Friends of Bo Dietl

Why I’m Running for Mayor of New York City As a New York City police detective, I devoted my life to keeping this city safe. I have arrested thousands of criminals. I was hospitalized over 30 times for injuries in the line of duty as one of the first decoy cops so that others wouldn’t be harmed. When my career as a cop ended, I found another way to keep New Yorkers safe and started a security and private investigation company which provides highly trained security personnel to numerous sites around the city, as well as a variety of private investigative services to individuals and organizations throughout the city and the world. It’s not enough. When I look around the city I see fear, violence, and unrest. The people of my city deserve better. The city is poorly run with no respect for the mayor nationally and internationally. New York City needs leadership. They deserve leaders who will protect them, leaders with experience ensuring safety and helping those in need. That’s what I’ve done all my life, and that’s why I want to be your next mayor. The first step towards ensuring safety is restoring faith in those who are supposed to protect us. The tragedies that have occurred recently, while inexcusable, are not representative of the NYPD as a whole. Every day, thousands of police officers do their jobs right, but you don’t hear about it in the news. The city needs to be reminded that the NYPD are men and women who go out on the streets not knowing if they’ll come home to their families to ensure that everyone else’s family is safe. This process starts with our youth. New York City is a melting pot. Every race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation live here. Some neighborhoods have a higher concentration of one group than others. Those neighborhoods deserve to have police officers that are a part of their community and that understand them and their culture. If we want to restore faith in our police department and foster better relationships between them and the community, we need a police department that better reflects the community it is representing. I want to more actively recruit our inner-city youth into the NYPD. I want to place a heavy emphasis on staffing the various precincts with ethnicities that are relevant to the neighborhoods they serve. I also want to work harder at recruiting more Muslim Americans. Right now, one of the requirements for becoming an NYPD officer is that you have two years of college under your belt. A lot of our inner-city youth cannot afford college. I propose waiving this requirement so that we can actively recruit these inner-city youth with the stipulation that their employment with the NYPD is contingent upon them continuing their education while they are working as police officers. In Harlem, the police used seized drug money to refurbish a local gym where they regularly play ball with the neighborhood youths. In Brooklyn, the 90th precinct’s NY Together program lets kids and cops interact informally and engage in joint civil service projects. I want to implement something similar citywide and establish community centers where young people can interact with off-duty cops as regular people. Many inner-city kids are being raised by single parents, and without role models and proper parental supervision, they turn to crime and drugs. A safe place where kids can go, play sports, and learn life skills with their local police officers will help keep them out of danger and improve relationships between the community and the police department. Crime will go down. Confidence in police will go up. The city will be safer for everyone. Community centers can do only so much to help disadvantaged youth improve their lives, and some of our youth simply don’t want to be around police officers. As a city, we have always believed that education is the key to success; however, our educational system is overly focused on university preparedness. College isn’t for everyone, and too many of our young people are graduating without practical skills, the ability to pay their student debts, or even the ability to get a job. I was employed as a laborer and an iron worker before I became a police officer, and I’ve run a successful business for over 30 years without a single college credit. The world needs plumbers, electricians, masons, mechanics, and carpenters. The Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York is desperate for apprentices. I want to make trade schools an accessible and viable option for New York youth, especially those who can’t afford university tuition. Vocational schools are a simple and cost-effective way to ensure that young people can break out of poverty and become productive citizens. More people with jobs means fewer people living on the streets. As the city’s street homeless population grows, not only are there more impoverished people suffering, but every citizen is in greater danger from those homeless with mental or substance abuse issue