Cardinal Timothy Dolan Utilising personal stories from his interactions with the New York Police Department, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said in a newspaper column that the city’s police officers deserve better treatment and broad support on the job.
Writing in the New York Post, Cardinal Dolan said police officers deserve to be recognised for the heroic work they carry out daily to protect the city.
“Our valiant police officers have one of the most perilous, stressful duties around, and from what I have seen in my nearly dozen years here, they do it with care, compassion and competence,” the cardinal wrote.
He said “one of the tumours on our beloved nation, past and present” is how often African Americans are targeted, profiled, caricatured, blamed and suspected “as the cause of all evil and woe in society”. And he urged people now not make police officers the object of similar broadsides.
“That is raw injustice,” Cardinal Dolan wrote of this treatment of African Americans. “But for God’s sake, let’s not now, in a similar way, stereotype the NYPD.”
He described the city’s police officers as one of the features he likes most about being in New York when people back home in Missouri ask him about being in the city.
To illustrate his belief, Cardinal Dolan told the story of an officer who rushed to protect him when a man holding an object in his hand in the congregation at St Patrick’s Cathedral jumped up as the cardinal walked by.
“What he was clutching I did not know, but I have to admit, I feared it to be a pistol. Apparently, the officer on duty that morning did, too. He lunged not at the man, but at me, shielding me from the rushing congregant. Then we both saw the man was holding a cross, which he asked me to bless,” Cardinal Dolan wrote.
“What moved me was the police officer’s spontaneous instinct to protect me, literally, ‘to take a bullet for me’. The NYPD would do that for any of us, members of the community they swear to serve and protect.”