It's far from clear what kind of support Trump enjoys among police officers in this highly diverse city. | Getty In Democratic NYC, at least some cops are on the Trump train

Donald Trump’s administration may have picked a fight with leaders of the New York Police Department when Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the city “soft on crime” last month. But Trump cast himself as a friend to police officers on the campaign trail — and as he returns to his overwhelmingly Democratic hometown of New York City for the first time as president Thursday, some GOP officials say he’s got plenty of friends on the force.

“They love him,” says Republican state Sen. Marty Golden, a former cop who now represents Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, when asked what he hears from police officers about Trump. “I was at a police function, they went crazy.”


“There seems to be, regardless of what we see in the press ... an overwhelming support among our law enforcement, and our military units, for Donald Trump,” Golden says.

It's far from clear what kind of support Trump enjoys among police officers in this highly diverse city. And New York City Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill has slammed Sessions' comments about New York policy strategy (which Sessions took back) as well the Trump budget and its threats of cuts to cities that shield undocumented immigrants from federal authorities.

But at least some rank-and-file police and law enforcement officials seem caught in the middle in New York City — they like Trump’s law-and-order talk, but live and work in a city whose federal funding Trump has threatened to cut over the “sanctuary city” fight.

Rep. Dan Donovan, New York City’s only Republican member of Congress and a former district attorney on Staten Island — the only New York borough to go for Trump — says Trump has plenty of support among law enforcement officers.

“Our police officers aren’t the one-percenters,” Donovan said. “They’re hardworking people. … They’re taxpaying and I think they’re the people the president was speaking to during his campaign.”

Donovan said the question really should be about “their relationship with the Mayor [Bill de Blasio]. And I don’t know what that is.” Donovan said Trump’s support for police officers is “genuine” and “I hope they feel that from him and I think when he gets back home he is going to see their support as well.”

“I’ve done nothing but commend him for it and I think law enforcement probably think the same thing,” Donovan notes.

De Blasio squared off with police unions over police violence earlier in his term, and the relationship with NYPD has sometimes been rocky.

Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association, said that “I have not officially surveyed my membership, but it's my sense that NYPD detectives like President Trump.” He adds: “As a New Yorker, he always supported law enforcement and they feel there is now someone in the White House who recognizes and appreciates what they do and the risks they take every day.”

Palladino dismissed the fight between the Trump administration and de Blasio over sanctuary city funding as hot air. “I think detectives are savvy enough to realize that, at this time of the year, there’s a lot of budget rhetoric that takes place,” he said. “This is probably a starting point and it’ll probably evolve from here.” He called it the “typical budget rhetoric. I think that’s how they see it.”

