The city’s fiery NYPD sergeants union president has ratcheted up his war of words with City Hall.
“All of my criticism of Mayor [Bill] de Blasio is well-deserved and will not cease until he abandons the policies that are placing all members of the [Sergeants Benevolent Association] and the NYPD at greater risk of injury and death while making it more difficult for us to do our jobs,” Sergeants Benevolent Association president Ed Mullins said in a Facebook post Tuesday.
“I am confident that my comments enjoy broad support among the SBA membership and members of the NYPD overall – you have repeatedly told me so – and I will not be intimidated by the coercive tactics employed by City Hall,” the post says. “I assure you a ‘retaliatory targeted investigation’ by the Department will be met with quick legal action by the SBA.”
A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office called the comments a “nonsensical rant.”
“Ed Mullins is supposed to be a leader in this city. It’s time he act like it,” spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein said. “His comments were clearly inappropriate and a multi-paragraph, nonsensical rant doesn’t change that.”
Mullins’ remarks are the latest salvo in an ongoing battle with City Hall that escalated when Mullins tweeted that members of the NYPD were “declaring war” on the mayor after accused gunman Robert Williams allegedly walked into a Bronx NYPD stationhouse Feb. 9 and opened fire, hitting one cop, a day after allegedly shooting another cop in the face while he sat in his patrol car.
��Mayor DeBlasio, the members of the NYPD are declaring war on you!” the SBA tweeted after the attack. “We do not respect you, DO NOT visit us in hospitals.”
Those comments prompted de Blasio to call for “consequences” for Mullins.
Then news leaked that Mullins was under internal investigation for the tweet and had been questioned by the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau.
But Mullins wrote in the post on Facebook that he wouldn’t back down despite the countermeasures against him.
“If the Mayor’s response to my criticism is to threaten and retaliate against my First Amendment rights, he is once again sorely misguided,” Mullins wrote, adding that the administration’s policies of “hands-off policing” are driving “spikes in crime, preventable homicides and violent crime, worsening relationships with our brother ICE officers, and the deterioration of neighborhoods throughout the City.”
He also referenced the NYPD’s failed attempt to subpoena a Post reporter’s Twitter account and the media leak about the investigation into him.
The mayor has said the subpoena was a “mistake” and that the NYPD would abandon the effort.