feature: the fight to dethrone nypd union boss pat lynch, the king of unaccountability

Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association head Pat Lynch has declared war on the citizens of New York. That’s not hyperbole. Those are his words. And believe me, I wish I were taking them out of context to make a point. In a recent statement, he announced “The mayor’s hands are literally dripping with our blood because of his words actions and policies and we have, for the first time in a number of years, become a ‘wartime’ police department. We will act accordingly.” Think about that for a second. The man who speaks for the majority of police officers in one of the largest cities on the planet has declared war on its citizenry. Keep in mind that former Mayor Bloomberg famously said of the NYPD “I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world.” So this “war,” as declared by Pat Lynch, has the potential to be much more than a battle of words.

By Nathan Leigh, AFROPUNK Contributor

Following the non-indictment of Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the choke hold death of Eric Garner, Pat Lynch has been catapulted into the national spotlight for his inflammatory statements about basically everything related to holding police accountable. Beyond blaming Eric Garner for his own death: “We feel badly that there was a loss of life, but unfortunately Mr. Garner made a choice that day to resist arrest,” Lynch has become an outspoken critic of Mayor De Blasio for having the gall to talk publicly about his concerns for his own son’s safety as a young black man. This has created a sort of false equivalency in the media. De Blasio (who, it cannot be overstressed, remains a supporter of the Broken Windows policing philosophy that led to the death of Eric Garner) is painted as a central figure in the ongoing #BlackLivesMatter protests (he’s not), while Pat Lynch is depicted as a spokesman for the individual members of the NYPD (he is; that’s basically his job).

If Pat Lynch’s central thesis is that the police department should not be held accountable for the deaths of its citizens, and in particular as their public representative, he personally should not be held accountable, it’s curious how hard he seems to be working to hold the mayor of New York City accountable for the tragic shooting deaths of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. To blame the deaths of Officers Liu and Ramos on the protests or their organizers is a willful distortion of the truth. To blame them on De Blasio would be dismissible as absurd were it not for the fact that so many talking heads on the right push that narrative.

Not only has De Blasio had no hand in organizing the recent demonstrations, he hasn’t even participated. Frankly, I wish De Blasio were as involved as his opponents claim he is. The best that can be said is that unlike his predecessor, De Blasio has been willing to meet with activists and organizers and listen to their demands. To merely not condemn something is a far cry from having a hand in organizing it. It is a far cry from Pat Lynch’s declarations that “that blood on the hands starts on the steps of city hall in the office of the mayor.” Despite a willingness to meet with activists for police reform, De Blasio has remained committed to the Broken Windows philosophy. However Pat Lynch’s recent work slowdown to demonstrate the NYPD’s value to the city failed to result in the uptick of crime Broken Windows supporters predicted. Contrary to Lynch’s intentions, it demonstrated plainly and clearly that Broken Windows is a failed tactic.

As the leader of the largest NYPD union, Pat Lynch occupies a complicated position within our city’s representative democracy. He is elected by members of the NYPD to serve as their advocate and spokesman. That’s not the same as Police Commissioner Bratton, who controls police policy and procedure, and was not democratically elected, but appointed by the democratically elected Mayor De Blasio. More complicated still is the economics of it. While the general public has no control over the police department, we are nonetheless responsible for their salaries. Pat Lynch is paid $65,382 from his salary as a police officer, and another $65,382 for his work as union head, all by the city itself. So while Lynch derives his income from the citizens of New York, he works for the NYPD rank and file, who work for Bratton, who was appointed by De Blasio. All of that is to say, he doesn’t work for the citizens of New York, and is totally unaccountable to them, he is merely paid a 3 figure income by them.

In his 15 year tenure as union head, Pat Lynch has become the human embodiment of the “cops can do no wrong” mentality that occupies space in the national discourse despite not being true. He is the human avatar of the modern media’s quest for two sides to every story. Gawker [http://gawker.com/nypd-union-president-patrick-lynch-is-completely-nuts-1674178970] has a fantastic rundown of some of Lynch’s more preposterous comments over the years, including a statement from 2000 in response to Bruce Springsteen’s song “American Skin” about the murder of Amadou Diallo, accusing Springsteen of disrupting the police officer’s healing process. “I consider it an outrage that he would be trying to fatten his wallet by reopening the wounds of this tragic case at a time when police officers and community members are in a healing period.” Because far more offensive than the wrongful and racist killing of Amadou Diallo is a singer writing a song calling attention to it thus disrupting the killers’ healing process.

As Patrick Lynch’s outlandish statements grow daily in volume and intensity, there’s a ray of hope from an ironic place. It turns out that when it comes to the job he was elected to do—negotiating contracts on behalf of the NYPD—he’s woefully inadequate. The NYPD has now worked for 5 years without a contract. When De Blasio came into office, 72% of public unions came to agreement on contracts, some of whom had been operating without contracts for large chunks of Bloomberg’s tenure. The NYPD has remained an outlier, largely because of Lynch’s reliance on state arbitration to agree on compensation. While Lynch claims his tactics result in better pay for police, as evident by a fight at a Tuesday night union representative meeting in Queens [http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/pba-lynch-spurs-yelling-cops-city-hall-feud-article-1.2076394], many, particularly younger officers from Brooklyn and the Bronx, disagree. The meeting nearly came to blows when union members demanded that Lynch focus on securing a contract and safer working conditions rather than his rhetorical battle with the democratically elected mayor.

According to the New York Daily News [http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/gonzalez-pba-pat-lynch-ousted-june-elections-article-1.2076930], a coalition of NYPD officers are currently mounting a challenger to Pat Lynch to run in the union’s June elections. This would be the first time since 2003 that Lynch has faced a challenger. There are increasing signs that the rank and file are unhappy with their representation, given that only 4% of police signed Lynch’s proposal to ban De Blasio and Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito from their funerals if killed on the job. And while the needlessly disrespectful act of turning their backs on the mayor at the funerals of Officers Liu and Ramos has received considerable press attention, Bratton himself was quick to point out in an interview with Charlie Rose this week that it was only a few hundred out of tens of thousands. This points to what critics of the NYPD and organizers for police reform have been saying for decades; that an extremely vocal minority of entrenched, corrupt, and disconnected officers are responsible for the overall culture of corruption, racism, and willful unaccountability within the NYPD. And Pat Lynch is their leader par excellence.

That isn’t to say that the culture of white supremacy and unaccountability will die with the end of Pat Lynch’s reign. It’s been there far longer than he has. However, demonstrating that the “cops can do no wrong” camp does not have the power or influence it thinks it has is a key step. Making it clear that Pat Lynch’s inflammatory rhetoric has no place in the public discourse will be a step towards reconciliation.

At present, there seem to be two paths to a city without Pat Lynch polluting the discourse on policing and racism. The first is to actively support the insurrectionist NYPD officers running a challenger against Lynch in June’s elections. While it seems preposterous to suggest that substantive change will come from within, to change that electoral structure would be to negate the necessary power of unions. (This is one of those strange moments where being an activist for police reform and also for unionizing puts me at odds with myself, but here we are…) If those of us actively engaged in reforming the police are able to form alliances with NYPD officers with similar goals, it will both strengthen the relationship between the NYPD and the community it serves which is necessary in the long term, and further the goal of more immediate short term police reform. There is one external means of influence, however, which is Lynch’s paycheck. Currently, he is paid by the citizens’ tax dollars for his dubious services. Union representatives are commonly paid by the dues their members pay. To shift the burden of responsibility for the union’s representative’s salary from the city to the union members itself would force the officers who belong to Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association to take a more active role in making sure their advocate actually speaks on their behalf.