Mayor Bill de Blasio wants Eric Garner’s family and “every single person hurt by the tragedy of his death” to know “they are seen and heard” — or at least his campaign team does.
Hizzoner’s camp used his own personal Twitter account to offer the seemingly personal words of support on Wednesday night after he was publicly heckled by protesters, who were shouting “Fire Pantaleo” in reference to the cop who put Garner in a deadly chokehold five years ago.
“To the protestors [sic] in the audience today: I heard you. I saw you. I thank you,” de Blasio’s account said, while he was still on stage trading blows with his Democratic rivals.
“This is what democracy looks like and no one said it was pretty,” the account added, before firing off another seemingly sincere tweet.
“I want the Garner family and every single person hurt by the tragedy of his death to know they are seen and heard,” it said. “We all watched Eric Garner’s dying words. They haunted this nation. He NEVER should have died.”
De Blasio’s account continued, “While I believe that respecting the process is the best way to get justice for Eric Garner’s family, I recognize and identify with the pain people across this country are feeling. From ending a broken policy of stop-and-frisk to training our officers in implicit bias, we’ve fundamentally changed our city because of Eric Garner — so that a tragedy like this never happens again.”
Social media users were quick to point out how the sympathetic tweets weren’t actually coming from de Blasio.
“These posts are being written by Deblasio’s handlers,” a Twitter user said. “He’s on stage right now. He’s FOS, and he needs to be impeached.”
One person wrote, “Someone needs to fire whomever is running this account. At a minimum, this is tone deaf AF.”
Another said, “Uuummmmm… ain’t u on the stage trynna get Biden to confess to some shyt?!?! Y’all coulda waited toll the debate was over to post, just to make it a lil bit more believable AT LEAST.”
De Blasio, while on stage, claimed there would “finally” be justice for the Garner family “in the next 30 days in New York” — referencing the recently completed administrative trial, which could cost Officer Daniel Pantaleo his job.
However, he once again refused to say whether the cop should be fired.
“They’re going to get justice,” the mayor said of Garner’s family. “Because for the first time we are not waiting on the federal Justice Department.”
De Blasio has repeatedly refused to say whether he believes Pantaleo should keep his job. A surrogate for the mayor’s campaign told The Post early Wednesday that the mayor would have fired Pantaleo “immediately” if he could have.
“Unfortunately, these are things he cannot do, legally,” said Bronx Assemblyman Luis Sepulveda.