New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to change the way the New York Police Department (NYPD) enforced the law. But the recent death of an African American man at the hands of white police officers has rekindled long-standing controversy about the tactics of the force, and may have exposed a rift between the new mayor and his Chief of Police.

After taking office earlier this year, De Blasio made good on promises to sharply curtail the "stop-and-frisk" practice of detaining pedestrians without suspicion of criminal activity, and to be fairer in policing "quality of life" crimes that detractors have labeled harassment.

While the mayor has been widely applauded for his actions by civil rights groups and minority leaders citywide, the police union has complained that De Blasio's strategy has handcuffed the police instead of the criminals, making New York City's streets more dangerous.

De Blasio has also been criticized by some liberals for reappointing William Bratton, the police chief under the Giuliani administration and architect of the city's former policing policy, to head the NYPD.

Detractors saw Bratton's appointment as a concession to conservative advocates of strong policing, and a contradiction of the mayor's promised reforms.

In the first major policing scandal of the new administration, video evidence of the deadly arrest of former city employee Eric Garner, 43, is giving New Yorkers what appears to be a firsthand account of police procedure, and reactions have split between powerful, long-standing political factions in the US' largest and most diverse city.

Defenders of Bratton's "broken windows" theory of policing are increasingly on the defensive against those who ardently support De Blasio's purported interest in protecting individual liberties, despite New York City's long-term decrease in violent crime, and its self-reported status as "the safest city in the US."

This turn in popular opinion seems to mark a departure from the culture of uniform administrative support for police officers under former mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg toward rekindled support for individual rights amid New York City's increasingly safer streets.

Setting the stage for the political and media eruptions following Garner's death was De Blasio's decision in January to drop the city's appeal of a recent court ruling that held "stop and frisk" policing actively discriminated against blacks and Hispanics.

A different New York judge recently reported to the media that 96 percent of those appearing before his court on charges of public consumption of alcohol, the most common "quality of life" summons, were non-white.

When a group of police officers encountered Garner on July 17, it was originally reported that they had witnessed him being involved in a fight, one that Garner claimed he was trying to break up.

Subsequent police accounts said officers had observed Garner illegally selling single cigarettes, an offense for which he has been repeatedly cited, and has contested in all cases.

It is not yet clear whether or not Garner was in possession of any cigarettes at the time of his arrest, but his family told reporters he had none.

New York City has a long history of white police officers killing non-white citizens without serious consequence, and if New York City police officers were harassing Garner for a minor crime or merely acting in the interest of de-escalating violence when they attempted to arrest him, a few facts put the episode in context.

For instance, Garner was a large dark-skinned African American man, with a history of minor misdemeanor charges. The police officers who confronted him were all white, and the one who applied the chokehold, Daniel Pantaleo, had a history of brutality complaints made against him.

Further, the practice of applying chokeholds to those being arrested is specifically prohibited according to NYPD police procedure, but citizen complaints against police allegedly using the illegal tactic have been mostly dismissed.

Video evidence of Garner's arrest spotlights New York City's Civilian Complaint Review Board report that 1,022 complaints about police using chokeholds have been received in the past five years, with only nine being substantiated. 

Mayor De Blasio held a joint press conference with Bratton, saying he was "deeply troubled by the video."

Nevertheless, in subsequent comments to the press, Bratton defended the style of police work his officers engaged in, calling it "what we do," and made it clear that while he didn't endorse the chokehold, he didn't "expect his officers to back down from [such] an arrest." Bratton also said "I personally don't think that race was a factor in the incident involved in this tragic death."

Whatever the chief's personal views, the reality on the ground looks quite different.

The author is a freelance writer and political observer living in Columbus, Ohio. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn