December 21, 2000

Police Plan Rally Over Stalled Pay Talks

By JOHN MARZULLI
Daily News Police Bureau Chief

The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association is planning a massive rally in City Hall Park next month to protest stalled contract negotiations, the Daily News has learned.

In response, the NYPD is preparing to meet the rank-and-file turnout set for Jan. 11 with an equally massive deployment of on-duty supervisors to prevent a repeat of the 1992 police union rally in the park that turned into a riot, according to department sources.

NYPD spokesman Tom Antenen declined to comment on the planned rally.

At the infamous 1992 protest, thousands of cops blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, while others shouted racial slurs at former Mayor David Dinkins and attempted to storm City Hall.

Ironically, it was Rudolph Giuliani, then a mayoral aspirant, who delivered a fiery speech in which he denounced Dinkins as anti-cop and repeatedly shouted a barnyard epithet to the wild cheers of protesters.

But now, eight years later, Giuliani is the target of the PBA's ire.

Still smarting over two years without a salary increase, the PBA has been locked in negotiations with the city for months. Last Friday, it declared the talks at an impasse.

Union President Patrick Lynch could not be reached for comment yesterday, but PBA officials are privately offering assurances that the protest will not get out of hand.

"There will be controls in place," a union source said.

The PBA will try to keep a tight lid on cops' drinking, and delegates are expected to wear prominent jackets identifying them as rally marshals, the source said.

In 1992, about 10,000 off-duty cops targeted Dinkins after the mayor refused to equip cops with 9-mm. semiautomatic handguns; paid the funeral expenses of a drug dealer fatally shot by a cop, and backed an independent panel to root out corruption.

The rally deteriorated into obnoxious and, at times, unlawful behavior.