Albany eyes police reforms

Despite vids, he sez ‘not a fact’

Gov. Cuomo called on city prosecutors to crack down on looters while casting doubt on aggressive NYPD tactics despite viral footage of police clobbering peaceful protesters with batons.

When asked Thursday for his thoughts on videos from the night before of officers bludgeoning demonstrators protesting police brutality for staying out past the city’s 8 p.m. curfew in Brooklyn and Manhattan, the governor said, “That’s not a fact. They don’t do that.”

“The question itself can be a little offensive,” Cuomo said. “It’s that kind of incendiary rhetoric … it’s not a fact. It’s not a fact.”

Pressed by a reporter who noted that there were videos, Cuomo demurred.

“Police have to enforce the law. If you are violating the curfew and you refuse to leave, the police officers have to enforce the law,” he said.

Later in the briefing, Cuomo acknowledged it would be wrong for cops to batter peaceful protesters with batons, saying “anyone who did do that would be obviously reprehensible, if not criminal.”

He also tweeted Thursday afternoon that he has asked Attorney General Letitia James to look into the incidents as part of her ongoing investigation of the police response to the protests.

“Peaceful protest is a sacred American right,” he tweeted. “No peaceful protester deserves to be hit with a baton and no self-respecting police officer would defend that.”

The curfew was imposed earlier in the week after chaos erupted in the city, overshadowing peaceful demonstrations held to condemn the death of George Floyd, an African-American man who died after a white officer knelt on his neck during an arrest in Minneapolis last week.

The baton battering aside, Cuomo offered a blanket defense for the NYPD and noted that three officers were attacked in two separate incidents overnight, one of whom was stabbed in the neck.

“The police are doing an impossible job,” he said. “They have treated police officers with such disrespect in New York City that I am stunned. I have never seen that level of disrespect to a police officer.”

Cuomo’s comments come two days after he took heat for saying the NYPD was “not effective at doing their job” in the wake of widespread looting and mayhem that rocked the city earlier in the week.

The NYPD’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, Terence Monahan, said Wednesday on NBC’s “Today” that the governor’s office called him to apologize for the critique, adding that Cuomo spoke directly to Commissioner Dermot Shea.

But the governor said during a radio interview Thursday he “never apologized” for his remarks.

Cuomo also called on city prosecutors to take a tougher stance on looters who have used the mostly peaceful protests as cover to break into high-end stores.

The governor suggested that the city’s district attorneys should charge suspected looters with the stiffest possible burglary charges, since a new state law precludes judges from setting bail on common burglary offenses, resulting in hundreds of defendants being let loose within 24 hours of arrest.

“To the New York City district attorneys: You look at these videos. It would be nonsensical if police were arresting looters and they were being arrested and returned to the street the next day to loot again,” Cuomo said. “These people should be charged for the crime that they are committing and bail set, right?”

Cuomo’s call for harsher prosecution of looters came after Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. asked the governor to invoke emergency powers to allow people arrested during the protests to be jailed indefinitely.

Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo’s top aide, said prosecutors are simply “not using the tools available to them.”

A spokesman for Vance’s office fired back at the governor, saying that it’s not possible to charge suspects with the crime suggested.

ALBANY — State lawmakers are expected to introduce a package of police reform bills Friday in the wake of civil unrest over police brutality against African-Americans.

Spurred into action by the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white officer knelt on his neck during an arrest in Minneapolis last week, and a week of civil unrest, Democrats in control of both chambers plan to vote on the bills next week.

The reforms will include the repeal of 50-a, a controversial statute that allows cops across the state to shield disciplinary records from the public, and the codification of an executive order establishing the state attorney general as a special prosecutor for cases when a cop kills a civilian, a Democratic source said.

Other bills being considered include a ban on racial or ethnic profiling by police and banning chokeholds.