NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton says he wouldn’t be surprised if federal investigators opened a probe into the death of a Staten Island man who was placed in a possible chokehold by cops.
The Rev. Al Sharpton and the family of the dead man, Eric Garner, met with Brooklyn US Attorney Loretta Lynch on Friday.
“I would not be surprised if they opened one,” Bratton said on former mayoral contender John Catsimatidis’ Sunday morning WNYM 970 AM radio show.
The NYPD has reached out to six leading police associations for their help in reviewing Garner’s death and the department’s use of force, according to the commish.
“That review will include looking at the current state-of-the-art police departments in other parts of the country,” he said.
The top cop also said any decision in the Garner case will take some time, due to the many different investigations that are going on.
“There will be no quick resolution under the criminal-law processes for months,” Bratton said. “We are going to try and learn from the experience. My own perspective is that we can do a much better job both for the safety of our officers and the safety of the public than we have been doing.”
Bratton also spoke about the uptick in shootings this summer. There have been 618 shootings citywide so far this year, up about 10 percent from 516 last year.
And almost 725 people have been wounded in gun crimes this year, up 8.5 percent from last year’s 667.
“I have literally thousands of additional officers out on the streets of New York, with a combination of overtime [and] a recent class that just graduated out of the academy,” Bratton said.
“[They are] focusing on the 10 to 15 precincts that have been experiencing an increase in shootings.”
Catsimatidis, the Gristedes supermarket mogul who last year lost the Republican mayoral primary to Joe Lhota, did not ask whether the de Blasio administration’s dramatic reduction in use of stop-and-frisk boosted the grim trend.
Bratton insisted he was hopeful the city could still bring down the number of shootings — and even beat last year’s record low in violence.
“This year, we have potential to match that or even beat it,” Bratton insisted.