The Dividing (and Conquering) of the New York Protests
A police officer stands guard as people demonstrate outside of City Hall against police violence at a rally that was supposed to be in support of the New York Police Department (NYPD) on December 19, 2014 in New York City.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesIn the latest skirmish between New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city's most outspoken police unions, the unions can declare a rout. In a widely shared, gripping story, Politico's Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush (both trained up by New York papers) compared de Blasio's "inability to keep long-simmering tensions with the city’s traditionally powerful police department" to Barack Obama's fumbling first negotiations with congressional Republicans.
De Blasio had been struggling with the cops since his 2013 campaign, when he surged by vocally opposing the NYPD's "stop and frisk" policies. This summer, the tension even led to a union warning the Democratic National Convention's planners to avoid Brooklyn. But de Blasio didn't obviously lose an argument with the NYPD until this week.