WALKING OUT
Top cop, sponsor exit P.R. parade over militant
POLICE Commissioner James O’Neill and JetBlue Airways have pulled out of next month’s Puerto Rican Day Parade in protest of plans to honor a nationalist jailed for his connection to a string of deadly bombings.
O’Neill’s decision came after police unions and other law enforcement groups criticized plans to honor Oscar Lopez Rivera, 74, as the parade’s first “National Freedom Hero.”
“I usually do march in most of the parades with the fraternal organizations, but I’m not going to be marching this year,” O’Neill said. “I cannot support a man who is a co-founder of an organization that engaged in over 120 bombings.”
JetBlue, in a statement, said the company would redirect its funds to support scholarships in Puerto Rico and New York.
Last week, Goya cut ties after 60 years, calling it a “business decision.”
Lopez Rivera, a prominent member of the Puerto Rican independence group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), spent 36 years in prison for transportation of explosives with intent to kill and injure people, among other charges. Lopez Rivera, a Vietnam War veteran, was never charged with carrying out any violence.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, the FALN claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings at government buildings, banks, restaurants and stores in New York, Chicago and other cities.
NYPD cops hold a particular grudge against Lopez Rivera and the FALN for the 1975 bombing at Fraunces Tavern in Lower Manhattan that killed four people and injured dozens. No one has ever been charged with the blast.
The group also planted bombs at four government building on New Year’s Eve in 1982, seriously wounding three officers.
Just before leaving office in January, President Obama commuted Lopez Rivera’s sentence.
Mayor de Blasio said he would march in the June 11 parade.
Organizers of the annual parade that draws a crowd of more than 1 million have said Lopez Rivera’s participation is “not an endorsement of the history that led to his arrest,” but rather “a recognition of a man and a nation’s struggle for sovereignty.” That didn’t satisfy many cops. On Monday, the Gay Officers Action League endorsed a decision by the NYPD Hispanic Society to not participate in the parade .
Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito (photo bottom), who hails from Puerto Rico and lobbied for Lopez’s release, said many of the reactions from police unions had been “inflammatory” and “inaccurate.”
“They have the right to make a decision to not march,” she said. “They don’t have a right to make up facts.”