This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

New York Police Department unions said on Tuesday there had been “no resolve” in the ongoing public rift between police and mayor Bill de Blasio, following a meeting between the two sides.

“There were a number of discussions, especially about the safety issues members face. There was no resolve,” Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Pat Lynch said in a statement after the two-hour discussions.

“And our thought here today is that actions speak louder than words and time will tell.”

De Blasio, who did not address reporters following the meeting, issued a statement through his press secretary saying the meeting had “focused on building a productive dialogue and ways to move forward together”.

The mayor called the meeting with five police union leaders, some of whom have blamed him for exacerbating tensions between police and city residents, just a day after he was heckled at the annual NYPD graduation ceremony.



In the immediate aftermath of the shooting of two police officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, in Brooklyn on 20 December, Lynch said there was blood “on the steps of city hall, in the office of the mayor”. The same day, the Sergeants Benevolent Association used Twitter to say “the blood of 2 executed police officers is on the hands of Mayor de Blasio”.

Ramos and Liu were killed in an ambush shooting by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, a 28-year-old with a history of mental health problems who shot and wounded his ex-girlfriend before travelling to New York. Brinsley posted on his Instagram feed that he planned to kill police officers to avenge the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, unarmed black men killed by police in recent months.

Grand jury decisions not to indict the officers responsible for the deaths of Brown and Garner sparked waves of protest across the US. De Blasio refused to endorse the Staten Island grand jury decision in the Garner case.

At Ramos’s funeral, in Queens on Saturday, hundreds of police officers turned their backs on the mayor as he spoke.

At the funeral and during the Monday NYPD graduation ceremony, de Blasio voiced support for rank-and-file officers.



“You’ll confront poverty, you’ll confront mental illness, illegal guns and a still too divided society. All of these challenges. You didn’t create these problems but you can help our city to overcome them,” de Blasio said, before quoting from the bible: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”

De Blasio’s words do not appear to have appeased union leaders. On Tuesday the Sergeants Benevolent Association, which later attended the meeting with the mayor, tweeted: “Mayor needs to humble himself & change his philosophical views on policing & the way protests have occured [sic] within the city.”

The tweet later appeared to have been removed.

The New York Post reported on Tuesday that NYPD arrest statistics had fallen by 66% for the week starting 22 December, in what an unnamed police source described as an undeclared slowdown of work.

