Last Call For Slow Going In Fast City

To the surprise of exactly zero people, NYPD Comimssioner Bill Bratton today confirmed that New York's Finest are New York's Not Workingest.

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is confirming a work slowdown, following reports that criminal summonses have declined by 90 percent. 

In an interview with NPR's Robert Siegel, Bratton said the department has taken a close look at the numbers. 

"We're coming out of what was a pretty widespread stoppage of certain types of activity, the discretionary type of activity by and large," he said. He added that despite the slowdown is prosecuting smaller, quality-of-life criminal offenses, major crimes in the city are down overall. 

Bratton also said he's aware of how difficult the past few weeks have been for officers. Late last year, police responded to widespread protests in the city, following a grand jury's decision not to indict a police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner. And just last month, two police officers were shot and killed in Beford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. 

"I'm very conscious of the impact of all of those on my personnel," Bratton said, adding that the department is taking a measured approach as it returns to normal policing.

Bratton appears to be saying that the NYPD is now returning to whatever normal is, i.e. harassing the hell out of any non-white resident of the five boroughs that they can find.  Not sure if the NYPD is actually doing so, but we'll see over the next month what the numbers are.

I wonder what Bratton promised the unions and the rank-and-file.  They wouldn't be ending the slowdown unless they got something out of it.  My guess is major, major concessions from City Hall about police union contracts...and the knowledge that they can successfully push around Mayor de Blasio in the future.

Very interesting to see where this goes.  On the other hand, it's possible that the NYPD isn't "coming out of the slowdown" at all, and that Bratton's going to be hung out like a beef carcass. Either situation is a win for the NYPD.  It's just a matter of how much they run up the score at this point.

Of course, there's always the possibility that the NYPD are in fact angels protecting New York from icky brown people, so what do I know?