#De Blasio shades ex-health boss Dr. Oxiris Barbot, touts relationship with Dermot Shea

Mayor de Blasio talked up his good relationship with Police Commissioner Dermot Shea Wednesday, as he explained his decision to oust Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot.

“It’s been a very collegial dynamic,” de Blasio said. “There’s nothing he said that I took personal offense to. We have talked constantly.”


De Blasio said during a remote City Hall press briefing that he demands “teamwork” and “communication” from his commissioners.

And though both Shea and Barbot had clashed with the mayor over his decisions around policing and the coronavirus, he still felt comfortable working with the police boss.

“When he has a concern he raises it forthrightly. When it’s something that I understand he thinks is important to talk about publicly he and I talk about it first and we come to an agreement on the right way to address things.

Barbot infamously blew off a pressing NYPD request for surgical masks during the height of the COVID-19 crisis in March — telling a high-ranking police boss that “I don’t give two rats’ asses about your cops.”

She later apologized.

“If someone, anyone, says something that wasn’t the right thing to say it’s important to clear the air and just move forward and that’s what happened,” de Blasio recounted Wednesday.

De Blasio suggested he made the decision to fire Barbot last weekend, before she submitted a resignation letter Tuesday criticizing the mayor for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I always prefer if we’ve gotten to a situation where we got to make a change that there be a real conversation with someone. Everyone’s mature adults. Some things just don’t work out sometimes. It’s just time for a change in leadership especially as were getting ready for a whole host of new challenges and that’s the point we got to this weekend,” he said.