There will be plenty of tears and recriminations on Friday at the funeral for NYPD Officer Brian Mulkeen at Sacred Heart Church in upstate Monroe.
The fact that the decorated 33-year-old officer was killed by friendly fire Sunday as he struggled to arrest a gangbanger in the Bronx just emphasizes the strain that frontline cops are under in a city that no longer has their back.
Mulkeen was the best of the NYPD, a well-respected giant who gave up a lucrative career at Merrill Lynch for a life of service protecting the powerless in one of the city’s roughest neighborhoods.
But the progressive anti-law enforcement policies of Mayor Bill de Blasio and the state Legislature are taking their toll.
Criminals have been empowered to disrespect police and resist arrest as a matter of course, with inevitable fatal consequences.
Anecdotally, of course, it’s worse since Officer Daniel Pantaleo was scapegoated over the 2014 death of Eric Garner while resisting arrest.
The tragedy of Officer Mulkeen’s death at the Edenwald Houses just compounds the Pantaleo effect, and makes life in the largest public housing complex in the Bronx more difficult for the people who live and work there.
In the last year alone, the Edenwald Houses has seen shootings skyrocket, up from a reported 10 to 15 shootings in the precinct covering the complex.
That’s why Mulkeen was on patrol in Edenwald in the early hours of Sunday, trying to control the shootings and gang feuds that make life a misery for law-abiding residents, especially the elderly, the mentally handicapped and the children under age 6 who live in almost 300 households there.
“It’s a two-man stop: Don’t go alone,” says Eddie, 49, a painter for the New York City Housing Authority who has worked in the Bronx for three years and sees firsthand the impact of the city’s war on cops.
He says “it’s a no-brainer” that anti-cop policies have made Edenwald more dangerous as gangbangers feel free to fight police during an arrest.
“Police have been retreating more and more, for quite a few years. But between Pantaleo and some other [NYCHA incompetence] stuff, it seems to have accelerated …
“Edenwald is real bad now. A lot of guys won’t take overtime there because after dark it’s like the OK Corral.”
As the shootings increase, makeshift shrines with candles for victims spring up around the projects, always accompanied by anti-cop graffiti. “F–k the police” is a favorite, even though it’s a lack of policing that leads to the deaths.
It’s a hostile environment for any cop to walk into and Eddie figures if he gets into trouble while he works, 911 won’t be much help.
“I’m painting the stairs and I know If I need help, I’m done … There’s different rules and a different rule of law here.”
The entrance-door locks on the buildings are always broken, so strangers are free to stroll through corridors and stairwells that stink of urine from being used as toilets.
“Elderly people are prisoners in there. You can tell [the danger spots] because there’s no one on the park benches.”
Increasingly, at night when he’s working overtime, he hears shooting.
His wife begs him not to keep working in the Bronx projects but the city pays union wages — $45 an hour, twice as much as he’d earn some place safer.
“I get nervous every day going to work. But where else am I going to make the money? I have bills,” says Eddie, who does not want to give his real name for fear of losing his job.
He’s no wide-eyed innocent, having lived in the projects briefly as a child before joining the military.
He feels sorry for good people trapped in the descending chaos.
“I’ll go into some apartments that are like a palace. You could eat off the floor. It’s horrible for them. It’s horrible for us to witness.”
Protective cages have had to be built around the time clocks where NYCHA tradespeople report for duty to keep them safe from objects and garbage that rain down from windows above.
When Eddie clocks in mornings, sometimes the cages are surrounded by dirty diapers and feminine-hygiene products tossed from surrounding apartments.
Construction awnings are de facto garbage dumps for residents too lazy to walk 100 yards from their front doors to chutes on every floor. Or maybe they’re too scared to venture outside.
It’s no way to live.
This is the dysfunction Eddie wades into every day.
He takes pride in a job that pushes back against the chaos and filth for the decent people of Edenwald. But he doesn’t know how much longer he is willing to take his life in his hands to earn a living.
When there are no more cops like Mulkeen willing to risk their lives to maintain law and order, where does that leave the voiceless poor held hostage to the violent gangbangers who rule the roost?
The poor are the real victims ignored by the virtue signalers of the progressive criminal justice movement who are too busy emptying out prisons and emasculating police to notice the disaster they are fueling.
Impeach sorrow? Yeah, right!
Using impeachment as a political weapon, House Democrats hope they can soften up President Trump like a tormented bull before the matador arrives for the coup de grace come election time.
They don’t care about the damage done by their soft coup as the stock market wobbles and the government is paralyzed.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi admitted as much yesterday when she told reporters impeachment would only further divide America.
No one buys the mock mournful tone she has adopted after last week’s impeachment triumphalism. “I pray for the president all the time,” she keeps saying now. “This is a very sad time for the country.”
Pull the other one. It plays “Jingle Bells.”
Pelosi belatedly has realized that irate constituents want her to stop trying to rig the election and fix problems such as gun violence and the high price of prescription drugs.
But rather than rely on the merits of their lackluster candidates, Democrats know their best chance of winning back the White House is to fatally weaken the president.
Trump isn’t letting it get to him.
“Get a better candidate this time,” he tweeted Wednesday. “You’ll need it!”
Hill’s Liz snub un‘Generes’
It says a lot that Hillary Clinton couldn’t find space for Elizabeth Warren among the 100 women she has immortalized in her new tome, “The Book of Gutsy Women.”
She managed to include TV chat-show host Ellen DeGeneres and teenage climate evangelist Greta Thunberg in her top-100 most inspirational females on the planet but, somehow, the woman most likely to succeed as Democratic presidential candidate never made the cut.
So much for the sisterhood.