The president and the NYPD

Daily Point

Biden’s police highlights

New Yorkers might have heard an echo in President Joe Biden’s State of the Union mention of NYPD officers Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora Tuesday night. It was not the first time he has memorialized members of the NYPD who were killed on the job.

In 2014, the then-vice president traveled to New York to eulogize Rafael Ramos, one of the officers shot in their patrol car at point-blank range.

As he often does in such appearances, Biden referenced his own family’s experience with untimely death, noting that "I know from personal experience that there is little anyone can say or do at this moment to ease the pain," according to a speech transcript.

Now as then, Biden attempted to strike a difficult balance by praising and empathizing with police work, at a time when major incidents of civilian deaths at police hands — from Eric Garner and Michael Brown to George Floyd — have resulted in mass protests and a pro-law enforcement counterreaction.

"I have spoken at too many funerals for too many peace officers, too many funerals for brave women and men who kept us safe and watched their families grieve," Biden said in 2014.

He struck a similar note on Tuesday while referencing Rivera and Mora, who were fatally shot while responding to a Harlem domestic call in January.

"I spoke with their families and told them that we are forever in debt for their sacrifice, and we will carry on their mission to restore the trust and safety every community deserves," Biden said.

He pointed to the changing face of the police department, how the two officers were both "Dominican Americans who’d grown up on the same streets they later chose to patrol as police officers." Biden highlighted similar details in 2014 regarding Ramos and his partner Wenjian Liu: "the son of a Chinese immigrant shared a patrol with a Hispanic minister in training."

Family members of the dead officers were not among the announced SOTU guests on Tuesday, a departure from the gallery guest lists of President Donald Trump’s addresses, which included injured or exemplary officers and the widows of California law enforcement members who had been killed by a person in the country illegally.

But Biden’s midterm-year rhetoric was unsurprisingly pro-cop: He derided the "defund the police" slogan and said "the answer is to fund the police." And he turned to the personal touch on which he has often relied, noting that he spoke with Mora and Rivera’s families on a recent visit to New York.

He did the same in 2014, going to Brooklyn to visit Liu’s family. According to Biden’s 2017 book "Promise Me, Dad," Liu’s father later returned the favor and attended the wake of Biden’s cancer-stricken son, Beau.

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Talking Point

Let’s make a deal

The long-awaited redevelopment of Hicksville took a step forward Tuesday, as the Oyster Bay Town board approved a memorandum of understanding between the town and the Long Island Rail Road that will allow the town to design and develop LIRR property around the Hicksville train station.

The deal specifically applies to parts of the town’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative, the $10 million state grant that Oyster Bay won in 2017. The deal, which included the state in the discussions, will allow the town to begin designing the so-called Festival Pathway, a smaller version of what used to be called Festival Plaza, which will take up some of the LIRR’s parking lots and other property stretching from the station toward Broadway, along with an expansion of Kennedy Park, which is located between Jerusalem Avenue and Broadway, just to the east of the station, and improvements to the so-called Underline — the area beneath the station and train tracks, which will gain new lighting, artwork and more.

Also on the town’s to-do list: A similar agreement with the state Department of Transportation, so traffic-calming and pedestrian-friendly improvements can be made to major roads, like Broadway and Newbridge, that cut through Hicksville’s downtown.

With the MOU approval, the town hopes to complete design work by the end of 2022 and start construction in early 2023, Colin Bell, the town’s deputy commissioner for intergovernmental affairs, told The Point.

But the MOU goes beyond those projects to discuss a "long-term planning effort" to deal with station improvements, the potential need for additional parking, and "construction of transit-oriented development at or near the Station."

James McCaffrey, Oyster Bay’s deputy commissioner of planning and development, told The Point that the town’s efforts to bring in mixed-use projects are "well on their way," and on a similar timetable. Two mixed-use projects — one that would bring 214 residential units and another that includes 91 units of housing — are currently undergoing planning and environmental review and McCaffrey said he expects them to be under construction by 2023, too, with potential openings as soon as early 2024.

McCaffrey noted that with all of the elements on a similar timetable, it’s now easier to incorporate architectural elements and other pieces of the station-related projects associated with the DRI into the additional mixed-use projects now being planned.

"We’re definitely at the crossroads," McCaffrey said. "The timing works out perfectly … It will make it cohesive. It’s actually good that they all came together at the same time."

If McCaffrey’s right, and the town’s plans actually continue to move forward, 2024 could be the year change finally comes to Hicksville.

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Pencil Point

Putin' him in his place

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Final Point

No masking her partisan leanings

New York Republicans might not be so quick to give up their rhetoric on COVID-19 mask requirements — as underscored during a seven-minute speech Monday at their state convention by Margaret Marchand, vice president of the Locust Valley school board.

Saying she was there on her own and not representing the district, Marchand said she was asked by the state GOP committee to offer insight on "what the schools statewide have been going through the past 23 months."

"Our faces are our identity," she said, adding that adults and children communicate with each other not just through words but through such expressions as smiles and scowls. "We have allowed the youngest people in our society who [have] no voice to have their feelings covered for the past 23 months in and out of school."

Marchand cautioned that the mask mandate is to be lifted Wednesday in "some schools" but that "there are still some districts with boards who are afraid to ask the questions and there are districts with boards who are afraid to stand up and understand what their elected power is."

Which is to say anti-mask activists have no plan to declare an end to opposing the governance of Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul — whom Marchand accused of overstepping her powers and circumventing the legislative process. Unlike Democrats, Marchand said current GOP County Executive Bruce Blakeman "sat with us, giving us a promise. He said ‘I will fight for you and stand with parents for parental choice.’"

Marchand echoed a refrain heard on the Republican side for some time. "What we’ve done to these children is harmful. It did harm them," she asserted. And she told the party faithful in the room: "I support every single one of you."

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

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