Dietl, law enforcement union leaders bond over criticism of de Blasio
Mayoral candidate Bo Dietl and labor leaders from the Teamsters and unions representing NYPD detectives and correction officers were in unison about one thing at a “labor appreciation” event held in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday: they do not care for Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The union heads — Elias Husamudeen of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, Greg Floyd of Teamsters Local 237 and Mike Palladino of the Detectives’ Endowment Association — and Dietl were not especially fond of de Blasio’s plan to close the Rikers’ Island jail within ten years.
They believed, universally, that de Blasio has manipulated New York City crime statistics to downplay the number of crimes actually being committed. And they were concerned that de Blasio’s policies would lead to a spike in crime.
That doesn’t necessarily mean these unions are going to back Dietl’s campaign, their leaders said. But they’re not opposed to it, either.
The heads of both the detectives union and the Teamsters Local 237, who haven’t backed a candidate in the 2017 mayoral election, both said their unions would consider endorsing Dietl in the race.
“We haven’t started our political process yet, and um, we’ll probably get that started in May, and then we’ll bring in all the candidates, we’ll interview all the candidates,” said Mike Palladino, the head of the Detectives Endowment Association.
“We don’t know which candidates are contemplating running,” he said.
Palladino had few kind words to say about de Blasio during the hour-long panel discussion about labor and law enforcement, but he said the union plans to ask to interview the mayor and will consider endorsing him.
“We definitely will be asking him to come in before our political action committee as well. We haven’t made any decisions yet. We’re not ruling out anything or anybody at this point,” Palladino said.
Greg Floyd, who heads the Teamsters Local 237, also said his union would consider endorsing Dietl.
“We’ll take a look at his platform. We haven’t made an endorsement. Would he be in consideration? Yes,” Floyd said.
Floyd said Dietl would have to go through the same endorsement process as any other candidate, despite the fact that he’s now “telling the truth.”
“I could tell the truth, but telling the truth and running the city are two different things. You gotta have a platform — who are your commissioners, what’s your agenda, what are your plans to change things. We want to hear everything,” Floyd said.
The panelists, Dietl and the three union heads, and the panel’s moderator, former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was convicted on charges of tax fraud and making false statements, were largely in sync as they discussed their grievances with the de Blasio administration.
“We have a mayor who wanted to be the first in the nation to do something to be trendy, so he eliminates punitive segregation for inmates 18 to 21-years-old, and here it is, this is the population that’s responsible for over 30 percent of the violence on [Rikers] Island, and right now when they commit violence, there’s nothing that we can do,” said Elias Husamudeen, the Correction Officers’ leader.
Husamudeen said the mayor’s policies had left correction officers underprepared in the event of a riot at one of the city’s jails.
“Right now, at this very minute, if the inmates was to riot, if the inmates was to take a hostage, the New York City Department of Correction is not prepared to go and take that jail at all. This mayor, and this commissioner, has taken our emergency services unit and dismantled it,” Husamudeen said.
Peter Thorne, a spokesperson for the Department of Correction, defended the department’s ability to respond to a crisis, and its emergency services unit. “DOC has not dismantled its Emergency Services Unit. Far from it – we have strengthened the unit’s ability to respond quickly and afforded them greater tools and training,” he said in a statement to POLITICO New York, noting that supervisors on the unit are now equipped with tasers and trained on how to best use them.
He added that violence is down across the department. “While any assault on staff is unacceptable, last year assaults on staff, especially those resulting in injuries, fell. Uses of force, especially those resulting in injury, dropped. Serious injury to inmates from assaults and fights likewise declined,” he said.
A spokesperson for the mayor’s re-election campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dietl, though, seconded many of the labor leaders’ concerns.
“If you listen to this mayor, all he wants to do is open up the jails, let everybody go,” he told reporters after the panel had ended, as guests ate sandwiches provided by Gristedes and waited to hear from Gristedes owner John Catsimatidis, whom some Republican city leaders hope will join the mayoral race.
Dietl, who will have to run as an Independent and not as a member of the two major parties because of a mistake he made last fall when filing his candidacy for mayor, said he’s being courted by a lot of different party lines, and he insisted that at this moment, it’s a two-man race between himself and the mayor.
“I wanna be the mayor. I don’t wanna be a label, not Democrat, not Republican. I wanna be a mayor of all New York City people, where I don’t have to kiss Democrats’ or Republicans’ butts. You know what I’m sayin? I wanna kiss the people’s butts. That’s what I want to do,” he said.
This story has been updated with comment from the DOC.