City Comptroller Scott Stringer on Wednesday criticized Mayor de Blasio for personally intervening when a politically connected preacher pal was busted by cops — saying “the mayor shouldn’t be involved in any way when someone gets arrested.”
“It’s my sense that good intentions — trying to obviously be concerned about a bishop — is certainly something that I’m sure he felt,” Stringer said after a City Hall budget briefing.
“But I think the rule is mayors should not get involved in any way about somebody’s arrest. It can only be problematic.”
“Once a mayor makes a call like that, it is problematic because it raises questions — even though your intention was good,” Stringer added.
“And I certainly believe the mayor and take the mayor’s word that this was certainly something that he was doing, not out of giving someone special treatment, but when you do make that call you do have to answer a lot of questions.”
New York state Republican Chairman Ed Cox called on Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate what he called de Blasio’s “abuse of power.”
“New York’s law enforcement apparatus should be beyond reproach,” Cox said.
“For the Mayor of New York City to interfere with law enforcement on behalf of his political allies is ‘telephone justice,’ not American justice.”
Schneiderman’s office didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Public Advocate Tish James, who has vowed to hold the mayor accountable when necessary, left City Hall without saying a word about the controversy, with her spokesman repeatedly shouting that she wouldn’t comment.
City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, a close ally of the mayor who relied on his help to secure the top Council post, also declined comment on her way out of City Hall.
“I’m off to meet with (Police) Commissioner Bratton, so I can’t be late,” she said.
Mark-Viverito didn’t answer when asked if the meeting had anything to do with the mayor’s admitted phone call to a top police official regarding Bishop Orlando Findlayter, who helped deliver the black vote to de Blasio last year.
Democratic Brooklyn Councilman Brad Lander, who represents de Blasio’s Park Slope district, feigned ignorance about what had happened.
“I’m here for the budget” Lander said as he walked in to City Hall.
Asked if he thought what the mayor did was appropriate, Lander said: “I’m not clear that I know.”
Councilman Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn) — a frequent critic of the NYPD — also declined to comment, adding, “Maybe later.”
De Blasio on Tuesday acknowledged calling a top NYPD official, Deputy Chief Kim Royster, “to get clarification” after Findlayter, 50, was busted on two outstanding warrants and traffic charges during a stop in Brooklyn late Monday night.
Aides have insisted that de Blasio did not ask that Findlayter not be jailed, and that the decision to spring the preacher — who leads Brooklyn’s New Hope Christian Church — was made before de Blasio’s call.
According to the NYPD, Royster contacted Deputy Inspector Kenneth Lehr, commander of the 67th Precinct, who was already at the station house after learning about Findlayter’s arrest from other local clergy.
Lehr exercised his discretion to personally release Findlayter, wanted since Jan. 16 for failing to appear in court in connection with earlier, protest-related arrests, top NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis said.
His warrants were later tossed when he appeared before a judge, sources said.
Roy Richter, the head of Lehr’s union, on Wednesday called Lehr’s action “a common-sense decision based on the totality of the facts in front of him — the reason he was being held, the basis for the warrants and his prominence and strong ties to the community.”
“The warrant was for failure to respond to a C-summons issued when he was engaging in a peaceful protest as part of a larger group. The group had counsel who were supposed to resolve and dispose of the summons on his behalf and that did not happen,” said Richter, president of the Captain’s Endowment Association.
But a former Brooklyn prosecutor who recently left the District Attorney’s Office told The Post: “If you have just one open warrant, you get processed and you don’t get released.”
“The pastor had two — that’s a double whammy. It doesn’t matter how minor the crime is,” the ex-prosecutor said.
“I have prosecuted dozens of cases where someone with an open warrant for disorderly conduct or (an) open container had to spend a night at Rikers before being produced in court the next day.”
“You don’t get to go home and spend the night in a warm bed.”
Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, also earlier questioned Lehr’s action.
“If a guy has a warrant, you don’t let him go. Period,” Mullins said.
“There is no ‘discretion.’ What if you release him [and] he drives a block, blows a red light and runs somebody over and kills him? As a [police] supervisor, you have a lot to answer for.”
Mullins also said de Blasio’s involvement in the case “just confirmed that it really is a ‘tale of two cities,’” referring to the mayor’s oft-repeated, populist campaign pledge to attack inequality.