When you advertise with a burning police car, you don’t plan a ‘peaceful rally’

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Protesters are arrested by NYPD for violating the citys’ 8 p.m. curfew at 136th and Brook Avenue in the Bronx.
Stephen Yang

It’s all too telling that much of the local media and many politicians are faulting the NYPD for its handling of Thursday night’s Mott Haven protest: They still refuse to recognize even obvious risks of violence.

The event was organized by a group styling itself FTP — which doesn’t mean Friend The Police, as the chants made obvious. FTP is another face for Decolonize This Place, which intentionally did major damage to subway OMNY readers in January.

Both FTP and DTP promoted the event on social media with invites featuring a burning NYPD squad car and a promise to do battle with cops.

Based on such information revealing clear violent intent, Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed with (and later stood behind) Police Commissioner Dermot Shea’s decision to take a firm and forceful stand against another night of havoc in a Bronx commercial district.

Frankly, staging a rally after the 8 p.m. curfew is, by itself, a telling sign: Outside agitators and looters have both proven eager to exploit such protests. Why enable them?

Bigger picture: For all these groups’ claims to speak for the wider public, they don’t. New Yorkers of all races think cops in their own neighborhood are fine. When last the Quinnipiac Poll checked (not since 2017, since it’s been a dead issue), solid majorities of white, black and Hispanic New Yorkers approved of the way the police in their community performed their job. That the NYPD’s citywide approval is a bit less is the result of incessant anti-cop propaganda.

Indeed, Shea notes that it was Mott Haven residents on-scene who pointed out to his cops the troublemakers and denounced the FTP hooligans.

The NYPD isn’t being racist when it moves to protect a Bronx neighborhood from violence and disorder — the racist thing to do would be to let the bad guys run wild.

This has ceased being about protests. Professional cop-haters have sought to exacerbate community-police tensions to their own ends. FTP organizers telling marchers, “If police put hands on us, we’ll put them back on them,” isn’t the language of nonviolent protest or civil disobedience.

Advertise on social media your intention to wreak havoc in a South Bronx commercial district and attack the police, and you’ve guaranteed a strong NYPD presence. That’s plainly what the hooligans behind FTP desired.

They can’t wait to clash with police, break the law and violate the curfew — and then demand kid-glove treatment.

Kudos to de Blasio for standing by his police commanders and the people of the Bronx against a pack of anti-cop wolves pretending to be peaceful protesters.