New York City’s first lady described a situation where her city didn’t have any cops patrolling the streets as “nirvana.”
“That would be like a nirvana, a utopia that we are nowhere close to getting to,” Chirlane McCray, wife of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, said during an interview this week, according to the New York Post.
McCray added that she doesn’t believe that goal can be achieved any time soon.
“Could the human race evolve to a point where no guardians, no structures are needed?” she asked. “I guess in theory, but I don’t see that in the future we’re going to live the next few generations.”
The interviewer asked McCray about Minneapolis’s latest move to disband the police department and whether or not New York City could follow suit.
McCray laughed and said, “They’re a small city,” she said of Minneapolis. “They can do things that would not be possible in a large city like New York.”
Mayor de Blasio joined Democratic politicians across the country aiming to slash police funding in response to the death of George Floyd by pledging to strip funding from the New York Police Department and reallocate the money to social programs.
The relationship between de Blasio and the police department has been a contentious one in recent years highlighted by hundreds of police officers turning their backs on the mayor during a fellow officer’s funeral over perceived lack of support from his office and an admission that he warned his biracial son that the NYPD is dangerous.
De Blasio also criticized the NYPD following the controversial death of Eric Garner in 2014.
“What parents have done for decades who have children of color, especially young men of color, is train them to be very careful when they have a connection with a police officer, when they have an encounter with a police officer,” de Blasio told ABC News in an interview.
This week, an NYPD union boss lashed out against elected officials across the country who have demonized police departments since Floyd’s death.
“Stop treating us like animals and thugs, and start treating us with some respect!” Mike O’Meara, head of the New York Police Benevolent Association, said. “That’s what we’re here today to say. We’ve been left out of the conversation. We’ve been vilified. It’s disgusting.”
