2 New York Cops Executed: Sadness, Tension and Blame

Flags across New York flew at half-staff Sunday, a day after the apparent revenge killings of two police officers roiled and saddened the city’s five boroughs while Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to reassure residents while many cops blamed him in part for the deaths.

The officers, Wenjian Liu, 32, and Rafael Ramos, 40, were killed in broad daylight as they sat in a marked patrol car Saturday by a man identified as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28.

Weeks of protests focused on the deaths of young black men confronted by white officers preceded the shootings. Many of the protests vilified officers, and tensions in New York had been growing all the while.

• Also See: Young Son Of Executed Cop Posts Heartbreaking Note

After shooting his girlfriend in Maryland and posting Instagram messages calling for the killing of police officers, Brinsley traveled to the Bed-Stuy section of Brooklyn to carry out the assassinations. With officers pursuing him, he shot himself dead on a crowded subway platform.

A warning from Baltimore police to officers in New York came too late.

“I’m Putting Wings On Pigs Today,” Brinsley apparently wrote on an Instagram posting, referencing the choking death of Eric Garner, a black man killed in a confrontation with police on Staten Island. “They Take 1 Of Ours, Let’s Take 2 of Theirs.”

BLOOD ON HANDS

In parts of New York, meanwhile, blame was being cast on others aside from the gunman, who had a criminal record dating back to at least 2006, when he was arrested in Georgia for carrying a concealed weapon, a knife, as well as shoplifting, according to online records.

Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, pointed to de Blasio.

“That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall, in the office of the mayor,” he said.

In statements condemning the attacks, the mayor asked citizens to call 911 if they hear someone threatening police.

“When a police officer is murdered, it tears at the foundation of our society,” de Blasio said at a news conference, Yahoo news reported. “It is an attack on all of us. It’s an attack on everything we hold dear. We depend on our police to protect us against forces of criminality and evil. They are a foundation of our society, and when they are attacked, it is an attack on the very concept of decency.”

Anti-violence protests on the streets of New York, which began after a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer in the Garner case, have been interpreted by many officers as anti-cop rallies.

DISTRUST OF COPS

Two police officers were assaulted last weekend, The New York Times reported, by a small group of protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge.

In recent days, New York City police officers arriving at headquarters in Lower Manhattan have been greeted with epithets scrawled in chalk on the sidewalk, the paper reported

“NYPD KKK,” read one on Sunday. “Avenge our children,” read another.

Police have been distrustful of the mayor since he ran on an “anti-cop” platform, former Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Television stations in New York showed just how far that distrust runs: police officers turned their backs to the mayor Saturday night when he visited the Woodhull Hospital, where the officers had been taken and where their bodies remained until being escorted out.

Lines of officers three deep, many of them crying, lined the driveway and street as ambulances carried the bodies out.

The Times reported Sunday that Brinsley might have had mental health issues, which were hinted at during his many arrests in Cobb County, GA.

The officers were shot and killed near Myrtle and Tompkins Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant outside a housing project police were targeting because of violence.

President Obama issued a statement.

“I ask people to reject violence and words that harm, and turn to words that heal — prayer, patient dialogue, and sympathy for the friends and family of the fallen,” the president said.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, at the forefront of the Garner protests, held a news conference on Sunday to condemn Brinsley’s actions as did Gwen Carr, Garner’s mother.

“I am standing here in sorrow about losing those two police officers,” she said. “That was definitely not our agenda.”