A Columbia University-hosted panel billed as “improving police-community relations” turned into a cop hate fest Thursday, with one former transit detective comparing cops who kill violent, mentally ill suspects to the Nazis.
In addition, civil-rights lawyer Norman Siegel estimated there are about 400 bad cops — meaning bigoted or hostile — in the Police Department.
“That’s not a few bad apples,” said Siegel, who has called for random psychiatric testing of cops, as part of a panel at the university’s School of International & Public Affairs.
Former transit Detective Graham Weatherspoon cited the 1999 police slaying in Borough Park, Brooklyn, of hammer-wielding, mentally disturbed Gidone Busch. No charges were filed against the officers who shot Busch.
“The Nazis killed mentally ill people,” Weatherspoon said.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a former police captain and the event’s keynote speaker, got heckled by a lone student when he suggested the NYPD’s critics also try to work with police and understand the difficulty of their work.
“Let me tell you, I don’t want to live in a city without police,” Adams told the heckler, who had shouted, “F–k trying to work with the fascist system!”