Poll: Should de Blasio release police discipline info in Eric Garner case?

Since campaigning for mayor on a platform of ending the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policy, Bill de Blasio has tried to strike the impossible balance of instituting piecemeal changes in an agency that has largely eschewsed reform, while also satisfying his voter base - specifically black and Latino voters - who have historically had a tense relationship with police. 

Never was that tightrope walk more apparent than on December 3, 2014. Speaking at Mt. Sinai United Christian Chruch on Staten Island, de Blasio invoked the name of his son, Dante, then 17 years old, when discussing the tragic death earlier that summer of Eric Garner at the hands of a police officer chokehold. 

"Yet, because of a history still that hangs over us, the dangers he may face, we've had to literally train him as families have all over this city for decades in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him."

Those remarks were the tipping point in the already fraught relationship between police officers and the mayor. The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association immediately seized on de Blasio’s comments, saying he was throwing police officers under the bus. A month later, after the murder of two policemen in Brooklyn, police officers turned their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio during a funeral for one of the men.

Since then, the mayor has been decidedly more cautious when it comes to policing issues, perhaps not coincidentally as his public approval ratings began to wane.

The latest instance of the mayor’s hesitance to rock the boat at One Police Plaza, is ironically a direct result of Garner’s death. Citing a state law shielding police and other uniformed workers from having their personnel information released publicly, the NYPD has refused to release the disciplinary information for Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who employed the chokehold that killed Garner. Police disciplinary information had been publicly available for decades before the NYPD stopped providing it in April. De Blasio has said he supports the release of that information, but is hamstrung by the state law. Police reform and civil liberties activists have nonetheless called for the release of the information.

Do you think the NYPD should have to release disciplinary info for Pantaleo and other officers punished by the department? Vote in our poll below. 

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