Police Commissioner James O’Neill and Mayor de Blasio moved awfully fast to fault Sgt. Hugh Barry in Tuesday’s death of Deborah Danner. Without question, things went horribly wrong in that Bronx apartment — but is it now impossible for city leaders to offer a measured initial response?
The day after Danner’s death, both flagged the sergeant’s apparent failure to follow key protocols. What’s wrong with, “All our sympathies are with Deborah’s family — this never should have happened, and we’re going to get all the facts to understand why it did”?
Two years ago, the day after a probie shot Akai Gurley in a Brooklyn stairwell, then-Commissioner Bill Bratton was quick to say, “The deceased is a total innocent” — but also to note the tragedy came in an “unlit stairwell” and “everything points to an accidental discharge.”
The mayor promised “a full investigation.” But he emphasized, “This is a tragic situation — that’s the bottom line. . . A life was lost, and my heart goes out to the family.”
That first day, no one was mentioning breaches of protocol, though there were plenty, and Bratton (at least) surely knew it.
Of course, Bratton had decades of experience as a commissioner, with finely tuned political sensibilities. O’Neill is barely a month out of uniform. He was widely known as a cop’s cop — but now his job is different.
A decade ago, it took Mayor Michael Bloomberg three days to say, “It sounds to me like excessive force was used” in the Sean Bell case, and, “It is to me unacceptable or inexplicable how you can have 50-odd shots fired.” It took even longer for the NYPD to determine just how it all went down.
In this age of Twitter and other insatiable social media, de Blasio and O’Neill may think they need to give answers right away. But nothing they say can undo the tragedy — and their duty isn’t to feed the media beast.
It almost always takes a whole series of mistakes to leave innocent civilians dead at police hands. The men who bear ultimate responsibility for the NYPD should have all the facts in hand before they start detailing any of those mistakes.