The Rev. Al Sharpton has called off plans for a march across the Verrazano Bridge, in favor of a rally at the site of Eric Garner’s death followed by a march to the Staten Island DA’s office.
He’s still playing with dynamite — as is Mayor de Blasio.
In the bigger picture, things have only gotten worse for New York since the disastrous “Roundtable Conference” blew up on July 31.
Consider what happened after The Rev announced that he’d lead a mass protest march across the Verrazano.
First, one lawmaker urged Gov. Cuomo to order the MTA not to grant a permit for the march — and the governor quickly tossed the ball to the mayor, who promptly lateralled it off to Police Commissioner Bill Bratton.
He, in turn, punted it back to the MTA folks — who countered by saying if the city decided to allow the march, they’d issue the necessary permits.
The whole pack of officials acted as if someone had tossed a live bomb into their laps.
Not one had the courage to say: Sorry, the bridge is the main link between Staten Island and Brooklyn; if some disaster were to occur on the island, emergency vehicles couldn’t get across, so we’re not granting you a permit.
That Sharpton abandoned the idea only after a personal request from the mayor only underlines our leaders’ lack of leadership.
And his backup plan still poses great risks.
Anything can happen on the streets of New York in the summer months. In August 1991, Brooklyn saw four days of murder and rioting after a protest got out of hand.
That same year, Sharpton himself was stabbed while preparing to lead a march in Brooklyn. Last weekend a “peaceful” protest in a St. Louis suburb exploded into rioting and looting.
There is also a deeper concern about Sharpton’s tactics.
The US Supreme Court has traditionally taken a dim view of mobs or other gatherings trying to put pressure on criminal-justice officials to arrive at some particular decision.
In the 1923 case of Moore v. Dempsey, four black men were sentenced to death after a 45-minute trial. The high court intervened to halt their executions.
The great Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. noted that, as the Supreme Court had previously held, “if in fact a trial is dominated by a mob so that there is an actual interference with the course of justice, there is a departure from due process of law.”
Staten Island DA Dan Donovan is known as a man of high integrity, trained by New York County DA Robert Morgenthau. He won’t bow to pressure.
Yet these mob-justice tactics are still disturbing — especially when used by people who claim to respect civil rights.
Perhaps lawyers for the New York Civil Liberties Union will brief Rev. Sharpton on the Supreme Court decisions.
And nothing since the “Roundtable Conference” has erased the grim impact of that event.
At a meeting the mayor had called to show that police and community leaders were working together to defuse tensions after Garner’s death, Sharpton berated the police commissioner and threatened the mayor.
He did so, moreover, from his seat on the podium next to de Blasio, with Bratton on the other side.
It was the worst public tongue-lashing of an NYPD police commissioner in living memory — and the reverend’s threat to become the mayor’s “worst enemy” if his cops don’t abandon “broken windows” enforcement remains very much on the table.
Watching this amazing scene, I wondered how Mayor Fiorello La Guardia or Police Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt would’ve handled the situation.
Back in the day, when a prominent labor leader began threatening Mayor Bill O’Dwyer, NYPD Detective “Big Joe” Boyle marched him out of the building.
The timidity of officialdom today seems to have everybody defying governmental authority. The individuals who planted white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are playing cat and mouse with the NYPD.
Newspaper reports indicate that they are members of some protest group; clearly, the flags were put up to embarrass the cops.
Then, too, Commissioner Bratton tells us the NYPD is also seeing a dramatic increase in the number of people resisting arrest. The situation is spiraling completely out of control.
It’s past time for leaders of every constituency to step forward and strongly uphold the rule of law.
Thomas Reppetto is the former president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City and the author of many studies of policing.