IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS, PERPS WHO ATTACKED A COP EXPECTED TO GET THE SHIT KICKED OUT OF THEM

The shameful betrayal of New York’s Finest 

 

By Bob McManus

 

New York Post

November 16, 2021

 

 

Police body camera footage allegedly shows Isus Thompson Pepe assaulting an NYPD officer on Nov. 16, 2021 

 

NYPD Officer Kyo Sun Lee was minding his own business in The Bronx on Sunday — that is, he was walking a beat in the service of New York City — when he was attacked without warning or provocation. 

Randomly — because he was a cop. 

Welcome to the new normal — that is, to a city where donning the blue can be to strap a target on your back. And where prosecutors are cool with that. 

Lee’s injuries were slight and a suspect was quickly corralled — and that’s where this cautionary tale truly begins. 

 

Isus Thompson is busted for attempting to cill NYPD cop

 

Police say Lee was attacked by 38-year-old Isus Thompson — who did a scandalously short, two-year bit in state prison for stabbing a Queens cop in 2008. This time, a less lethal weapon was employed — Thompson, police allege, struck Lee in the head with a backpack containing a small safe, of all things. 

 

Suspect Isus Thompson only spent two years in jail after his alleged stabbing on NYPD officer Demitrios Raptis in 2008

 

But cops say Thompson also was carrying a box cutter when arrested, so who knows how things might have turned out. 

Or still might, for that matter. Thompson had scarcely been booked when he was put back on the street — because Bronx prosecutors didn’t request bail. 

Really. This is where things stand in soon-to-be post-de Blasio New York: Felony assault on a police officer is taken by prosecutors about as seriously as shoplifting or turnstile-jumping — petty offenses which also are ignored, but which don’t directly threaten the public order. At least in the short run. 

But random attacks on police officers — in the end, agents of the rule of law — are a grave threat to order and they are not to be tolerated. It is shocking that Bronx prosecutors don’t understand this. 

There’s no guarantee the judge in this case actually would have set bail if asked — that’s how far the city has fallen — but he wasn’t asked, and that’s the scandal. 

Yet cops aren’t potted plants. It’s stupid — and, quite frankly, immoral — to expect them to accept this new threat to their lives and well-being, on top of all the other risks that go with the job. 

It wasn’t so long ago that officers had their own way of dealing with cop-fighters. Call it nightstick justice, or whatever you like, but generally it was understood on the street that an extra-judicial price would be paid for injuring an officer. 

Those days are gone — cell-phone video saw to that, and good riddance — but this doesn’t mean cops now lack the means to protect themselves. They can always pretend to be potted plants. 

Which is to say, they simply can turn away from danger — and, given the sharp rise in violent crime since the anti-police riots of 2020, one suspects there’s a lot of that going on already. 

Manhattan, of course, also doesn’t prosecute shoplifting and turnstile-jumping — and it shows. Now it’s about to get a new DA, Alvin Bragg, who was elected on a platform promising “police accountability.” 

The phrase means different things to different people, but a fair translation could be: “Harsh on cops; soft on crooks.” 

So will Manhattan be springing cop-fighters after Jan. 1? 

If so, a price will be paid — and it’ll be steepest in those neighborhoods that already are the hardest hit by drug-related turf wars and near-daily gun battles. 

Call the police? Sure thing — just don’t expect much. Cops aren’t kamikaze pilots.