Ex-NYC Mayor de Blasio deliberately held back cops during George Floyd protests, new Melissa DeRosa book claimsBy Carl Campanile
Published Oct. 22, 2023
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa has claimed that then-Mayor Bill de Blasio deliberately failed to deploy enough cops during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in New York City because he feared violent clashes between the NYPD and protesters would embarrass him.
Like many other issues, how to handle the protests that erupted over the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota triggered disagreements between Cuomo and de Blasio, recounts DeRosa in her forthcoming memoir, “What’s Left Unsaid: My Life at the Center of Power, Politics & Crisis.”
“We learned that a high-ranking member of the police union had reached out directly to the governor that morning with disturbing information: he believed that de Blasio, fearful of more police clashes with protesters going viral on video, was purposefully not deploying additional bodies,” DeRosa writes, according to an excerpt obtained by The Post.
“As a result, knowing they were outnumbered, officers were unwilling to take on the looters.”
DeRosa recalled a conference call conversation Cuomo had with de Blasio and then-Police Commissioner Dermot Shea in which the top cop reported that he had “only 4,000 officers on duty,” outnumbered by 5,000 protesters.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2023/10/22/ex-nyc-mayor-de-blasio-deliberately-held-back-cops-during-george-floyd-protests-new-melissa-derosa-book-claims/
