WNYC’s Brian Lehrer has been hosting the “Ask the Mayor” segment, in which Mayor Bill de Blasio takes calls from New Yorkers, on Fridays for a long time. This particular Friday, the mayor was forced to answer questions about police tactics seen in his city over the last week. And he did. He answered people’s questions, including why police become “werewolves” after the newly instated city curfew and why NYPD officers are failing to wear face masks. “Answer” might be a strong claim, though.

Some might have been expecting something similar to the briefly cathartic experience of watching L.A. citizens voice their concern via Zoom on Tuesday, speaking directly to the LAPD chief, Michel Moore, and the police commission. The officials had to, per official medical terminology, eat shit. They could not respond, just listen.

The New York mayor did respond, however. It was a call-in show. And his answers were illuminating, more so with regard to his ability to obfuscate and redirect questions than in evidence of actual soul searching. Here is some context for the calls that you likely already know, but which bears repeating:

In New York, as de Blasio’s constituents protest police violence, curfews have been put in place and habeas corpus has been violated. Essential workers, including food delivery and health care workers, who are officially exempt from the curfew, have been arrested and kept from getting home. And it was not mentioned in the calls, but it’s also Breonna Taylor’s birthday today. She would have been 27. She was an EMT, and the Louisville police entered her home and shot her eight times. The officers were not wearing body cameras.

The initial call to de Blasio was from a man named Patrick, who has organized peaceful vigils outside the mayor’s residence every night, and wondered aloud why the police have become “werewolves” after curfew. De Blasio answered by talking about looting that happened days ago. He cited reports he heard from police that “anarchists” are making trouble and they had “evidence of violence about to happen” to answer a number of questions, including one from Lehrer about the “kettling” tactic used in the Bronx Thursday night, where phalanxes of police in riot gear surrounded the protesters on all sides and arrested dozens of them. The mayor, who mainly quoted police throughout the exercise (aside from mentioning his daughter at one point, who was arrested at a protest), responded, “I’m not hearing objectivity in your question.”

De Blasio, sometimes considered the police union’s gofer, despite the organizations clear disdain for him, conceded that a few things were unacceptable—the badges being covered up, body cameras not being turned on, officers largely not wearing face masks—but did not articulate what he was doing to fix the issues. “This is where there’s a sense, and I hear it loud and clear, [of a] double standard, and that’s not good. That’s not acceptable. If people feel that the police are not holding themselves to the same standard that they hold everyone else, that is where a breakdown of trust occurs,” he said. He gave no answer as to what he could do about it or what he would do about it.

Toward the end de Blasio said, essentially, don’t believe what you see on video, though he also said that the videos prompted investigations. “Sometimes what we see with our own eyes is the whole story, and that means fast investigation, fast action. Sometimes it’s not the whole story,” he said. “Sometimes there’s more going on than a short video shows. That incident was horrible, with the pushing to the ground. Made no sense to me…If someone’s pushed to the ground, a protester is pushed to the ground like that, and then hurt, police are supposed to help her,” referring to an early video out of the demonstrations that showed an officer violently shoving a woman. She alleged she suffered a seizure and concussion as a result. He said that that’s one of the cases being “immediately acted upon,” and “suspensions” are being considered.

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