New recruits attend their New York Police Academy graduation ceremony, Monday Dec. 29, 2014, at Madison Square Garden in New York. Nearly 1000 officers were sworn in as tensions between city hall and the NYPD continued following the Dec. 20 shooting deaths of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
By Michelle Conlin NEW YORK (Reuters) – From the dingy donut shops of Manhattan to the cloistered police watering holes in Brooklyn, a number of black NYPD officers say they have experienced the same racial profiling that cost Eric Garner his life. Garner, a 43-year-old black man suspected of illegally peddling loose cigarettes, died in July after a white officer put him in a chokehold. On Saturday, those tensions escalated after a black gunman, who wrote of avenging the black deaths on social media, shot dead two New York policemen. The protests and the ambush of the uniformed officers pose a major challenge for New York Mayor Bill De Blasio. The mayor must try to ease damaged relations with a police force that feels he hasn’t fully supported them, while at the same time bridging a chasm with communities who say the police unfairly target them. What’s emerging now is that, within the thin blue line of the NYPD, there is another divide – between black and white officers. Reuters interviewed 25 African American male officers on the NYPD, 15 of whom are retired and 10 of whom are still serving.
Original post:
Off duty, black cops in New York feel threat from fellow police
