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Why NYC police don't want mayor at police funerals

 The New York City police union have a new waiver that each police officer can request that Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito cannot attend their funeral should they be killed in the line of duty

  • By Staff Associated Press

| New York

New York City's rank-and-file police union is urging its members to ban Mayor Bill de Blasio from their funerals.

The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association posted a link on its website telling members not to let Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito "insult their sacrifice" should they be killed in the line of duty. The waiver states:

I, as a New York City police officer, request that Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito refrain from attending my funeral services in the event that I am killed in the line of duty. Due to Mayor de Blasio and Speaker Mark-Viverito’s consistent refusal to show police officers the support and respect they deserve, I believe that their attendance at the funeral of a fallen New York City police officer is an insult to that officer’s memory and sacrifice.”

The New York Post reports the mayor and council speaker issued their own statement in response:

Incendiary rhetoric like this serves only to divide the city, and New Yorkers reject these tactics. The mayor and the speaker both know better than to think this inappropriate stunt represents the views of the majority of police officers and their families.”

The mayor customarily attends such funerals.

The union's president has said officers haven't felt supported in the wake of a chokehold death of an unarmed black man.

At a press conference after the Eric Garner grand jury decision not do indict a New York police officer, Mayor de Blasio said that he had wanred his 17-year-old, mixed-race son, Dante, to be careful around police officers.

“We’ve had to literally train him, as families have all over this city for decades, in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him,” the mayor said.

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