#Blue and Black Lives Matter protesters clash at Brooklyn rally
“#Blue and Black Lives Matter protesters clash at Brooklyn rally”
Tempers flared in Brooklyn Saturday as anti-cop protesters crashed a Blue Lives Matter rally — complete with furious finger-pointing and a lot of shouting, pushing and shoving.
Some three dozen anti-cop protesters showed up just before the 11 a.m. start of the rally at 13th Avenue and Bay Ridge Avenue in Dyker Heights.
They confronted a crowd of more than 300 police supporters, including Lou Gentile, a 70-year-old Army vet who traveled to the rally from Staten Island in a three-bus caravan.
“I had to be here to defend my police – defend them and to show that I’m in total support of them,” Gentile told The Post.
Gentile, who said the disrespect of police officers goes back to last summer’s string of incidents in which several cops were doused with water while out on the streets.
“They risk their lives every day for us. When they put that gun on and that uniform, they risk their lives,” Gentile said pointing at cops.
“When you call them, who’s going to come? A social worker? I don’t think so. Who’s going to come? Him, him and him,” he said, again pointing at cops, “to protect your life.”
While some signs were ripped out of the hands of counter-protesters, it’s unclear if any punches were actually thrown between the two groups, both of which appeared to be mostly white folks.
The NYPD quickly stepped in to separate the anti-cop protesters, who carried Black Lives Matter signs, from the pro-cop protesters, who chanted “NYPD!” and carried signs reading Blue Lives Matter.
The anti-cop protesters were barred from joining the rally as it marched up 13th Avenue. No arrests were reported.
“The Blue Lives Matter march – there is no such thing as a blue life, it’s a blue shirt,” one of them, who declined to give his name, complained.
“They seem to think that Black Lives Matter is a personal attack on them, on their white lives and the police, but what we want is equality,” he said.
“We want fair treatment under the law and the police has shown that they can not do that.”
But members of the pro-cop contingent said the police needed community support now more than ever.
“It’s not fair to them,” teacher Natallia Vroublebski, 40, of Dyker Heights, said of the ongoing waves of anti-cop rallies and defunding efforts.
“We need them, we are seeing the crime goes up and it’s not good and we need them. They should not have cut their budget. I don’t agree with that.”
Added a pro-cop protester who said he was a union plumber and gave his name as Anthony — and who was waving a Trump/Pence 2020 flag — “Trump, our president, is for law and order to keep all of us safe — me, you, everybody needs to be be kept safe by the NYPD or any police.”
He said, “You can’t say all cops are bad because they are not. The ones that are bad they should be removed.”
“You are taking away our cops from the streets and these undercover cops that do their job – and it’s really hard to keep us safe – they are the ones who are in the most jeopardy and it you take them away, it’s going to take away from us at the end of the day.”
Of the Black Lives Matter protesters, he added, “Everybody deserves the right to freedom my speak. They have their right to protest as well.”
Additional reporting by Laura Italiano
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