The commanding officer of a New York Police Department precinct in Brooklyn spoke candidly about the impact of last month's killing of two officers and insisted a resulting slowdown in police enforcement action had ended, the Wall Street Journal reports. Deputy Inspector Maximo Tolentino told community members that the deaths of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu on Dec. 20 took an emotional toll on cops and resulted in decreased enforcement of “lesser offenses.”
“Some of the minor stuff, that did slide,” he conceded. “It was the lesser offenses that took a toll.” Tolentino added that citywide protests after a grand jury's decision not to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner had raised tensions and “contributed to that whole atmosphere.” He said, “there were officers that were truly angry about it. For the first couple of weeks it did affect our cops.” Tolentino said that after Police Commissioner William Bratton ordered police to return to cracking down on smaller crimes this month, his officers were “back on board.”