Black Lives Matter and other anti-police organizations received an early Valentine’s Day gift from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio when he decided to mandate that all members of the NYPD receive special training to stamp out “implicit bias” in their behavior. It sounds fairly innocuous, almost like Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow’s “conscious uncoupling,” yet it actually is anything but. “Implicit bias” is code for ingrained racism.
With this mandatory training for New York’s Finest, de Blasio has given credibility to the claims that police officers are racist and even worse. Now, each and every one of the New York City Police Department’s 34,450 uniformed officers have officially been called inherently racist by the mayor of the city they serve. Sure, it’s nothing new to hear that Bill de Blasio isn’t exactly the best friend to cops. After all, he made his elected career pushing anti-police policies and rhetoric. In December 2014, police officers turned their backs on de Blasio when he spoke at the funeral of assassinated police officer Rafael Ramos. Why? Because de Blasio had added fuel to the fire of the anti-cop movement. As Patrick Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of New York, said after Ramos and his partner Wenjian Liu were killed by an anti-police activist, de Blasio had “blood on his hands.”
Now, de Blasio’s move to end “implicit bias” has legitimized the claims of anti-police activists who have long held that police officers are racist and worse. During marches over the failure to indict the officers involved in the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, activists across the country carried signs that accused police officers of being “murderers,” perpetrating “America’s genocide,” carrying out an “American holocaust,” systematically carrying out the targeted killings of African Americans, as well as many more ridiculous and inflammatory claims. They claimed that all cops are racists and Bill de Blasio just told them they are right.
What will happen the next time social justice warriors organize a protest? Of course they are going to use the validity de Blasio gave their claims to bolster their argument. “Yes, cops are racists! The mayor of the largest city in the U.S. has publicly said so!” They will say.
Let’s take a step back and look at who the men and women of the NYPD actually are. They are white, African American, Hispanic, Asian, gay, straight, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, natural born citizens, naturalized citizens, veterans, and many more things. In short, they are a microcosm of New York City and the United States. They reflect the diversity that makes America unique.
It is important to acknowledge that there are some bad cops throughout our nation’s police forces. This is just like how there are bad postal workers, McDonald’s servers and bad people in any other profession. However, we do not apply a blanket label to all of the people who work in whatever industry the bad person works in. We also do not retrain an entire workforce based on the actions of a few.
Bill de Blasio just said they are all racist. By virtue of this, we can logically conclude that de Blasio believes that every citizen across the country is unconsciously racist. We better get to our “implicit bias” re-education seminars and consciously uncouple from our racist tendencies and behaviors!
What’s the real reason de Blasio is wasting time and resources with this? It is quite possible that the mayor is attempting to shore up his left flank in case he faces a challenge from his left (yes in 2017). His poll numbers among New Yorkers are in dismal territory (with the exception of African Americans). As long as he remains popular within this voting bloc, it would be difficult for a Democratic challenger to unseat de Blasio. He also has suffered a string of high-profile defeats and setbacks in the two years he has been in office. From failing to ban horse carriages to trying to stop the growth of Uber, de Blasio has become known among New Yorkers for having a “Reign of Error.” Perhaps it’s just de Blasio being the self-appointed progressive savior of New York City and the nation?
Whatever the reasons for de Blasio’s desire to stamp out the racism he and the social justice movement members see throughout the NYPD, it is wrong. Most police officers are good and hard-working Americans who seek to protect and serve. De Blasio has slapped police officers across the United States in the face.