One Police Plaza

Maple on Rachel: How Scrumptious 

September 29, 2014

Perhaps it reflected a new era of good feeling, ushered in by Commissioner Bill Bratton’s collaborative-policing approach. Or perhaps it was just a bunch of law enforcement guys getting older and becoming mellow.

But last week the NYPD engaged in a rare event at Police Plaza: a love-fest.

The occasion celebrated the life and times of the late Jack Maple — The Jackster, as he called himself — who is regarded as the founder of CompStat, which provides the department with a statistical-based approach to fight crime.

Maple first outlined the computer-based program on a table napkin at Elaine’s restaurant, circa 1994. It is now considered the “raison d’être” of the city’s dramatic crime drop over the past 20 years.

Scores of law enforcement personnel spoke of Maple in the kind of majestic awe that might befit Alexander the Great or Mao Tse Tung, both of whom Maple had been compared to before he died in 2001.

The event drew former Mayor David Dinkins and current Mayor Bill de Blasio who, in a humbling tribute to a man he never knew, conceded Maple was probably a more important attendee of Brooklyn Technical High School than hizzoner’s son, Dante.

At least on the educational front, let’s hope the mayor has better luck with Dante than Maple Sr. had with Jack, who never graduated from Brooklyn Tech and only later received a General Education Diploma.

Unfortunately, de Blasio can’t catch a break when it comes to mending mayoral-police relations after the chokehold death of Eric Garner as officers on Staten Island tried to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes. The website DNAinfo.com recently reported that Dante, mom Chirlane McCray and her chief of staff, Rachel Noerdlinger, attended a CompStat meeting. Such meetings are closed to the public.

Then, last week, DNAinfo.com reported that Noerdlinger’s live-in boyfriend, Hassaun McFarlan, was a convicted killer and drug trafficker who continues to get into serious scrapes with the law. The news website reported that McFarlan nearly ran a cop off the road in New Jersey last year while driving Noerdlinger’s car.

Alas, this is Team de Blasio’s amateurism at its worst. Was de Blasio unaware of Noerdlinger’s boyfriend’s past? Did he not care? Well, he’s going to have to care now.

The mayor said late last week he has faith in Noerdlinger — at least for the moment. But it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, for the mayor to easily speak on police matters when the boyfriend of one of his senior advisers has bashed police officers, referring to them as “pigs” on online posts.

Maple would probably have shaken his head in wonderment over the revelations about Noerdlinger and her boyfriend. He then would have uttered his favorite phrase: “How scrumptious.”