New York, NY – Members of the NYPD Hate Crimes Unit Honored by City Council

New York, NY – City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has given a glowing proclamation to some cops she would love to see lose their jobs.

Quinn presided at a ceremony before last week’s City Council session honoring the members of the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force, an elite detective unit charged with investigating bias and hate crimes.

She heaped praise on the unit’s commander, Inspector Michael Osgood, and jokingly noted that they often chat about various issues, including, “what else we could be doing to try to put you out of a job, quite frankly; put you in a different position.”

But as long as hate crimes exist, Quinn and the Council proclaimed that the unit’s hard work is deeply appreciated by the city.

With Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly on hand, along with seven representatives of the task force, the proclamation was read to “gratefully honor” the unit for its general “excellent” work since being formed in 2000, and, in particular, for speedy arrests in two hate-crime cases in recent weeks.

“Whereas, hate crimes not only affect individuals who are attacked because of their perceived race, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, gender identity, disability, or sexual orientation,” the proclamation stated, “they also tear at the very fabric of our free society. The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force performs an extraordinary service to all New Yorkers.”

The proclamation cited the arrests of four suspects in the vicious April 5 attack on Staten Island on bakery worker Rodulfo Olmedo, 26, who was clubbed and robbed by a group of teens who yelled anti-Mexican slurs. It also cited the April 9 arrest of three teens – two of them girls – for a string of attacks targeting Asian women on the lower East Side.

Kelly said the detectives used a combination of state-of-the-art technology and old-fashioned “shoe leather.”

“We simply won’t tolerate them,” Kelly said of hate crimes. “We devote more resources to investigating hate crime than any jurisdiction in America, as far as I know, and probably the world.”

Task force members at the ceremony were: Capt. Paul Saraceno, Sgt. Patrick Rodrigo and Detectives Kim Jackson, Simi Paul, Eric Sanchez, Rodney Theodule and Sidney Valer.

“Not every New Yorker knows about the hate crime task force,” remarked Quinn. “In a way that’s a good thing because they haven’t experienced hate crime. But in a way, I wish everybody knew what a terrific, elite squad of detectives we have.”