Representative Peter King (R-NY) argued that “think the less that al sharpton has to say…the better everyone would be.” on Wednesday’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC.
“Quite frankly, I know I’m on MSNBC. I think the less that Al Sharpton has to say about running the police department, interfering with the police department, the better everyone would be. Because I believe the decent people in both communities, in the NYPD, in the African-American minority communities do want to find a way to work together. But I think federal leadership is needed. Certainly Al Sharpton should not be involved” he stated.
Regarding the tension in the city between the police and Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), he added “the police officers feel that Mayor de Blasio turned against them early on with the Garner case, the way he tried to portray it as being a racial matter when the fact is it was an African-American chief, an African-American sergeant on the scene, African-American businessman. What went wrong or didn’t go wrong had nothing to do with race. And they felt that Mayor de Blasio jumped in and tried to make it a racial issue.” And “leaders have to move forward and put this in perspective. Last year the police made 230,000 misdemeanor arrests alone, the person who died was Eric Garner…again, it had nothing to do with race…that was an aberration, which has nothing to do with race. That the NYPD is only 44% white, it’s clearly majority minority, there’s 58 different languages spoken in the police department. The police department wants to reach out. But it’s going to take efforts on both sides.”
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