A bill to create an inspector general's office for the New York Police Department has already driven a wedge between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his closest ally in the race, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
Yesterday, he dismissed the field of mayoral candidates altogether on the issue of public safety, saying, "We don’t even know if [reducing crime] is their goal.”
Quinn supports the I.G. bill, which Bloomberg believes would create an unnecessary regulatory layer for the police and would stop the department from operating effectively. Ray Kelly, who Quinn has indicated she'd like to keep on as police chief, strongly opposes the bill too, as does the detectives union, which ran an ad today criticizing the bill and its chief supporter.
In an odd twist, City Comptroller John Liu, the most resolutely anti-Bloomberg Democrat and the only candidate to favor a total end to stop-and-frisk, recently changed his position on the I.G. bill and now, like the mayor, opposes it. That won him a modicum of praise from the Daily News editorial page, which strongly opposes the bill on the grounds that it dilutes the mayor's authority over the department.
At the bottom of this Daily News story it also revealed that former comptroller Bill Thompson supports the bill, but wants an inspector general "who would report to the commissioner."
I pointed that out to one of the bill's main sponsors on the Council, Brad Lander of Brooklyn, who called it "ridiculous." Lander said that the "entire point" of the bill is "meaningful oversight" independent of the police commissioner.