Poll Shows Low Approval Rating For PBA's Pat Lynch, Officers Turning Backs On De Blasio
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A new poll Thursday showed a low approval rating for Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.
As WCBS 880's Peter Haskell reported, the Quinnipiac University poll indicated that New Yorkers believe the NYPD is doing a good job, and they like Commissioner Bill Bratton.
Voters approved of the job police are doing by a margin of 56 percent to 37 percent. Bratton also had a 56 percent approval rating.
Poll Shows Low Approval Rating For PBA's Pat Lynch, Officers Turning Backs On De Blasio
But support for Lynch was only at 18 percent, compared with 39 percent of respondents who think of him unfavorably.
The poll also indicated that 69 percent of New Yorkers did not approve of police officers turning their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio at the funerals for officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, who were assassinated in their squad car in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn on Dec. 20. Only 27 percent of respondents approved of the action.
New Yorkers also didn't like a comment by union head Patrick Lynch that the mayor had ``blood on his hands'' after the officers were killed.
Quinnipiac University poll assistant director Maurice Carroll said those comments were "condemned by white, black and Hispanic voters alike."
"Maybe it's sympathy for a guy in a tough position, a commissioner leading a defiant department, but Commissioner William Bratton's job approval numbers jump up," Carroll said in a news release. "Voters think misbehaving cops should be punished and they fear that discipline in the department has broken down, but they believe Commissioner Bratton can straighten things out."
Poll Shows Low Approval Rating For PBA's Pat Lynch, Officers Turning Backs On De Blasio
Seventy-seven percent said relations between the mayor and police are "generally bad'' and of those, 43 percent blame de Blasio and 43 percent blame police.
The poll surveyed 1,182 New Yorkers from Jan. 7 to Jan. 14 and has and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
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