Unions representing New York City police officers have demanded the dismissal of the city’s health commissioner after she scoffed at a request to provide the force with surgical masks amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr. Oxiris Barbot refused to provide the city’s police with 500,000 masks as Covid-19 began to spread in March, telling a high-ranking law enforcement official, NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan: “I don’t give two rats’ asses about your cops.” The conversation, first reported by the New York Post, was confirmed to the media by the NYC Health Department. Barbot has since apologized to Monahan for her remarks, the department said, describing the crude utterance as a “heated exchange.”
Her atonement has not satisfied the city’s police unions, however. The Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York condemned her “despicable and unforgivable” slight against the force. In a fiery message posted to Twitter, the group said the commissioner should be forced to “look in the eye of every police family who lost a hero to this virus.”
New York City’s Sergeants Benevolent Association was similarly outraged, urging that Barbot be “immediately fired” if reports of her comments are accurate.
Of the city’s 55,000 police officers, nearly 5,490 have been infected with Covid-19, according to the latest available figures. The force has suffered 41 deaths from the virus.
It’s not only police who are fuming over Barbot’s remarks. Democrat Rep. Max Rose, who represents Staten Island and part of Brooklyn, said that the health commissioner “shouldn’t resign, she should be fired.”
The scandal also reveals the confusion and anger over the prioritizing of who should be given personal protective equipment (PPE) during the health crisis.
Guidelines requiring all people to wear masks have in some instances led to critical shortages among front line workers such as police. Meanwhile, even public health authorities don’t have a clear answer whether such policies are essential for the general public. The World Health Organization (WHO) states on its Q&A page regarding Covid-19 that “currently there is not enough evidence for or against the use of masks (medical or other) for healthy individuals in the wider community.”
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