'The cop in me wants to kick my own ass': NYPD officer reportedly apologized to fellow police for kneeling at an anti-racist protest

• A police officer in Manhattan took a knee with Black Lives Matter protesters on May 31.
• A few days later, in an email obtained by the New York Post, the officer wrote an email to his colleagues, apologizing for the display.
• "I could not imagine the idea of ever coming back to work and putting on the uniform I so wrongly shamed," he wrote, adding that he's had sleeping problems and little appetite since kneeling with protesters.
• "The cop in me wants to kick my own ass," he added.

Robert Cattani, a lieutenant in the New York Police Department, took a knee with anti-racist protesters late last month, in an apparent show of solidarity against racialized police violence.

But in an email he sent to his peers in the NYPD, obtained by the New York Post, Cattani tells a different story.

"The cop in me wants to kick my own ass," Cattani, who holds a post in the Midtown South Precinct, told colleagues on June 3, saying he regrets his "horrible decision to give into a crowd of protesters' demands."

"The conditions prior to the decision to take a knee were very difficult as we were put center stage with the entire crowd chanting," the officer wrote. "I know I made the wrong decision. We didn't know how the protesters would have reacted if we didn't and were attempting to reduce any extra violence."

There was no violence at the May 31 protest in Lower Manhattan's Foley Square where he and three other officers took a knee – just a crowd of thousands chanting, "NYPD, take a knee!"

"We just want to get home safely," one protester told police. "Same as you."

Kneeling with protesters, Cattani wrote, "goes against every principle and value I stand for."

"I spent the first part of my career thriving to build a reputation of a good cop," he said. "I threw that all in the garbage [on] Sunday."

Since taking a knee, he added in the email, he's had sleeping problems and little appetite. He's also considered turning in his badge, he wrote.

"I could not imagine the idea of ever coming back to work and putting on the uniform I so wrongly shamed," he wrote. "However, I decided that was the easy way out for me and I will continue to come to work every day being there for my personnel."

"We all know that assh--e in Minneapolis was wrong," Cattani added, in reference to Derek Chauvin, who killed Black man George Floyd after kneeling on his neck for more than eight minutes.

"Yet we don't concede [sic] for other officers' mistakes," he added. "I do not place blame on anyone other than myself for not standing my ground."

Neither Cattani nor the NYPD immediately responded to Insider's requests for comment.

• Read more:
• Before his arrest, Derek Chauvin was in talks with prosecutors about a plea deal for his role in George Floyd's death
• 'It's reminiscent of Occupy': Protesters in Seattle have established a communal 'autonomous zone' to prove they don't need police
• Police departments across the country are banning chokeholds and other 'deadly force' techniques in the wake of George Floyd's killing
• A 22-year-old woman in Ohio died 2 days after being tear-gassed by police during a protest
• The man who drove his truck into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters in Virginia is a leader of the Ku Klux Klan, prosecutor says