New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was drowned out by booing at a memorial for George Floyd in Brooklyn on Thursday, as the preacher who introduced him pleaded with attendees to show “respect.”
“Let us welcome with respect the mayor of New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio and first lady Chirlane McCray,” Rev. Kevin McCall said.
Loud booing then broke out as the mayor took the stage, forcing McCall to add: “Again, again, again, we said respect! We said respect! Say it with me, respect!”
When McCray took the microphone first, the booing subsided.
The New York City mayor has taken heat from not only his community but lawmakers both left and right over his handling of the riots against police brutality that have ravaged the city for nearly a week.
On Tuesday, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the mayor’s handling of riots a “disgrace” and said he has the power to “displace” de Blasio, though he won’t at this time.
“The NYPD and the mayor did not do their job last night, I believe that,” Cuomo said at the time. Cuomo said at a press conference that the mayor “underestimates” the scope and duration of the problem, suggesting he needs to deploy more police.
De Blasio imposed an 11 p.m. curfew to quell riots on Monday, but after another night of fires and looting moved up the curfew to 8 p.m. and extended it through Sunday night.
President Trump too slammed de Blasio for his refusal to bring in the National Guard.
“You have a liberal mayor [in Minneapolis] that frankly was having a lot of trouble and you have a very liberal mayor in New York [City] too and you notice that all of these places that have problems are not run by Republicans, they are run by liberal Democrats, so there is something into that philosophy,” Trump told “The Brian Kilmeade Show.”
Oppositely, Black Lives Matter protesters accuse de Blasio of being too sympathetic to the NYPD. De Blasio praised the police force for showing “tremendous restraint” toward protesters.
He said he saw a “lot of restraint from the N.Y.P.D. overall,” adding that if there was “anything that needs to be reviewed, it will be.”
“In the context of crisis, in the context of curfew, there is a point where enough is enough,” the mayor added. “If officers say now is the point we need you to go home, it’s time to go home.”
Earlier Thursday de Blasio gave a press conference outside a city hospital after an officer was stabbed in the neck the night before in what police say was an unprovoked attack, sparking a gunfight that left two additional officers and the knife-wielding man wounded.
(Fox News).