Yesterday was not a proud day for New York. In the City Council, members voted to override Mayor Bloomberg’s vetoes of two bills meant to hobble America’s most successful police force.
One bill imposes an inspector general on the NYPD, introducing into the department an official whose main function will be to second-guess the police commissioner. The other makes it easier for people who are stopped by the cops to sue in state court. Both are meant to make it more difficult for police to stop-and-frisk.
As these columns have noted before, the attacks by our city’s political class on a successful police policy leave little to shock. But even we were taken aback by Bill de Blasio, the public advocate now running in the Democratic primary for mayor.
It wasn’t enough for de Blasio to support the council’s overrides. In a bid to paint himself as the most anti-stop-and-frisk candidate, he’s misrepresenting the lawsuit bill by characterizing it as a ban on racial profiling.
That was too much for Chris Quinn, who voted yea for the inspector bill, nay on the lawsuit bill. In Wednesday night’s debate, she pointed out — to cheers — that racial profiling is already against the law.
But there’s no shaming the shameless. On the steps of City Hall yesterday, de Blasio described Quinn as someone who opposes a ban on racial profiling. All in all, a sad day for the city that Bill de Blasio managed, in his uniquely tawdry way, to make worse.