Holly MatkinSt. Anthony, ID – Former Superman actor and current St. Anthony Police Department (SAPD) Reserve Officer Dean Cain had some strong words for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio during an interview on Monday.
Reserve Officer Cain spoke to FOX News in the wake of multiple assassination attempts on New York police over the weekend.
The alleged gunman, 44-year-old Robert Williams, approached a marked NYPD van on Saturday night under the guise of asking for directions, then promptly opened fire on the two officers sitting inside.
NYPD Officer Paul Stroffolino was hit in the chin and neck before his partner hit the accelerator, allowing them to escape.
At approximately 8 a.m. on Sunday, Williams stormed into the 41st Precinct station where the effort to locate him was being coordinated and opened fire, WNBC reported.
Lieutenant Jose Gautreaux was shot in the arm before Williams was taken into custody.
In a tweet on Sunday, de Blasio referred to the attacks as a “premeditation assassination attempt against New York’s Finest,” and praised police for their “heroism and extraordinary skill.”
“This MUST be a city where everyone can live in peace and respect,” he wrote. “This individual attempted to destroy that. We will not let him win.”
Reserve Officer Cain told FOX News that the mayor’s words were appreciated, but that it was too little, too late.
“He should have said that from the very beginning,” Reserve Officer Cain said. “The police officers that I know in New York City…feel like he has turned his back on them from the very beginning, and that’s why they turn their backs on him.”
“The rhetoric and the words coming out of his mouth have done nothing except for encourage these sorts of attacks on police officers, and its an absolute nightmare,” he said.
Former Secret Service agent and current conservative radio host Dan Bongino also spoke with FOX News about New York’s increasingly lax attitude towards crime on Sunday.
“You have this liberal style of policing which, shockingly, prioritizes the rights of the criminals over the rights of the people,” Bongino railed. “It’s really easy to understand – When you make it easy to be a bad guy, you’re gonna get more bad guys. This is only complicated to liberals running these big cities.”
Reserve Deputy Cain said he agrees with Bongino “100 percent.”
“When criminals are emboldened like that, it doesn’t do anything to help the police officers. It does the exact opposite, and that’s why we’re seeing what we’re seeing,” he told FOX News. “This isn’t brand new…It’s all part of the same anti-police rhetoric, and de Blasio and [New York Governor Andrew] Cuomo are definitely a part of that problem.”
Reserve Deputy Cain said that the NYPD’s “support” for the mayor is at “zero.”
“The morale is horrible,” he said.
In order to affect change, de Blasio needs to commit to supporting New York’s law enforcement officers, Reserve Deputy Cain said.
“Doing things like fixing that bail law is a start,” he suggested. “Doing things to support the police officers is a big part…It needs to change and he needs to change it.”
Reserve Officer Cain was sworn in as a reserve officer with SAPD in Idaho on June 19, 2019, the Idaho Statesman reported at the time.
He previously played the role of Superman in the TV series “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” was the host of “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not,” and acted in a slew of additional television shows and movies.
The NYPD’s Sergeant’s Benevolent Association (SBA) declared “war” on de Blasio in a scathing tweet on Sunday.
“Mayor DeBlasio, the members of the NYPD are declaring war on you!” the message read. “We do not respect you, DO NOT visit us in hospitals. You sold the NYPD to the vile creatures, the 1% who hate cops but vote for you. NYPD cops have been assassinated because of you. This isn’t over, Game on!”
It is unclear how the SBA plans to proceed after making its declaration.
De Blasio’s soft-on-crime policies and growing tensions between the city’s police force and elected officials has been further exacerbated by anti-police protests, WNBC reported.
Officers have been repeatedly doused with water and attacked with bottles, bricks, food and other items for months.
“These things are not unrelated. We had people marching through the streets of New York City recently,” Commissioner Shea said, according to WNBC. “Words matter. And words affect people’s behavior.”
Despite his declarations that attacks on police are “not acceptable,” de Blasio has ushered in a slew of polices that critics believe have both coddled and emboldened criminals.
NYPD Police Benevolent Association (PBA) President Pat Lynch blasted city officials who have repeatedly stood before the community at press conferences to express how “lucky” and miraculous it was that no officers were killed in various attacks.
“Stop relying on luck!” Lynch told reporters. “Some of the same elected officials that were standing at that podium today are talking about how lucky we are…sometimes it’s their words that are causing this!”
“We talk about the protesters that are yelling, ‘we want dead cops,’” he continued. “Those words meant something, and people listen and they try to kill cops. But who’s leading them? Some of the elected officials that stand here today, nodding their heads…are the ones that are leading those crowds…putting the words in those protesters’ mouths. Well, now it’s real.”
Lynch said that the attacks on police shouldn’t come as a surprise.
“We’ve been warning about this since 2012. We warned about it in 2014 and we were ignored and two cops were killed,” told WNBC. “We warned it the other day, and what happened? [In a] twelve-hour time period, we’re here in Lincoln Hospital twice because police officers were almost assassinated.”
Lynch noted that it was the officers’ skills – not luck – that saved them from being killed.
The union leader implored city officials to start supporting police instead of just nodding their heads during press conferences after officers are shot.
“Start backing our police officers. Our elected officials that stand and nod with us, it’s time to open your mouth and say ‘this must stop,’” Lynch said.
Law enforcement groups have repeatedly voiced concerns about the growing anti-police sentiment throughout the city.
On Jan. 7, de Blasio finally acknowledged the connection between the city’s skyrocketing crime rate and the state’s new bail reform laws that put all but the most violent offenders immediately back out on the streets.
De Blasio was a big supporter of passing the new law that did away with cash bail as of Jan. 1, but now he’s found himself in the crosshairs after the result was exactly what law enforcement predicted, the New York Post reported.
He spent the first few weeks of 2020 dodging questions about the immediate effects of eliminating cash bail before he could no longer avoid the topic and admitted there was a problem.
It’s impossible to ignore the fact that shootings are up almost 29 percent, robberies are up almost 37 percent, and auto thefts are up by almost 72 percent, WCBS reported.
“We had, for six years, steady decreases in crime across the board. There’s not a whole lot of other environmental things that have changed recently,” the mayor said. “It sort of stands out like a sore thumb that this is the single biggest new thing in the equation and we saw an extraordinary jump.”
“Of course, there’s always a possibility this is plain statistical variation, that happens sometimes,” he added. “But I think it’s pretty clear that there’s only one new major piece in the equation.”
De Blasio has said he supported giving judges more authority to hold offenders in jail if they are deemed a threat to the public, the New York Post reported.
“I think judicial discretion should be clarified so that there are very clear checks and balances, so that we avoid any inkling of bias entering into the process, but I think a system predicated only on the question of flight risk misses the fact that there are some individuals who are just consistently, by their own actions, and by the proof of due process, consistently creat[ing] a threat to their neighbors,” the mayor said.
Critics of the new bail reform laws have pointed to multiple incidents of further crimes that were committed after someone who previously would have been held in jail on bail was dropped right back onto the streets the next day.
One man with three prior drunk driving convictions, who killed a 27-year-old man on Jan. 12 while driving “more than 135 miles per hour,” bragged when he was arrested that he would be released without bail the next day under New York’s new bail reform laws because the crash was “just a DWI.”
He was right.
A woman was arrested three times in five days only to re-offend on each occasion and physically assault additional people.
One Long Island judge tried to hold a defendant he called “a menace to society” only to have a higher court overturn his decision and set the repeat offender free.
Republican state lawmakers have tried to get the Democratically-held state house to commit to revising the new bail reform laws, but they refused.