Frank McGurty, REUTERS
NEW YORK (Reuters)—Tensions between New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the police are rooted in issues that go beyond racial relations, the police commissioner said on Sunday, a day after the funeral of one of the two officers slain a week ago in their patrol car.
The tensions “involve labor contracts. They involve a lot of history in the city that’s really different from some of what’s going on in the country as a whole,” Bill Bratton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“You need to understand this isn’t just about policing,” he said. “This is about the continuing poverty rates, the continuing growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor.”
On Saturday, thousands of police officers assembled outside the funeral of Rafael Ramos turned their backs on the mayor’s eulogy in a display of disrespect after what they perceived as the mayor’s lukewarm support.
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