If New York City's police officers, residents and elected officials do not come together to work out their differences over policing, the city could revert to the lawlessness and climate of fear that afflicted it decades ago, retired NYPD detective Wally Zeins told
Newsmax TV on Monday.
"The word has to get out that we have to have some sort of sit-down with the police commissioner and the mayor [and] the community, and we have to work together," Zeins, commander of the Manhattan detectives squad on 9/11, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner. "Otherwise, this city is going to fail."
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In the wake of two NYPD officers being murdered on Saturday in Brooklyn, Zeins said he is confident that city cops will continue to do their sworn duty and "keep the streets safe," but he a floated a worst-case scenario if tensions continue to rise amid racially charged public
protests over policing.
"If this continues, and there is no communications between the mayor and the police, we're going to go back to the '60s and '70s, when crime would just go right off the charts," said Zeins.
He and others have depicted the execution-style shooting of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu as an unsettling reminder of an era in New York policing when cops were sometimes targeted by political radicals.
On-duty officers
Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were gunned down in broad daylight on Saturday afternoon as they sat inside a patrol car in Brooklyn. Their killer, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, had vowed on social media to take revenge for the death of NYPD chokehold victim Eric Garner.
After shooting and wounding a former girlfriend in Baltimore that morning,
Brinsley — described in news reports as a troubled loner with a history of arrests and mental illness — traveled to New York and carried out his threat.
He turned his gun on himself as other officers closed in on him inside a Brooklyn subway station, police said.
Zeins said tensions between police, the mayor and the community today are unlike any he encountered in his years on the force, and he criticized New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for giving the impression of being "totally against the police."
Zeins said de Blasio campaigned against stop-and-frisk policing when he ran for mayor, has suggested that his biracial son should be fearful of cops, and recently soft-pedaled a group of protesters pummeling two policemen by calling the incident an "alleged attack."
"His back is against us," said Zeins, alluding to a group of officers who
turned their backs on de Blasio at the hospital where the slain officers' bodies were brought.
On Monday afternoon, de Blasio called for a suspension of the protests — an acknowledgement, perhaps, of police criticism aimed at him and at protests sparked by grand jury decisions that cleared white officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men: Garner, and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Zeins said that other political leaders — President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder — should come to New York to also make amends, because many cops feel that the commander-in-chief and the nation's top law enforcement officer have turned their backs on police.
"They should be here at the funeral of these two slain, executed officers," said Zeins.
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