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Top cop Jessica Tisch insisted Tuesday that the NYPD doesn’t partner with ICE on civil immigration enforcement amid lefty criticism over the police response to protesters targeting agents at a hospital last week.
Tisch credited the cops’ actions outside Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn with preventing bloodshed when an anti-ICE mob tried to stop the federal agency’s enforcers from leaving the hospital with a detainee May 2.
“Please know this: When police officers stand between armed ICE agents and surging protesters, that is not assisting with immigration enforcement,” the police commissioner said at the ABNY Power Breakfast at the 583 Park Ave.
“That is the men and women of the NYPD fulfilling their primary duty as members of service: to prevent chaos, to maintain order and protect human life.”
Tisch’s boss, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has echoed his commissioner’s stance that the NYPD did not team up with ICE during the hospital showdown.
The NYPD boss’ stern comments stem from the anti-ICE mob descending on the Bushwick hospital in defense of Nigerian national Chidozie Wilson Okeke, who the feds said has been in the country illegally and has previously been arrested for assault and drug possession.
He was in federal law-enforcement custody when he claimed to be injured and the agents brought him to the hospital to be checked out.
Word leaked among the woke crowd that ICE agents had the migrant there, and protesters stormed the outside of the hospital and blocked its emergency bays while tossing trash cans in the street to disrupt traffic.
NYPD officers reached the scene to restore order before a struggling Okeke was escorted away by ICE agents.
Lefty pols and activists accused the NYPD of assisting ICE at the time.
“New York City is a sanctuary city,” tweeted Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who is also running for Congress. “The NYPD shouldn’t be helping ICE in any shape or form.”
But Tisch argued NYPD’s presence stopped deadly violence from breaking out between the feds and demonstrators akin to the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
“That did not happen a little over a week ago outside Wyckoff Medical Center,” she said in her prepared remarks.
“Why? Because NYPD officers, in the middle of the night, amid chaos outside their control, did their job professionally and skillfully and made sure events did not spiral into calamity.”
She claimed critics of NYPD’s performance outside Wyckoff “have lost sight of the lives at stake.
“And misleading rhetoric that claims we’re colluding with ICE when we are emphatically not makes communities less safe,” she added, noting immigrants might not call 911 for help or to report a crime.
Tisch stressed the NYPD and federal officers will still work together to take down violent criminals – but voiced her support for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed sanctuary legislation restricting collaboration between local New York cops and ICE and blocking the federal agency from “sensitive locations.”
The proposals pushed by Democrats are expected to be part of the state’s long-delayed budget.
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