CLEMENCY FOR COP KILLERS, A LETTER FROM THE GAZETTE

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THE FOLLOWING LETTER APPEARS IN THIS WEEK'S GAZETTE:

To the editor:

This is a somewhat controversial position to take in New York nowadays, but may I humbly suggest that it is not OK to kill someone in cold blood just because they are a police officer?

Governor Cuomo has been lionized as a courageous leader of the progressive movement, full of compassion and a fighter for justice. He began his career in 1977 managing his father’s mayoral campaign against Ed Koch. That race is famous for the Democratic Party primary campaign posters put up in conservative sections of Queens with the slogan “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo.” But hey…it was a Dem primary in Queens in the ‘70s, and that’s just how it was. (To her credit, Cynthia Nixon didn’t let Cuomo forget: in her 2018 primary she trolled him with her quip “Vote for the homo, not the Cuomo.”)

Andrew Cuomo’s career went on to greater things, culminating in stuffing highly contagious patients into nursing homes, thereby resulting in the deaths of over a thousand helpless elderly. What finally sent Mr. Cuomo into taxpayer-funded retirement was not his harassment and fondling of women, but that times have changed—it is no longer acceptable to run your finger along a female employee’s body and force a quick slobbery kiss on her.

On his way out, Mr. Cuomo reminded us once again how much the definition of “progressive” has changed in New York. Adulation for cop-killers is not an entirely new theme with our elected officials. In April 1900, Westchester County Deputy Sheriff Robert Douglass was called into National Guard service to stand watch at the Croton Dam. He was shot and killed by someone hiding in the bushes in the dark of night. To mark the 119th anniversary of the event, Croton Mayor Brian Pugh put up a Facebook post praising revolutionaries (see my letter, The Gazette week of April 25/May 1, 2019).

As Governor, Andrew Cuomo has long had a soft spot for the criminals who perpetrated the October 1981 Brink’s robbery in Nanuet. Security guard Peter Paige was murdered, along with Nyack police officers Edward O’Grady and Waverly Brown. Nine children lost their father on that day.

But times change, and neither Croton mayors nor New York State governors care much about such things anymore. They care about “progressive” values, and few politicians are more progressive than San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, whose parents committed the 1981 robbery in Nanuet.

Mr. Boudin’s mother (Kathy Boudin) and father (David Gilbert) were put in prison. Chesa Boudin said: “I’m sad that my parents have to suffer what they have to suffer on a daily basis, that millions of other people have to suffer as well.”

Kathy Boudin was paroled in 2003. Her life achievement may have left nine children fatherless, but her impressive slaughter of police officers garnered her a professorship at Columbia University and a position as “Scholar in Residence” at NYU law school.

David Gilbert was just granted clemency by Governor Cuomo. The widows and orphans will never have clemency, but nobody cares about them anymore.

Perhaps this October 20, Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Pugh can do a joint Facebook post on the anniversary of the Nanuet murders, praising David Gilbert and his contribution to the Revolution; after all the Croton Dam strikers only murdered one cop, Chesa’s parents murdered two cops and a security guard.

Times have changed in New York.

--Paul Steinberg