12 NOVEMBER 7, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Mayor not thinking outside the box
When he announced that
NYPD Chief of Detectives
Dermot Shea, 50, will take
over as police commissioner on Dec.
1, Mayor Bill de Blasio called him
“one of the best prepared incoming
police commissioners this city has
ever seen.”
The mayor then touted Shea’s
personal story of growing up in a
cramped one-bedroom apartment,
the son of Irish immigrants, who had
to achieve everything through hard
work — and his 28-year career clearly
show he has the right stuff .
Shea will join the likes of John Francis
O’Ryan, Thomas Francis Murphy
and Patrick V. Murphy as the leader
of the nation’s largest police force,
a tradition in which the majority of
commissioners in the last 120 years
have been of Irish descent.
The mayor is correct when he called
Shea’s appointment “an Americandream
story if there ever was one,”
but reformers see something else.
Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz
tweeted, “At a time when the relationship
between police and communities
EDITORIAL
Mayor Bill de Blasio made the safe, easy choice in selecting Dermot Shea (pictured) as the new police
commissioner. Photo: Mark Hallum/QNS
couldn’t be worse — we chose another
white guy?”
City Councilman Donovan Richards,
the chair of the committee on
public safety, took a more nuanced
approach. Aft er praising Commissioner
James O’Neill, who is leaving
for a job in the private sector, Richards
questioned the mayor’s decisionmaking
process.
“As we look towards a new commissioner,
I am concerned with the
direction we are going. The faces of
everyday offi cers is changing, as the
NYPD shift s to a majority minority department.
The top of the department
should refl ect that.”
The mayor looked into the faces of
the changing NYPD just last month
during a swearing-in ceremony at
the Police Academy in College Point,
where the latest class of 697 recruits
is the most diverse in city history
with more than 60 percent representing
a minority group.
Should de Blasio have followed the
path followed by Ed Koch in selecting
Ben Ward or David Dinkins appointing
Lee Brown by going with First
Deputy Commissioner Ben Tucker,
who was reportedly interviewed by
the mayor over the weekend?
Maybe that was just for optics —
and the mayor punted, telling NY1
“you will see an intensification of
diversity in the leadership ranks in
the coming years.”
De Blasio, who is term-limited out
of offi ce in 2021, basically admitted
that he had made up his mind on picking
Shea a while back.
“I started watching Dermot in action
six years ago... And I became convinced
a long time ago that he was the
future of the NYPD,” de Blasio said.
That is not thinking outside of the
box. It was an easy choice made by a
lame duck mayor.
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