Gov. Andrew Cuomo blasted Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD Monday for faulty training after police officers walked away from punks who doused them with buckets of water — making cops look “impotent.”
“There was an incident in New York City where police officers were doused with water and the police officers walked away and got back in the car. That is wholly unacceptable,” Cuomo said on WAMC’s “The Roundtable” radio show.
“Walking away was one of the most disturbing and embarrassing actions I’ve seen, I don’t blame those officers, I believe they were relatively new.”
The governor questioned the NYPD’s training of new officers.
“I look to the training and the policies of the police department that would’ve instructed them to act that way,” Cuomo said.
“The training has to be you don’t turn around and get back in the car and drive away. You literally make law enforcement ineffective and impotent and that hurts everyone. You’re assaulted, you take the perpetrator into custody, that’s what you do,” he fumed.
He claimed state police offices would have arrested the perps.
“If that ever happened to the [New York] State Police, I would bet you my bottom dollar that you would not see State Police officers assaulted and they turn around and get back in the car,” Cuomo said.
The governor was commenting on a recent spate of water bucket and other dousings of cops in Harlem, the Bronx and Brooklyn.
Cuomo asked how officers can be expected to protect the public if they won’t protect themselves.
“If a police officer is being assaulted, the police officer has to do something. If the police officer is not willing to defend himself or herself, how are they going to defend me?,” he said.
Cuomo also said de Blasio is “required” to intervene and take action in both the NYPD dousing incidents as well as the Eric Garner chokehold case, regarding whether NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo should be fired.
(snip)
“I think both situations require his intervention and action,” he said.
The governor repeated that he agrees with an NYPD judge’s recommendationon Friday that Pantaleo should be fired for his actions that led to Garner’s death in 2014.
Cuomo wouldn’t go as far as to say de Blasio should be removed from office, referencing a recent front-page Post editorial saying the governor has the power to do so.
“I don’t have any authority on a specific incident. It would be a broader authority to take a more significant action and I don’t believe these situations reach that threshold,” he said.
*story by New York Post