Rep. Peter King believes New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — who failed to denounce protestors' twisted cries of "What do we want? Dead cops!" — would have quickly condemned the picketers' death wishes had they targeted blacks, women or gays.
"He had an absolute obligation as mayor to go on television to forcefully denounce it, to denounce in every way," King, a New York Republican, said Tuesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
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"If people were demonstrating and saying they wanted dead blacks or dead gays or dead women or dead anyone … a mayor, a governor, a president, whose ever jurisdiction it's in, has an absolute obligation.
"Especially the mayor of the city when he … is the commander in chief of the police force and these are his cops."
Asked by Malzberg whether the Democratic mayor would have come out swinging at anybody who was calling for the deaths of blacks, gays or women, King responded, "Absolutely."
King, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee and chair of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, said virtually every New York City mayor has scuffled with law enforcement over the years.
"Even people like John Lindsay and David Dinkins, who had difficulties with the police along the way, [it was] nothing like this. They looked upon the cops as being their cops, [with a] personal attachment to them," King said.
"And that people said they want them dead and for [de Blasio] to not respond and not to do so forcefully …"
Police were outraged by de Blasio's comments following a grand jury decision not to indict a police officer who placed a choke hold on Eric Garner, an African-American man selling loose cigarettes. Garner died after repeatedly gasping, "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" — a horrifying scene captured on video.
The mayor said he feared for his biracial son Dante in the presence of police.
Last Saturday, Police Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were executed by a cop-hating madman as they sat in their patrol car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The killer, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, had earlier gone on social media to express his desire to avenge the deaths of Garner and Michael Brown, a black teen shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, over the summer.
"The killer of the two police officers … on the edge of society, they get encouraged, their worst instincts are encouraged when they see something like this," King said.
"And as a person in public life, the mayor has absolute obligation to realize the power of his rhetoric."
King said he was incensed the mayor allowed protestors of the grand jury decision to take over the Brooklyn Bridge, shut down the West Side Highway and assault cops.
"[They put] a cop in the hospital, [and were] attempting to throw garbage cans down on people, on police officers from a bridge — and for him to call that an 'alleged' assault," King said.
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