New York City is a rude sort of place, and most locals learn early on to ignore it and just keep going.

Which is why, as crime surges, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's new plan to make policing all about customer service is just a little ... strange. 

According to the New York Post:

During his daily City Hall news conference, de Blasio ignored the pressing issue of public safety and called his “revolutionary” initiative for the NYPD “a paradigm shift,” saying, “Customer service has to be what the NYPD is about.”

He said part of the push would involve putting a “community guide” in each of the city’s police stations to greet visitors at the door.

The mayor, whose term ends this year, said he was motivated by years of complaints about cops who are sometimes “gruff and dismissive.”

Well, d'oh. New York City is full of "gruff and dismissive" people, including bus drivers, subway operators (some of whom will stand there and ignore you while you are being assaulted), shop clerks, airport personnel, hotel staff, postal clerks, garbage collectors, city permit bureaucrats, basically anyone in government, or anyone in a union who can't be fired, plus others. It exists for many different reasons, some understandable, some not.

And while it's not everyone, to encounter rudeness in New York is not unusual.

But somehow, de Blasio thinks the general rudeness problem of New York resides solely with the cops, so he's putting out memos, plus booklets to ensure that the public knows their rights so they can sue. Sound like a morale builder?.

More to the point, the New York Post points out that it's a pretty absurd thing to be bringing up, given that crime is surging in New York.

NEW YORK (PIX11) — Crime rose by 30.4% in April 2021 compared to April 2020, an NYPD report released Wednesday said.

Other crimes that were up from last year included murder (at 44 versus 38) and rape (at 110 versus 72). Incidents of hate crimes against Asian Americans—which have taken the spotlight in recent months—were also up 400% in April, an increase of 64 from this time last year. Crimes committed in public housing were up 46.3%.

As shooting incidents have gone up, so have gun arrests. There were 223 arrests for possession of weapons in April 2021, up 3.7%, police said.

The cops are understaffed and generally powerless, the report notes, and police morale is low. All by itself, that's a natural breeding ground for 'rude.'

Who made them powerless? Try de Blasio who otherwise can't stop demonizing them. He doesn't have their back, and so, police officers turn their backs to him at important events and he just lets it go. Worse still, they don't have the wherewithal to stop crime. When any little thing you do as a police officer triggers a media incident, it's not unusual to retire at one's desk instead and be rude. 

Meanwhile, the criminals committing the crimes aren't exactly polite, either. We don't hear of any plans for Miss Manners lessons from de Blasio on taming that bunch with politeness or something -- courtesy thugs. To the mayor, it's just the cops who are the problem.

So yes, there's crime, lots of crime. Rather than focus on that significant issue of rising crime that affects the quality of life of New Yorkers, de Blasio's plan is to up the public relations skills from the cops whose job description is to catch violent criminals.

'Sorry, ma'am, we can't find the thug who pushed you into the subway pit, but have a nice day,' is that it?

It's downright insulting. Most New Yorkers would gladly take a rude cop if he had the muscle, the political backing, and the will to catch the bad guy. If he had any power, he might not even be rude. Most New Yorkers would gladly welcome back the Rudy Giuliani era of "broken windows" policing, where small crimes are not tolerated in order to have the natural knock-on effect of discouraging bigger and more violent crimes. De Blasio got rid of that and now wonders why cops are understaffed, de-funded, and rude. De Blasio thinks the problem is mean cops, not a mean system that pretty well treats cops as criminals in waiting, lets criminals out of the can with no consequences, and excuses violent crime as a nothingburger. Do that to anyone and about the only thing you can expect is 'rude.'

Crime is why cops are hired, and crime is out of control in New York. That's the issue. But de Blasio thinks that just a little customer service will do the trick instead of a serious, Giuliani-proven solution. Call it policing by public relations.

The cops the Post asked weren't impressed:

An NYPD source called de Blasio’s “customer service” plan “just stupid and crazy,” while another described it as “utterly the most horrific idea I’ve heard thus far being on the job.”

“Since when did policing become like walking into a T-Mobile store? Policing is not a pretty business so let’s not pretend that it is,” the cop said.

“If someone is coming to a precinct, they have a problem that we need to deal with — not hope they give us a 5-star review on ‘UberPolice.'”

And that certainly isn't surprising. De Blasio is promising to treat the symptoms of what ails New York instead of the cancer he caused. Here's the other thing: His plan won't work.

Image: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped) // CC BY-SA 2.0

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