Metro

De Blasio warns Sharpton: March will ‘tear New York City apart’

Mayor de Blasio personally pleaded with Rev. Al Sharpton to cancel a threatened Staten Island march that the mayor feared “would tear the city apart,” The Post has learned.

As the firebrand preacher publicly planned an Aug. 23 protest march across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that would effectively paralyze Staten Island and ratchet up racial tensions citywide, Hizzoner phoned Sharpton Thursday and begged him to change course.

“Do you think that marching over this bridge will be a benefit to the progressive agenda?” de Blasio asked, according to a City Hall source with knowledge of the conversation.

The mayor tried to reason with the Rev that the march controversy was distracting them from achieving their mutual goals, including better policing, the source said.

Sharpton finally announced Saturday that demonstrators would drive, not walk, over the span to protest the death of Eric Garner, who was killed on July 17 after cops subdued him with a chokehold. The city medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.

Protesters will now park their cars and buses in Tompkinsville, where Garner died, and march from there to the DA’s Office a mile away on Richmond Terrace.

De Blasio, Public Advocate Letitia James and several labor leaders, including the boss of ­Local 1199 of the SEIU health-care-workers union, George Gresh­am, phoned Sharpton in close succession.

Do you think that marching over this bridge will be a benefit to the progressive agenda?

 - De Blasio to Sharpton

The mayor took a “respectful” tone, even though he is said to be furious with Sharpton’s dictatorial tone during a July 31 public round table on police-community relations.

De Blasio tried to get the Rev to “see the light” rather than lay down the law, the source said.

“The discussion was what’s in the best interests of the city. We don’t need racial tensions, and it would be a distraction from the progressive agenda.”

De Blasio was “appealing to [Sharpton’s] sense of religious duty, his higher calling,” the source said.

“The mayor was obviously concerned because he was getting hammered in the press,” the insider added. “They thought they could control the Rev, but no one can control the Rev.”

The threatened march “was ­really undermining the de Blasio administration,” the source said.

Yet all week, officials sat on the question of whether Sharpton should be given a precedent-setting permit to tie up the Verrazano, which is rarely closed.

Eric Garner
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton punted to the MTA, which operates the bridge and answers to Gov. Cuomo. Transit officials kicked it right back to City Hall.

It wasn’t until Friday that de Blasio publicly commented, pointing out “very real logistical challenges with using the bridge.”

Sharpton says his “justice caravans” still might slow traffic.

“I got to go across the Verrazano because there is no other way to get there,” he insisted. “Now you all are going to have a lot of bridges going to have to slowdown. Our goal is not to slow folks down. Our goal is to speed up justice.”

Additional reporting by Kathianne Boniello