NY Mayor de Blasio: US must face 'centuries of racism'

In an interview with US television network ABC on Sunday (07.12.2014), New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was asked three times whether he endorsed the grand jury's decision not to indict Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who put Staten Island resident Eric Garner in a chokehold as he tried to arrest him.

De Blasio dodged the question, and would only say that he respected judicial process "as an executive in public service."

New York has seen four consecutive nights of demonstrations since the decision was announced last week. The protesters were demanding justice for black men who have died at the hands of white policemen in recent weeks.

The case of Eric Garner came in the wake of riots following a grand jury decision not to indict a white police officer over the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

De Blasio said the United States must confront "centuries of racism," after protests shook major cities across the country.

"We have to have an honest conversation in this country about a history of racism, we have to have an honest conversation about the problems that have caused parents to feel that their children may be in danger in their dynamics with police, when in fact police are there to protect them," he said.

Fears for own son

"Our police keep us safe, and yet there's been not just decades of problems, a history of centuries of racism that undergird this reality."

De Blasio also said that it was high time that police were retrained to work in different communities.

"We have to work on things like body cameras that will provide a different level of transparency and accountability," he said. "This is something systemic and we bluntly have to talk about the historical racial dynamics underlying (it)."

The mayor, who is white and married to a black woman with whom he has mixed-race children, that he also feared for his own son's safety when dealing with the police.

"What parents have done for decades with children of color, especially young men of color, is train them to be very careful, when they have a connection with a police officer, when they have an encounter with a police officer," he said. "It's different for a white child, it's just a reality in this country."

"And with Dante, very early on, my son, we used to say, look, if a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do, don't move suddenly, don't reach for your cellphone, because we knew, sadly, there is a greater chance it might be misinterpreted."

bk/pfd (AFP/dpa)