Editorials of The Times

Mr. Mayor, Why No Outrage Over a Mother’s Brutal Arrest?

“The most sacred duty of government is to protect people,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said, “especially defenseless children. There is nothing more barbaric than separating children from their parents. There is no excuse for this horror and certainly no reason.”

Was that the mayor’s response to a stomach-churning video of a mother’s arrest in a New York City welfare office Friday as police officers tried to yank her child from her? No, it was a tweet by de Blasio in May about the Trump administration’s family separation policy for asylum-seekers at the border.

He’s shown much less passion in his response to the arrest.

In the video, a woman identified by officials as Jazmine Headley is seen on her back on the floor of a Brooklyn benefits office surrounded by officers from the New York Police Department and the city’s Human Resources Administration. Headley desperately tries to hold on to her 1-year-old as a police officer tries to tug the boy from her arms.

“You’re hurting my son!” the woman screams on the video, recorded by a bystander and posted to Facebook. Headley was held without bail on Rikers Island over the weekend. Relatives are caring for her son.

For most of Monday, de Blasio said nothing about the video — even as he hosted an event celebrating the 25th anniversary of the city’s police oversight board, the Civilian Complaint Review Board. It would have been the perfect moment to brief the city on the episode. Instead, he ignored a flurry of questions shouted by reporters and walked out of the room.

It was only several hours later that he tweeted about the video, calling it “a disturbing incident.”

“Like anyone who’s watched this video, I have a lot of questions about how this was handled,” he wrote, adding that the city agencies involved would “get to the bottom” of what happened.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill also called the video “disturbing” and said his department was investigating the incident. But why can’t the city explain why the police were called in the first place and why Headley was being arrested, apparently for refusing to leave the office?

The social services commissioner, Steven Banks, who oversees the Human Resources Administration, which administers many benefit programs, was appropriately upset.

“HRA centers must be safe havens for New Yorkers needing to access benefits to improve their lives,” Banks said. “I am deeply troubled by the incident, and a thorough review was launched over the weekend to get to the bottom of what happened.”

He said he would improve training for officers and other staff members to defuse difficult situations before calling the Police Department. The agency’s officers who were involved in the matter have been put on leave.

De Blasio’s handling of the incident shows how far he has strayed from his righteous roots as a candidate promising to hold the police accountable and change the way they interact with minority residents like Headley, who is black.

There has been some progress. Police stops have continued to decline sharply under the mayor, for example. The city moved this year to reduce marijuana arrests, another important effort at improvement. But since the moment early in his first term when officers turned their backs on him at the funerals of two police officers, he has largely shied from backing more aggressive efforts at police oversight and has brushed aside concerns from City Council members, the Department of Investigation and others.

For years now de Blasio has been standoffish to the department, leaving his commissioner to deal with the toughest questions about policing, just as he did Monday. That’s disappointing from a mayor who said he wanted to make New York City America’s fairest big city.

Knowing she would lose, Theresa May on Monday aborted a vote on her embattled Brexit deal. The humiliation of the moment was underscored by the derisive laughter in Parliament as the prime minister announced the delay, especially when she claimed there was still “broad support for many of the key aspects” of the agreement. But as the March deadline looms for Britain’s exit from the European Union, the question is whether the search for a compromise has been a mission impossible all along.

The delay was another of the many “What next?” moments since the fateful referendum in June 2016 in which the British voted 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent to leave the European Union. But with the bloc showing little interest in reopening negotiations on the 585-page agreement it reached with May, the options are few and fraught.

Once again, questions are being asked about what May should or should not have done over the 2 1/2 years she has struggled to bridge the gap between those who demand an exit from the union no matter what the consequences, and those who see that exit as an economic and social disaster. No doubt May made mistakes. But as Ellen Barry noted in a report in The Times on the prime minister’s quest for a compromise, “Historians will dispute whether such a thing was ever possible.” And May, she writes, was probably the right person to give it a try: an old-fashioned civil servant, without ideology or overweening ambition.

Though the implications and consequences of Brexit have been endlessly and passionately parsed in the referendum campaign and since, the chasm between the Leavers and the Remainers has become only broader, a fact on display as the two camps marched a couple of miles apart in London on Sunday. Their slogans were not about the fine print in the deal, which is most likely the best one possible, but about competing visions of Britain. It was less a political clash than a clash of cultures.

By delaying Tuesday’s vote by Parliament, May bought some time. But not much, and at high cost. She evidently hopes she can squeeze some concessions out of a European Union summit scheduled for Thursday and Friday that could placate some members of Parliament on the most contentious issue, the open border between Ireland and the British region of Northern Ireland. Both sides are committed to keeping the border open. But since that would mean keeping part of Britain in the union’s single market, the British and union negotiators agreed that as a “backstop,” Britain would remain bound by some rules of the European Union if another solution was not found by the end of a transition period in December 2020. To some supporters of Brexit this is anathema. But as an exasperated member of the European Union Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, tweeted, “Just keep in mind that we will never let the Irish down. This delay will further aggravate the uncertainty for people & businesses.”

Reopening the talks could also open the door to more European Union demands, like France’s desire for future access to British fishing waters or Spain’s claims over Gibraltar. And political sharks at home, from Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn to the hard-core Conservative Brexiteers ranged behind Boris Johnson, have been quick to sense May’s weakness.

And so at the eleventh hour, it remains unclear what’s next, a fact that sent the pound tumbling again. A Conservative leadership struggle, or new elections, or even a new referendum are all considered. Yet however it plays out, the British government, whether under May, Corbyn, Johnson or anyone else, will still be faced with finding a way either to put in place a messy divorce that would infuriate a major portion of the nation, or abandoning the process, staying in the European Union and infuriating a different portion of the population. The only other option, an exit with no deal, would be a disaster.

On one question, at least, the European Court of Justice provided clarity Monday when it ruled that Britain could, if it chose, rip up its notification to the European Union that it wanted to leave, and simply stay.