Bloomberg backs off police strike comment

Mayor Michael Bloomberg Tuesday backed off comments he made supporting the notion of a nationwide police strike over a failure by the federal government to toughen gun control laws.

Speaking Monday to Piers Morgan on CNN, Bloomberg said, "I don't understand why police officers across the country don't stand up collectively and say, 'We are going to go on strike' " unless laws are passed that better protect cops.

Tuesday, the mayor told reporters he didn't mean it literally. "In New York they can't go on strike; there's a law against it," he said.

Officials said Bloomberg was merely venting his frustration over inaction in Washington on gun control, something the mayor has been commenting about almost daily since the massacre in Aurora, Colo.

"I think he got caught up in passion of the moment," said City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria), chair of the public safety committee.

NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, discussing developments in the Bronx shooting death of a 4-year-old boy on Sunday, said there's no overarching federal strategy to deal with gun violence.

"Frustration that we all feel [is] that there is inadequate gun control in this country, as witnessed by fact we have three guns being used, or perhaps four guns being used, in this incident," Kelly said.

"The mayor and I have stood side by side at the bedside of police officers shot with illegal firearms, and we've stood with the grieving families of police officers who lost their lives to guns that never should have been here," said Patrick Lynch, head of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.