Back in mid-December — just before the murders of two officers in Brooklyn — the NYPD’s biggest union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, began encouraging its members to ban Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito from their potential memorial services. “I, as a New York City police officer, request that [de Blasio and Mark-Viverito] refrain from attending my funeral services in the event that I am killed in the line of duty,” read an online form that cited the mayor and the speaker’s “consistent refusal to show police officers the support and respect they deserve.” So how many cops actually signed it?
Not very many, at least according to the New York Daily News. The paper’s sources said that only 850 cops — or 4 percent of the PBA’s 23,000-person membership — filled out the document. A PBA spokesperson countered that the publication’s number was “totally bogus,” saying, “We haven’t collected them yet.” One source blamed the low sign-ups on PBA head Pat Lynch’s decision to post the form without really consulting anyone else. “It was just his idea and he threw it out there,” said the source. On to the next stunt.
