Sharpton’s ‘Promotion’: De Blas’ Top Cop Adviser
l Politics does make strange bedfellows, as evidenced by the presence of the progressive, leftwing community’s favorite demagogue, the Rev. Al Sharpton, at City Hall last week (“Commissioner Sharpton,” Editorial, Aug. 1).
Sharpton wraps himself in the mantle of the great Martin Luther King Jr. while wearing thousanddollar suits and enforcing his selective, myopic vision of urban justice.
The Republicans had Joe McCarthy. New York Democrats live with the albatross of a fool. Gene Roman
The Bronx
l Am I the only person who noticed that no one mentioned the fact that Eric Garner was resisting arrest?
Am I the only person who noticed that no one mentioned the fact that the mayor needs to do public service announcements telling criminals to go along with an arrest? Isn’t it time the criminals learn how to be arrested without incident? Or is the payoff at the end of resisting arrest just too much to resist?
I long for the good old days when Rudy Giuliani wouldn’t give Sharpton the time of day and made sure he couldn’t use City Hall as a platform. Barbara Paolucci
Manhattan
l As Mayor de Blasio decides whether to heed Sharpton or Commissioner Bratton on the future of the NYPD, he should consider the words of Lao Tsu, who wrote: “Ruling the country is like cooking a small fish” — a task requiring skill, experience, humility, judgment and strict attention to detail.
More than any other individual in our country, Bratton has transformed policing in America into something resembling the massproduction process that generates millions of identical McDonald’s fish sandwiches a year.
His “broken windows policing” is a gross aberration from more than half a century of the evolution of modern policing into a true profession whose practitioners are guided by high principles drawn from the Bill of Rights. Bratton and his slogan and numbersdriven style of policing peaked some time ago. Time for his bad ideas to go. Terry O’Neill
Director The Constantine Institute, Inc.
Albany
l The sight of Sharpton at that City Hall meeting sickened and frightened me, because Sharpton has done more damage to race relations in this city than anyone in history.
It frightens me because if Shapton’s demands of the police department are implemented, violent crime will skyrocket back to the levels of the ’80s and early ’90s.
Barry Koppel Kew Gardens Hills
l Sharpton was totally wrong to mention de Blasio’s son by name as potential chokehold bait if he were not the mayor’s son. If I were de Blasio, I would have decked Sharpton.
While Garner’s death seems like an overuse of police tactics, this does not give Sharpton a bully pulpit to dress down the mayor and police commissioner. Ray Hackinson
Ozone Park
l Sharpton said: “The fact of the matter is, given the data that we are seeing in terms of these ‘broken windows’ kind of operations, it’s disproportionate in the black and Latino community.”
The translation: No white neighborhood would ever put up with the cops ignoring the weed smokers, people selling loosies, beer drinkers, loud radio players, dice throwers and latenight loiterers.
Here’s an idea: Grab a yellow school bus, pack it with some weed smokers, loosies sellers, beer drinkers, loud radio players, dice throwers and late night loiterers and head out to Sharpton’s block. Jake McNicholas
Whitestone