De Blasio booed at NYPD graduation

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio received boos Monday from the audience at a graduation ceremony for the city’s newest police officers, after he didn’t address simmering anger that has prompted symbolic protests.
 
{mosads}At one point during the speech, de Blasio said that officers needed to face problems that they themselves didn’t create. Someone then reportedly yelled at the mayor, “You created them.”
 
While most of the audience clapped for the mayor, boos and jeers were heard mixed in throughout the mayor’s speech.
 
De Blasio praised the graduates, and police in general, for what he called a “noble calling.”
 
“It takes a special kind of person to put their lives on the line for others, to stare down the danger,” he said to graduates and their guests at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
 
He also took a moment during his speech to mourn two officers who died after being ambushed in their police car, calling Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu “peacemakers” and “heroes.”
 
De Blasio’s remarks come at a tense point in the relationship between the mayor and the New York Police Department. Critics have charged him with stoking anti-police sentiment linked to the slaying of the officers on Dec. 20. During Ramos’s funeral Sunday, hundreds of officers turned their backs to a live video of de Blasio speaking.
 
While reports from the graduation speech show that some audience members turned their backs on the mayor as he spoke, no graduating officers did.
 
New York police Chief Bill Bratton, who spoke after de Blasio, briefly acknowledged the controversy when he told recruits that the country, city and police department all face a “difficult time.”
 
“We will work through it; we always do. We will resolve our differences and even while we do that, we will keep this city safe,” he said.