Just like Obama, this is de Blasio’s subtle finger in the eye to the NYPD. Here’s the story on the arrest of the SEIU organizer, Robert Murray. Murray is 43, not a kid, with years of union organizing. SEIU was a main actor behind Occupy and is heavily involved in getting out numbers for these protests in New York.
Via NYDN:
Walking a fine line between his sympathy for civil disobedience and his role overseeing the NYPD, Mayor de Blasio met with both protesters and cops Friday in separate events just hours apart.
At the agency’s lower Manhattan headquarters, where he attended a police promotion ceremony and addressed about 200 cops, the mayor got a polite reception Friday afternoon — though it paled compared to the wild cheers that greeted officers when they went onstage to be promoted to a higher rank.
In his speech, de Blasio twice referred to the NYPD as “the finest police force in the world” and praised its members for skillfully handling the weeks of angry protests against a Staten Island grand jury’s failure to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.
“The eyes of the nation, in fact the eyes of the world, have been on this city and have been on this department and … the respect for the NYPD has grown,” he said.
Two hours earlier, the mayor met with the organizers of Justice League NYC, one of the groups behind the city-wide protests that have sprung up in the aftermath of the grand jury decision.
The closed-door meeting, held in the Midtown office of labor union 1199SEIU, lasted about 45 minutes.