It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.
Throughout last year’s election season, New York’s Finest were bashed by the Democratic candidates as a racist force at war with the community, even as the cops had driven violent crime in the city to record lows.
As recently as March, Mayor de Blasio spoke of the “rift between police and community” left by his predecessors.
If the mayor was right, then all the changes at our police force — the new procedures imposed by federal Judge Shira Scheindlin, the downgrading of stop-and-frisk, the new police commissioner — should be making the community much happier with our men in blue.
But the latest Quinnipiac poll tells a different story.
It reports that from March to today, the NYPD’s job approval dropped nearly 10 points, from 68 percent then to 59 percent. Of course, this is just one poll’s figures, and there may be many factors behind the drop, including all the publicity surrounding the bloody murder of a six-year-old Brooklyn boy in an elevator by a knife-wielding maniac.
Still, all last year as the politicians running for office were portraying cops as the enemy, the public’s job approval for the NYPD never dropped below 60 percent.
Again, we are skeptical of drawing broad conclusions from one month’s figures. But we note that even with this drop, New Yorkers approve of our police at a level most politicians can only dream of. And contrary to the activist community, New Yorkers also support more police patrols of public housing.
A reminder that the most important factor in the public-approval rating for the police is whether New Yorkers believe our men in blue are keeping us safe.