Mayor de Blasio, Commissioner Bratton: A Chance For Trust

The ties are broken, and the scars are deep. Over the past decade, we have witnessed a steep deterioration in the relationship between the administration of  Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Muslim community. How did we get here?

The 9/11 terrorist attacks cast a shadow of doubt on all American  Muslims. The engineers of that doubt included Rep. Peter King's  McCarthy-like hearings and the New York Police Department's massive surveillance of Muslims' mosques, businesses and  campuses. The citizens who were supposed to be protected by the police officers were victimized, intimidated and entrapped by the very same police officers, who even targeted mentally challenged teens. And they conducted this grand betrayal in the name of national security.

The central actors in this broken trust were Mayor Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Ray Kelly. The mayor and police commissioner broke those bonds, and now it's up to the new mayor and the new commissioner to knit them back together. The burden of reconciliation is a heavy burden.

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio  and  his choice for police commissioner, William J. Bratton, have the opportunity to rebuild the mutual trust between the city and and its Muslim communities. But these communities are expressing concern over the mayor-elect's choice of Bratton. We have to wonder nervously: Will he continue the spying on Muslims that Kelly has continued so aggressively ?

What better gesture of reconciliation could there be than rectifying the egregious injustice against one of the NYPD's own: my son, Cadet Mohammad Salman Hamdani? At Salman's funeral, on April 5, 2002, Bloomberg said this:

" Salman walked towards the towers when others were running away from it. The City of New York thanks you for giving us your son." Yet he has steadfastly  declined to acknowledge this young man's sacrifice as a Cadet of the NYPD  on the official first-responder list!

Mayor-elect de Blasio has the power to rectify this injustice and not cheat Salman by denying him his due place in history. He needs to set the record straight by acknowledging Salman Hamdani as an NYPD cadet and a first responder on the official list. This gesture will go a long way toward rebuilding the lost trust between the City of New York's administration and its Muslim communities.