Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons has apparently apologized for calling New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio a bullied “punk” and”b***h” over lack of progress on police misconduct.
In a phone call yesterday to the same radio station that aired Simmons’ criticism, the mayor said “Russell has apologized, and I certainly appreciate and accept that apology,” the Observer reported.
In the discussion last Thursday on Hot 97’s Ebro in the Morning show, erstwhile de Blasio supporter Simmons expressed outrage that the progressive mayor has fallen down on the job insofar as pushing for one or more special prosecutors to investigate police shootings over the apparent objections of the police.
According to Simmons, prior to the deployment of body cams, racist cops have been murdering African-Americans across the country with impunity.
“Our police commissioner is bullying our punk mayor that we worked so hard to put in office. He knows his kids are at risk. He knows that if a cop shoots his kid, and there is no footage, that cop is not getting charged. And that’s because there are no special prosecutors. There should be independent prosecutors who don’t work for the police who have to look at these cases individually.”
Simmons seemed also to acknowledge some buyers’ remorse for endorsing de Blasio over the original mayoral front-runner, Christine Quinn. “[de Blasio] has not done anything… he’s a mouse.”
The Def Jam co-founder also called out de Blasio’s fellow Democrat, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, for failing so far to follow through on his promise to appoint a special prosecutor to look into police shootings, even if enabling legislation never passes the state legislature. “And Mayor de Blasio has no said a word because he’s a punk,” Simmons added.
De Blasio is, at the same time, deeply unpopular with the NYPD for his perceived soft-on-crime views. Recalling that hundreds of cops turned their backs to the mayor during a murdered police officer’s funeral last December, Simmons further slammed de Blasio.
“He should have told them, ‘turn around or go home.’ He got the police commissioner pushing him around like he’s a b***h. And it’s shocking to me that he’s not stood up for the people of New York.”
A de Blasio spokeswoman disagreed with Simmons’ assessment of the mayor’s police reform efforts in a statement provided to Capitol New York prior to the apology.
“At Mayor de Blasio’s direction, Commissioner Bratton has retrained officers and stopped excessive stop and frisk which the Mayor believes led to unconstitutional searches of innocent people of color but did nothing to reduce crime overall.”
[Photo by Rob Kim / Getty Images Entertainment]
