Eric Adams patrols subways with NYPD cops amid surge in transit crime

New York City’s first transit cop-turned-mayor joined a team of the NYPD’s finest to patrol the subways after dark — and took The Post along for the ride. During more three hours underground, Mayor Eric Adams traveled across Manhattan and Brooklyn, observing the changes that have taken place since he worked the beat. Amid this year’s surging crime rates — including an alarming, 54% spike in the…

The Profession: A Memoir of Community, Race, and the Arc of Policing in America by Bill Bratton https://amzn.to/3wkgMxQ

The Profession: A Memoir of Community, Race, and the Arc of Policing in America by Bill Bratton https://amzn.to/3wkgMxQ

The Profession: A Memoir of Community, Race, and the Arc of Policing in America by Bill Bratton https://amzn.to/3wkgMxQ 

Vox: 

Fifty years after the New York Police Department raided the Stonewall Inn, leading to the birth of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, the commissioner of the NYPD has apologized.

“I do know what happened should not have happened,” James O’Neill, New York’s police commissioner, said in a public statement. “The actions taken by the NYPD were wrong — plain and simple. The actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive, and for that, I apologize.”

The commissioner’s remarks were vague about what, exactly, happened at the Stonewall Inn, a gay- and trans-friendly bar, in 1969, when patrons fought back after decades of harassment and mistreatment by police. The riots that began in response lasted four days, leading to dozens of arrests, injuries on both sides, and, one year later, the first Pride March.

O’Neill’s decision to apologize is significant because it marks a departure from years of NYPD commissioners, including O’Neill in 2017, insisting that the past was the past and no apology was necessary.

Before O’Neill’s statement Thursday, the executive committee of Heritage of Pride, which organizes the NYC Pride events, called on the NYPD to apologize, as did New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson.

“I think the NYPD apologizing in this would be a very, very good thing,” Johnson, who is gay, said, according to the New York news radio station 1010 WINS, “because I think it would be a step toward further healing and reconciliation.”

When the question of an apology came up in the past, a previous top NYPD official had even implied that the LGBTQ community should be thankful Stonewall happened. “We should all celebrate that out of that terrible experience that a lot of good came,” Bill Bratton, the previous NYPD commissioner, said in 2016 when asked at a press conference if he would apologize to the LGBTQ community for the events at Stonewall.

“An apology — I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s necessary,” Bratton continued, adding that instead of an apology, people should look to how far the NYPD has come since the 1970s.