Video: Boos, Turned Backs Meet De Blasio At George Floyd Memorial

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — A chorus of boos greeted Mayor Bill de Blasio as he took the stage at a Brooklyn memorial for George Floyd on Thursday.

Then the boos were drowned out by another call: "Turn around."

Hundreds of mourners, maybe more, turned their backs on de Blasio — a protest often and ironically performed by NYPD officers when de Blasio attends police funerals.

De Blasio entered office promising police reform but advocates quickly counted themselves disappointed.

For years, de Blasio refused to fire Officer Daniel Pantaleo, the cop who held Staten Island man Eric Garner in a chokehold while Garner gasped "I can't breathe" — the same three words said by George Floyd last week while a Minneapolis police officer held a knee on his neck.

And as protests and outrage spread across New York City over Floyd's death, de Blasio repeatedly defended the NYPD, even as videos and reports of cops brutalizing protesters spread. He also instituted a much-criticized curfew that led to a tense standoff between peaceful protesters and cops on the Manhattan Bridge Wednesday and a violent scene in the very place the George Floyd protest was held Thursday — Cadman Plaza.

NYPD officers rushed nonviolent protesters near Cadman Plaza who were out past the curfew late Wednesday.

De Blasio on Thursday said NYPD officers have shown "great restraint" and respect for peaceful protest and used as "light a touch as possible." He said the curfew was put in place to tamp down looting from a "criminal element."

He said Thursday he hadn't see any videos from Cadman Plaza the night before.

"If there's anything, that's a concern, a problem, anything questionable, anything inappropriate, it will be followed up on immediately," he said.

"But I want to emphasize, I don't think there is anything but clarity, if we say there's a curfew at 8 p.m. and that folks are being told consistently, there's a curfew here and we're showing respect for protests, but you need to go home. And if a certain point officers say, okay, it's time we need to go now, people need to listen to that, it's not an unfair action to say in the context of crisis, in the context of curfew, there is a point where enough is enough."

Thecrowd immediately booed as Mayor Bill de Blasio showed up on the stage.

The Reverend Kevin McCall, a civil rights leader and spokesperson for Terrence Floyd, asked for "respect" for de Blasio but the crowd turned it into calls for him to "resign."

The city's First Lady Chirlane McCray, who is black, received some polite indulgence from the crowd. But de Blasio's short speech was drowned out by boos.

All a Patch reporter could hear de Blasio say was "Black Lives Matter."