It wasn’t “the world’s worst thing” that cops allowed a publicity-starved rapper to hold midtown traffic hostage for two hours, Mayor Bloomberg said today.
Speaking on his weekly radio show, said it’s not fair to second guess the police who allowed Raymond Velasquez to hold court on a light pole at West 44th Street and Seventh Avenue Tuesday morning.
“If they Taser somebody, they can die,” said the mayor. “It’s a judgment call. It’s easy for us to sit there and make fun of it and say I would have done it differently.
“No. 1, in retrospect everybody does things differently. And No. 2, it’s the guy or the woman there who’s got to make the decision. They made the decision. Nobody got hurt. Inconvenienced? Yes. Is it the world’s worst thing? No. Should it have happened? No. But let’s blame the guy who did it, not the cops who responded.”
Bloomberg then offered some grudging admiration for the pole man.
“Having said that, he certainly got a lot of publicity,” he said.