The silence of New York's good cops widens the divide

In an interview last week of 25 current and former black New York City cops, all but one said they had been racially profiled (many of them multiple times) while off duty by white officers. These random stops didn’t stop until earlier this year, when de Blasio agreed to discontinue the practice, which during a 12-year period targeted more than 5 million people. Most of them were black and Hispanic men. Just 10% of these “stop and frisk” victims were charged with a crime or given summons. Only about 2% of them were found to be carrying a weapon.

While the vast majority of New York City’s cops, I believe, are good law enforcement officers who treat people with dignity, their silence has widened the divide between New York City’s majority white police force and its mostly minority residents.

Rather than demand that rogue cops be removed from their ranks, this silent majority accepts the union’s embrace of the department’s rotten apples. Instead, the union resorts to blaming de Blasio — and not the chokehold that took Garner’s life — for sparking Brinsley’s senseless violence.