council decision imposing strict new oversight on the NYPD, but they’re the ones chiefly at fault, say some unusually candid department sources contacted by DNAinfo. According to the current and former high-ranking cops, the mayor’s and police commissioner’s standoffish, arrogant responses to criticism gradually stoked the flames of negative public opinion.
“He was absolutely tone deaf on this issue and it has created a fucking mess for the city, a monumental issue for the future,” one source said. “He refused to recognize that this was an issue or that he needed to change the way he was doing things.”
“Maybe the lack of transparency prolonged things that could have been stopped sooner, but I think it was the arrogance,” another source agreed. “I think if [Kelly] had just backed down, instead of saying, ‘Fuck you, I know better,’ the result could have been different.”
The mayor isn’t exempt from the cops’ ire, either. “I think the mayor supported him to the extent that was unhealthy and that has nothing to do with the great job Ray Kelly has done,” said one source. “If the mayor had forced him to rethink the way he was doing things, to get him to back down, it might have changed everything. They don’t see anything wrong in anything they do.”
(Photo: Azi Paybarah/Flickr)
