A remarkable thing happened in New York City over Christmas and New Year’s weeks.

Summonses issued by police plunged. Parking tickets? Down 92 percent compared with the same period a year earlier. Moving violations? Down 93 percent. Criminal citations? Also down 93 percent.

It’s not as though New York cabbies suddenly started driving better, other motorists stopped double parking and vagrants ceased urinating in public.

The explanation is that New York City police, peeved at what they consider a lack of respect from Mayor Bill de Blasio, stopped doing their jobs.

The enforcement slowdown, a petulant response to criticism, ill-serves the public. How it is resolved will send a message to police unions and public officials across the country about the proper boundaries of uniformed protest.

The low-level war between the NYPD and de Blasio was provoked by two despicable incidents: Five days before Christmas, a deranged murderer surprised officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in their patrol car and shot them to death. Separately, protesters angry at the killing of black men by law enforcement roamed through city streets shouting, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!”

That understandably enraged police, and de Blasio needlessly made things worse by appearing with activist Al Sharpton, a frequent NYPD critic, and publicly saying he had warned his biracial son to be extra careful in any encounter with officers.

Police reacted by turning their backs on de Blasio when he visited the hospital where Liu and Ramos had been brought. The cops turned that spontaneous anger into disrespect by repeating the gesture at the funerals of Liu and Ramos. On top of this came the work slowdown, a variation on “blue flu” sickouts employed in labor disputes involving police.

Union leaders such as Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, tacitly egged officers on while denying the work action was happening or was related to contract talks. Police Commissioner William Bratton provided dubious leadership by first seeming to pretend the slowdown wasn’t deliberate then saying on Friday that it was, but that it was ending. New figures, due Monday, will indicate whether that’s the case.

All this might be merely a curiosity outside the nation’s notoriously contentious largest city if it didn’t come at a time when the country is convulsed by the deaths of unarmed black men by law enforcement, some of whom might be alive if officers had tried less-lethal means of subduing them.

Few jobs are tougher or more dangerous than being a police officer, and police deserve the respect and thanks of the people they serve and protect. But like anyone else, they make mistakes, and reasonable criticism is justified when that happens.

Police are trained not to overreact to provocations that would unhinge most civilians. That should include the clumsy rhetoric of politicians.

New York’s finest would do themselves and their city a favor — and set a useful example for police and citizens across the nation — by getting back to work.

— USA Today

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