For decades, Blue Privilege has allowed cops to break the same laws, rules and policies they are expected to enforce but it is only in recent years that we’ve seen it flaunted so openly and arrogantly, thanks to citizens with smartphones no longer intimidated to record them in public.
The most recent example is a video that surfaced last week out of New York City showing a male NYPD cop shoving a man out of a subway station while his female partner plays along, doing her part by opening the door to throw the man out.
Both cops walked away after shoving him out the door, ignoring his requests for their badge numbers with the woman cop eying the witness with the camera before following her partner to lean against the wall.
The man, Andrew Gilbert, was wearing a mask in accordance to policies set by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority which forbids anybody from entering the subway system without a mask.
But the cops were not wearing masks in defiance of the M.T.A. rule as well as NYPD policy which requires officers to wear masks when working in public transportation systems, according to the New York Times.
Gilbert, 27, who had just stepped off a train and was headed to work, decided to ask the cops to follow the rules.
Not surprisingly, it did not go well.
Gilbert said the cop first acted dumb, claiming he could not understand what he was saying through the mask but then lost his patience and started shoving him about 80 feet backwards until he forced him out the emergency exit.
“You’re being disruptive,” the cop told him.
The witness who recorded the video, Victoria Hall, told the New York Times the male cop was mocking Gilbert and “being really obnoxious” which is why she decided to record the video which has been viewed more than 3 million times on Twitter.
She also had just stepped off the train where she kept hearing repeated messages reminding commuters to keep their masks on.
“I just heard 100 times on the train that I need to wear a mask,” she told the New York Times. “Why are you special?”
The Times reports that about 70 percent of NYPD cops and employees are vaccinated compared to 85 percent of New York City residents, a trend that is mirrored throughout many parts of the country where cops have been more reluctant to getting vaccinated compared to the general population.
Earlier this month, CBS News reported that Covid has been the leading cause of death of police officers since March 2020 so evidently mask wearing is not part of the “officer safety” protocol we hear so much about. Before the pandemic, suicide was the leading cause of death for police officers.
Meanwhile, cops throughout the country have continued to jail people over nonviolent crimes, including for not wearing masks, resulting in millions of infected inmates throughout the United States that could have been prevented, according to a recent study by Northwestern University and the World Bank.
Watch the video of the most recent incident below.