Forest Hills Car Cavalcade Shows Support For NYPD

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Honking drivers rolled past the police stations in Kew Gardens and Forest Hills on Sunday for a car cavalcade to show support for the NYPD.

A couple hundred drivers paraded past the NYPD's 107th and 112th Precincts during the day, some waving American flags and others bearing makeshift thank-you signs, according to CBS2 New York.

“We feel that defending the police and backing the blue is very, very important for the entire world," Queens Jewish Link publisher Yaakov Serle, who organized the event with several rabbis, told CBS2. "We hope this leaves a message to the rest of the world, that the rest of the world should defend law and order."

Police officers told CBS2 they were grateful for the gesture, which is among several "Blue Lives Matter" demonstrations that have taken place in Queens this summer.

The rallies are largely a response to recent Black Lives Matter protests demanding police reform and an end to racial profiling by law enforcement, sparked by the Memorial Day death of Minnesota man George Floyd after a police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

NYPD leaders claim those protests have caused officers' morale to plummet; one police officer characterized the protests over Floyd's death as an "all-out war on cops," according to the New York Post.

Pro-police marchers have at times clashed with Black Lives Matter counter-protesters, with some "Blue Lives Matter" demonstrators spewing racist remarks and attacking counter-protesters.

Mayor Bill de Blasio gave a nod to the Black Lives Matter protests last week as he signed a package of police reform bills into law, including a ban on chokeholds, a measure protecting New Yorkers' right to record NYPD officers and a requirement that police officers display their badge numbers.

“The Black Lives Matter movement has been at the forefront of change in New York City and across our nation," he said.

NYPD Commissioner Dermot F. Shea claimed the measures, combined with recent criminal justice reforms to reduce the city's jail population, will have an adverse impact on public safety by "crippling police officers," according to NY1.

Shea also blasted the reform efforts in a speech last week to other department leaders, referring to protesters advocating the reforms as “the 1 percent fringe lunatics," according to a video obtained by the New York Daily News.