MIAMI — The head of the NYPD’s biggest union slammed Mayor de Blasio on Thursday for using “anti-police rhetoric” during the first Democratic presidential-primary debate.
Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch specifically condemned Hizzoner’s revival Wednesday night of an old anecdote about warning his biracial son, Dante, about how young black men should conduct themselves with cops to avoid being the target of police violence.
“Mayor de Blasio has apparently learned nothing over the past six years about the extremely damaging impact of anti-police rhetoric on both cops and the communities we serve,” Lynch said in a statement.
“The hostile and dangerous environment we now face on the street is a direct result of the demonization of cops by de Blasio and other elected officials. By rolling out that rhetoric again on a national stage, it’s clear he wants to take the country down the same path.”
De Blasio, who angered police when he first told of the father-son talk in 2014, revived the story on the debate stage after being asked by MSNBC host and moderator Rachel Maddow about Supreme Court nominations.
The mayor instead pivoted back to a previous prompt on gun control, then veered into relations between police and minorities.
“I’ve had to have very, very serious talks with my son, Dante, about how to protect himself in the streets of our city . . . including the fact that he has to take special caution because there have been too many tragedies between young men and our police,” de Blasio said.
In Florida Thursday, the mayor was unapologetic and ripped Lynch, without naming him.
“Ridiculous. Ridiculous and shameful,” he told The Post.
“We’ve been down this road before. Tens of millions of American parents have had the very same conversation with their children that I talk about I had with Dante .
“Tens of millions, and we should be able to acknowledge that openly in this country and then talk about how we heal that, how we fix that,” the mayor said.
“I said, ‘Look, we are bringing police and community together in New York, that’s something that should be celebrated.’ I am not surprised that [Lynch] continues to want to divide us. I’m talking about how to overcome our past and bring us together.”
De Blasio first invoked his conversations with Dante in December 2017 while addressing the death months earlier of Eric Garner, who died after cops on Staten Island tried to arrest him for selling loose cigarettes.
Days later, as the mayor and his entourage snaked through a jammed corridor at Woodhull Hospital, where two officers were pronounced dead hours earlier, scores of cops faced the walls to turn their backs on him.
Earlier, de Blasio approached a cluster of cops at the Brooklyn hospital and offered, “We’re all in this together.”
“No, we’re not,” one replied, according to a cop who witnessed the icy scene.
Hundreds of officers also turned their backs on a screen showing the mayor as he spoke at the funeral for those officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.