SGT. MULLINS GOES TO WAR

As president of the NYPD’s sergeants union, ED MULLINS has become the city’s most virulent opponent of police reform.

- JAMES D. WALSH

ON A RECENT Monday morning, Joe Piscopo—“former Saturday Night Live superstar”—used his AM-radio show to decry the plight of Italian Americans. City officials in Newark, New Jersey, had just taken down a statue of Christopher Columbus, and Piscopo feared other effigies of the Italian explorer might be under threat. “If these creepy losers, these thugs, go near that statue in Columbus Circle, we will mobilize,” he vowed. Then he welcomed his next guest, who picked up where Piscopo left off without missing a beat.

“I was just listening to you talk about the Columbus statue and the attack on the Italian Americans, and you’re 100 percent correct,” said Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, which represents nearly 5,000 officers of the NYPD. “We’re wiping away our history, and we’re painting Black Lives Matter signs in the streets.”

As a regular on the conservative-media circuit, Mullins has perfected the art of playing directly to the fears of older white voters. “What they’re attacking is the fiber for what we believe in. They’re attacking law and order and authority. When they get past us, Joe, they will be in your studio taking control of the message. They will be in people’s homes taking control of their homes, running the subways, not letting children play in parks. The silent majority cannot sit by and be silent.”