When cops fight with each other, it ain’t beanbag.
Take the PBA election, scheduled for June, where cops supporting incumbent president Patrick Lynch or Strengthen the Shield insurgent Brian Fusco are throwing the kitchen sink at each other.
Both men then vanish and leave their public relations people to handle the fallout.
Let’s start with a recent post on the Facebook page of PBA treasurer Joe Alejandro. The post links Fusco’s PR guy, George Shea, to Mayor Bill de Blasio, the cops’ perceived archenemy.
Shea, Alejandro wrote, “is also the shill for Mayor de Blasio’s real estate friends . . . So the mayor, who was embarrassed by the PBA, has asked his real estate buddies to attack the PBA . . . [T]hese guys will never give you direct proof but all you need to see is some of the web to know that the spider is around.”
Shea told me: “They’re saying some crazy stuff.” He called Alejandro’s allegations “ridiculous,” and said he had “no connection to de Blasio unequivocally. Pulling a PR man into an election campaign shows you don’t want to talk the real issues.”
One of those issues, Shea said, was the PBA’s $5,000 endorsement of Ken Thompson, who in 15 months as Brooklyn district attorney has indicted four police officers. Fusco has charged that Lynch’s endorsement was a stab in the back of cops.
Both Fusco and Lynch were in the wind when sought for further details.
PBA spokesman Al O’Leary said Fusco was there when the PBA made its endorsement. But Shea said Fusco had “objected.”
Meanwhile in the Bronx, the repercussions continue for the insurgents in the 2011 ticket-fixing case. The scandal led to indictments of 13 cops, including three of the election insurgents.
Two of the three, Brian McGuckin and Michael Hernandez, filed their retirement papers last week. The third, Joe Anthony — who is charged with more than a hundred counts, including tampering with public records, official misconduct, grand larceny and conspiracy — now faces a Hobson’s choice. He will soon have to decide whether he remains on the insurgent slate and goes to trial, or retires while charges are pending and hopes he gets his pension.
Anthony said Lynch did not defend him and the other 12 officers.
“Our campaign will go on to the end,” he said.
