Officers Down in Brooklyn

--Posted 9:30 pm, Dec. 20, 2014 “Officers down!” have to be the two most tragic words ever heard over police radios. NYPD officers, 40-year-old Rafael Ramos and 32-year-old Wenjian Liu, were shot, point blank, at approximately 2:47 p.m., this afternoon.

Related: Love and respect for the Blue Line trump the laughter and clapping in Brooklyn The tragedy is all the more heart-rending that the officers were working overtime as part of an anti-terrorism drill in Bedford-Stuyvesant when they were shot in the head by a lone gunmen, who had earlier stated his cop-killing intention via Instagram, as they sat in their cruiser. The lone gunman, identified by sources as Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, 28, had addresses in both Georgia and Brooklyn. As police were closing in on him moments after the shooting, Brinsley turned the gun on himself on a nearby subway platform. Brinsley from Baltimore, shot his girlfriend on Saturday morning before targeting the two officers. The execution style slaying of the two officers came during the continuing protests staged in opposition to a grand jury’s decision to not indict the police officer who killed Eric Garner, whose death has led to the wearing of “I can’t breathe” T-shirts by sports figures and seen on protest banners.

---

The shooting of Officers Ramos and Liu follows by two days President Barack Obama’s Thursday executive order called The Task Force on 21st Century Policing and announcement of members of the new task force. Obama was on his annual 17-day Christmas holiday in Hawaii when this afternoon’s shooting occurred. The shooting follows by a week a petition signed by NYPD members asking that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio not attend their service should they be killed in the line of duty in light of his recent actions. DeBlasio had been quoted by the media when he said he had pulled his 17-year-old biracial son aside to warn him about the police. A Move On petition demanding that he resign already has thousands of signatures. What happened to two of New York’s finest today in Brooklyn is an indicator of how the orchestrated ongoing protests that followed both the Michael Brown and Eric Garner Grand Jury decisions were destined to put at risk the lives of those who work in the worst of circumstances to keep the public safe. While New Yorkers were still reeling in shock, self-appointed civil rights leader Al Sharpton was first off the mark releasing a statement shortly after the murders: “I have spoken to the Garner family and we are outraged by the early reports of the police killed in Brooklyn,” he wrote. Even in the aftermath of the deaths of the two officers, Sharpton tried to control the narrative:

“Any use of the names of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, in connection with any violence or killing of police, is reprehensible and against the pursuit of justice in both cases,” Sharpton warned. “We have stressed at every rally and march that anyone engaged in any violence is an enemy to the pursuit of justice for Eric Garner and Michael Brown. “We have been criticized at National Action Network for not allowing rhetoric or chanting of violence and would abruptly denounce it at all of our gatherings. “The Garner family and I have always stressed that we do not believe that all police are bad, In fact we have stressed that most police are not bad. “We plan to hold a press conference in the morning to express our outrage and our condolences to the families and the police department.”

Sharpton will need more than words and press conferences to put out the fire of outrage of decent people who grieve the death of the two young officers, and who see the NYPD as courageous protectors of the public at large, risking their lives in the line of duty. Tragic to know that it will soon be Christmas for most everyone else but not for the families of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, who, along with justice, will need everyone’s most fervent prayers.