At his daily press conference on Wednesday, Mayor DeBlasio was asked by veteran Hamodia reporter Reuvain Borchardt about Former NYC Mayor David Dinkins, who passed away earlier this week. YWN suggests to our readers that after you watch this video and read the text of the mayor’s response, you scroll down and actually read what the Crown Heights riots were, and how David Dinkins HIMSELF said in an interview with WNYC Public Radio “I screwed up Crown Heights”. Borchardt Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. For many, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of Mayor Dinkins is the Crown Heights Riot. He was quoted as telling police to “let them vent their rage,” and some have blamed him for restraining police and allowing the riot to turn into a pogrom. Now, you were an aide in the Dinkins Administration. Can you share your thoughts, both then and now, on how Dinkins dealt with the riots, and whether it in any way informed your decision-making in dealing with the riots this past summer? Mayor Response: Well, look, we’re on the verge of Thanksgiving, and I want to be benevolent to you. And you often ask me pointed questions and I think we sometimes don’t agree, but I know you ask very honest and important questions, but I just – I have to call out, I think there’s a bunch of things in that question that just don’t reflect the reality. I don’t think that’s accurate at all about what happened at that time. I think we all now know, looking back, that a horrible combination of things happened in an absolutely unpredictable order that created tremendous tension. As you remember, it was, on top of that, a lot of the key police leadership was either out of town or had been changed. There’s just a lot of things happening at once that made it such a hard situation to address. So that’s the first point. The second point, I think there’s so many more important things to think about with David Dinkins than that one very sad moment. And I think it’s important, particularly having lost him, that we honor the good he did in terms of trying to bring the city together and helping us to move forward in terms of safety, which he unquestionably started the ball rolling on. I think in terms of what we learned, we clearly learned that when you are dealing with situations like that, which was a different situation than what we have had in 2020. And I just don’t – I’ve looked at everything that happened in 2020, those were protests and some of them had some violent people in them and they were – it was unacceptable to see any violence, but I don’t think it’s accurate to compare it to what happened in Crown Heights, which was a very different reality. But we have learned that when you see a situation like that emerge, address it very immediately and forcefully. And certainly, I learned from that – and it is something I remember very vividly with a lot of pain for everyone, for the loss in all communities – but it certainly gave me a firsthand experience with the importance of dealing with something like that assertively and clearly […]

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