This Time at Times Square

There are less than six hours to go (Eastern Standard Time) for the calendar year of 2014.  This Blog has previously weighed in on New Year's celebrations in general, and on the famed one at Times Square in particular.  This year, the Times Square event carries implications that were not there in prior years.

In prior years, everyone is there to celebrate the coming of the New Year, even if it constitutes little more than an excuse for drunken revelry.  This year, Al Sharpton's anti-cop, anti-America, anti-civilization crowd specifically plans to disrupt the Times Square ball drop festivities.

From the calm of my own desk in my own home/office, I now ponder the following imponderables:

**  Given the New York City Police's obviously concerted decrease in arrests and summonses (synonym:  labor strike), are the NYPDers really up to preserving order and decorum to the extent they have been in prior years?

**  Wishful thinking:  If Sharpton's Shitheads get too overly out of hand, might the NYPD enlist the good offices of the FDNY to borrow their fire hoses to douse the protesters, what with the colder-than-usual temperatures this year at Times Square?

**  How will the majority of revelers, who will be at Times Square with the intention of having a good time for New Years, interact with Sharpton's Shitheads?  Will they join the protesters?  Will they turn upon the protesters?  If so, to what extent will the NYPD intervene?

**  Might there be potential for an incident or event at tonight's festivities to impact the attitudes (and therefore, actions) of the NYPDers with respect to their decorum when Commissar de Blasio speaks at the upcoming funeral of Officer Wenjian Liu?

"They're Your People! Back Them Up!!"

The funeral of Officer Rafael Ramos of the NYPD was today.  Being that Saturday is my religious Sabbath, my personal attendance was out of the question, as was my monitoring of the funeral via today's modern electronic technologies.  There had been some discussions and speculations as to how the rank-and-file NYPDers would present themselves vis-a-vis New York City's alleged Mayor, Bill de Blasio.  A week before, they had already turned their backs their backs to the alleged Mayor as he came to the hospital where Officers Ramos and Liu were taken following their brutal murder.

I gave the odds as 60:40 that the NYPD rank and file would once again turn away from Blaz, leaving open the possibility that PBA President Pat Lynch may have decided on a strategy to take the high road, leaving Blaz to worry about when the other shoe would drop.  But just before I shut down my computer for the Sabbath, I came across the news item that some persons unknown, presumably current or former NYPDers, had chartered a plane to fly over the Hudson River, dragging the banner message "De Blasio, Our Backs Have Turned To You."

I knew then and there that there was no 60:40 or 50:50, but that there was a 100% probability that there would be thousands of NYPDers and other law enforcement officers at Officer Ramos's funeral, and that they would be turning their backs to de Blasio.  And so it came to pass.

Two years out of college, I was working as an Administrator for a certain electronics firm that was a subsidiary of, and housed in the same building as, the parent company, a larger electronics firm.  Our division President, who was my boss's boss, was a vice-president of the parent company.

I was once at a meeting where the topic of discussion was a certain project in Oklahoma and in Ohio that required the interface of our division with another division of the parent company, offices located upstairs and down the hall from our own.  My division President was at the meeting, and I was covering the meeting for my own boss, who was out of town at the time.  Our Division President confronted the Other Division President (also a VP of the parent company) with a document produced by two of the ODP's underlings, with whom I had been interfacing.  The document was clearly based upon invalid data, and had faulty rationale.

The ODP said to my DP, "Oh, that's just the work of "Laurel" and "Hardy," but we don't have to go with their numbers or schedules.  They're shitheads anyway!"

So my DP said to the ODP, "George, they may be shitheads, but they work for you!   They're your people, so you have to back them up or flush them out!

"And by the way, George," my DP continued, "I don't have any shitheads working for me.  But even if I did, I certainly wouldn't tell anybody about it!"

[I, of course, ended up having to refigure the numbers and the schedule, but once I did that, there was no pushback from "Laurel" and "Hardy," nor, I was informed, from George.  In the next two months I traveled to Oklahoma and to Ohio to get the project going.].

The one (and perhaps the only) common denominator of all the effective supervisors to whom I have ever reported is that they either stood up for their own people, or, if they could not stand up for them, they got rid of them.  All "visits to the woodshed" were done privately.

And the few supervisors I have had who were ineffectual (including my aforementioned boss who was out of town that day) all, without exception, failed to give their own people the proper backing, and failed to keep their admonitory chastisements behind closed doors.

And when I held a supervisory position with Uncle Sam, I backed up my people as best as I could (for a while I was severely hampered by another ineffectual boss who failed to give me the backing I needed, and who allowed his soul sister to bypass me with her issues and go directly to him, but his subsequent criminal indictment gave me much vindication a few years later).

With that background, I direct your attention, dear reader, to the New York City Charter:

Chapter 1, Section 8(a):

"The mayor shall be responsible for the effectiveness and integrity of city government operations and shall establish and maintain such policies and procedures as are necessary and appropriate to accomplish this responsibility including the implementation of effective systems of internal control by each agency and unit under the jurisdiction of the mayor."

Chapter 18 of the City Charter places the New York City Police Department under the jurisdiction of the Mayor, and spells out the duties and mission of the NYPD.

Bill de Blasio's problem:  He. Doesn't. Back. His. Own. People.  And in return, they are showing him their own backs.

Look for the situation to further deteriorate.  Blaz is too firmly welded to Sharpton to be able to shake him off. I only hope that the NYPD rank and file appreciate the New Yorkers and visitors to the city who empathize with them.

Belated Holiday Greetings

I have been very engaged and occupied with this, that, and the other thing (the other thing being a sore hip and knee that has significantly impaired my mobility).  I have been accompanying my wife on various chores when not attending to my own pressing issues.  This has left me too burnt out to have any profound thoughts to post.

So it is only now that I take this opportunity extend Chanukah or a Xmas greetings (as the case may be) to you, dear reader.

Starting tomorrow, another action-packed and draining week two weeks will be upon me.  And it may be even longer than two weeks.

Wear Blue to Support Cops

 Wear Blue to Support Cops

 

Wear Blue to Support Cops

This is a reposting of Thomas Lifson's piece in today's American Thinker.

Thomas says it all; I have nothing further to add.  This should be reposted and should go viral.

And, as for me, I will wear my blue sweatshirt and blue jacket when I go out today.

Wear Blue to Support Cops!

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/12/wear_blue_to_support_cops.html

A Fine Kettle of Fish in NYC

Bill de Blasio, the alleged Mayor of New York City, together with Patrick Lynch, the President of the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, have gotten themselves into one fine kettle of fish.

The alleged mayor, of course, has been hamstringing the New York City Police Department, and, in the view of many NYPDers and members of the public (myself included), has come down too far on the side of the lawlessness crowd. 

Pat Lynch, after showing some remarkable restraint, finally spoke for his constituency by telling de Blasio and NYC Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito that if, G-d forbid, a NYPD officer is killed in the line of duty, then they would be unwelcome at the funeral, and invited his constituents to place that sentiment in writing.

A bit hotheaded?  Perhaps!  But unmitigated extremism will eventually beget counterextremism, a sociological phenomenon analogous to Newton's Third Law. 

To be sure, police forces need checks and balances no less than any other agency of the government, and de Blasio, as the alleged Mayor of the City of New York, is the one who needs to provide those checks and balances while, at the same time, optimizing the NYPD's efficacy in combatting crime and promoting law and order.  He needs to either back up his boys and girls as they do their jobs, or get rid of them; he cannot have it both ways.  Now that he is allegedly a mature adult, de Blasio needs to conduct himself as an executive, not as the Sandinista/uberleftist he was in his younger days.

[The adult in the room thus far has been Dennis Gonzalez, the President of the NYPD Hispanic Society.   Said he, "Many elected officials are quick to speak out against police officers but now that we need them to calm our city where is their press conference on the steps of City Hall?"].

Well as of a few hours ago, it is no longer a posturing and bluffing and pissing contest between Lynch and de Blasio.  Two New York City police officers have been shot dead, in cold blood, as they sat in their squad car.  There is much NYPD and citizen anger that will no doubt come to a head in the coming days.   And with the breakdown and dysfunction of New York City's governmental interactions, the City may well become more dangerous before it becomes any safer.