Bx. pol hammered for anti-cop placard
A Democrat running for state Senate in The Bronx was pictured carrying a sign with “ACAB,” the acronym for “All Cops Are Bastards,” during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 — drawing ire from neighborhood activists and an opponent.
Christian Amato, a strategist and community organizer, was spotted holding the anti-cop placard during a 2020 demonstration at Loreto Playground in Morris Park, according to a photo that has recently surfaced on social media.
“It’s laughable that Amato is running for Senate … He’s a weasel beyond belief,” said Bronx resident Wayne Gurman, who snapped the photo of Amato at the protest.
Gurman, who runs the Facebook group BRONX STRONG, was attending a “Back the Blue” rally at the park when he saw Amato — a former staffer of state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi — participating in a hastily organized counterdemonstration.
The protesters blared rap group N.W.A’s song “F--k Tha Police,” Gurman said. A demonstrator standing next to Amato also carried a sign that read “Blue Lives Don’t Matter.”
James Gisondi — a lawyer who is also running in the Democratic primary for NY Senate District 36 — retweeted the photo of Amato and wrote: “An anarchist can’t be a state senator. He doesn’t have the character to be a state senator.”
Amato is seeking to replace his former boss Biaggi, who is running for Congress in a district that runs from Riverdale to City Island and takes in parts of Westchester.
Speaking to The Post, Amato admitted to carrying the “ACAB” sign — but insisted he didn’t realize he was holding a cop-hating message when it was handed to him.
“Someone passed me the sign and I didn’t know it said, ‘ACAB.’ I had no clue,” he said. “I totally grabbed the sign in haste.”
Amato said he took part in the counterprotest because he thought it was “tone deaf ” to hold a pro-cop rally just days after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which triggered massive demonstrations across the country.
“The officers deserve our respect. But we need our officers to be culturally cognitive,” he said. “When there is social unrest, it is not the best moment to hold an event. You have to read the room.”
Amato also said the Blue Lives Matter participants were unruly and angrily confronted and taunted the smaller group of Black Lives Matter protesters.
The Bronx Community Board 11 member and former Broadway producer was fired from his post as Biaggi’s top deputy in 2019.
He declined to comment on his termination, saying he never got an explanation as to why he was canned, and that he wanted to leave to provide more constituent services.
Other candidates running for the Senate seat to replace Biaggi include lawyer Miguelina Camilo and Lisa Hofflich, a Vietnamese immigrant who previously worked for US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). The primary is scheduled for June 28.
The controversy over Amato’s “ACAB” photo comes a week after The Post’s report on how a candidate for Democratic district leader in Brooklyn, rapper Noah Weston, spewed hateful screeds about cops in Twitter posts.
More police bashing
Weston — who is running on the “For the People” slate — has called officers “f–-king pigs,” “plague rats” and “sacks of s-–t” who do more harm than good.
On Feb. 28, 2021, Weston — known as the rapper Soul Khan — retweeted a video of an incident where cops are seen kneeling on an old man in the subway.
“F–k these f–king pigs till the day their misbegotten lives end. Abolish these egrish sacks of s–t,” wrote Weston, a West Hollywood, Calif., native who now performs in a hip-hop group called Brown Bag AllStars.
Weston defended his cop-bashing as justified when contacted by The Post, saying he merely pointed out wrongdoing.
“The ‘sacks of s–t’ and ‘f–king pigs’ comments were in reference to officers beating an elderly man in the subway on video,” he said in a text response.