One day after two New York City police officers were shot dead at point-blank range while sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn, targeted apparently solely because they were officers, Mayor Bill de Blasio faced the challenge of reassuring a city on edge while addressing a deepening rift with the police department.
Mr De Blasio, who attended a Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral on Sunday morning, is facing perhaps the gravest challenge of his one-year-old administration. In a stunning show of disapproval and disrespect, police officers turned their backs to Mr de Blasio on Saturday night when he went to the hospital to talk about the two officers who were killed.
Flags at half-mast
Flags across the city flew at half-mast yesterday for the officers, Wenjian Liu (32) and Rafael Ramos (40).
In an emotional posting on Facebook, the 13-year-old son of Mr Ramos, Jaden, captured the mood of many in the department and around the city. “This is the worst day of my life,” he wrote. “Today I had to say bye to my father. He was [there] for me everyday of my life, he was the best father I could ask for. It’s horrible that someone gets shot dead just for being a police officer. Everyone says they hate cops but they are the people that they call for help.”
The officers were killed by a man identified as Ismaaiyl Brinsley (28), who took his own life on a crowded subway platform after being confronted by police officers who had been pursuing him. Police commissioner William J Bratton said the officers were “quite simply assassinated”.
It has emerged that Brinsley might have had mental health issues. During an August 2011 plea hearing in Cobb County, Georgia, he was asked: “Have you ever been a patient in a mental institution or under the care of a psychiatrist or psychologist?” According to a court record, he responded yes. The record did not provide any other details.
Police officers in Atlanta were familiar with Brinsley. On nine occasions in less than six years, Fulton County Sheriff’s Office records show, Brinsley was booked into jail. He was arrested on charges that included disorderly conduct, terrorist threats and shoplifting. He was also arrested on weapons charges.
In at least one case, according to court records, Brinsley was convicted of a felony shoplifting charge.
On Saturday, Brinsley began his day with bloodshed, according to the police. Before he left for New York, he shot a former girlfriend in Maryland; she survived. He took her phone and offered updates on his plans for the rest of the day.
He was armed with a silver pistol and a desire to spill the blood of police officers. “I’m Putting Wings On Pigs Today,” Brinsley apparently wrote on an Instagram posting, where he also referenced the 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.”
Alerted
The mother of the woman he was suspected of shooting alerted the police about the messages at about 1.30pm. The messages were cryptic, suggesting officers would die but not specifying exactly where, and investigators in Maryland scrambled to determine where they had been posted from.
Soon afterwards they located the posts – and a mobile phone carried by Brinsley – in south Brooklyn. At 2.10pm, the Baltimore County authorities called the 70th precinct in Brooklyn, where the mobile phone had been last located, and told them of the threatening messages.
They also faxed a wanted poster to the precinct naming Brinsley, according to the authorities in Baltimore County.
It was not until 2.45pm that the information circulated widely throughout the police department. At 2.50pm, the same information that was shared with the 70th precinct was sent by teletype from Baltimore County to the real-time crime centre at New York city police headquarters. But by that time, it was too late. Mr Bratton said at 2.47pm Brinsley had approached the officers and shot them in their car in the 79th precinct, several miles north of where his phone had been located by police.
Mr Bratton said the officers never had a chance to draw their weapons and perhaps never saw their killer coming.
President Barack Obama joined the ranks of public officials who expressed outrage and sorrow.
“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.
But the tension between City Hall and the police department is worse than it has been in years. Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, laid the blame for the deaths of the officers squarely at the feet of the mayor.
Blood on the hands
“That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall, in the office of the mayor,” he said. For weeks, ever since a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer in the death of Mr Garner, many police officers have talked about feeling as if they are under siege.
Former police commissioner Raymond W Kelly, speaking on ABC's This Week, said the antipathy stretched back to the campaign, after Mr de Blasio ran on what Mr Kelly called an "anti-cop" platform. The distrust was exacerbated, Mr Kelly said, when Mr de Blasio spoke publicly about how he talked to his son, Dante, about the dangers he could face when dealing with the police.
As protesters took to the streets in largely peaceful demonstrations, their rhetoric was often vitriolic and personal. And two police officers were assaulted last weekend by a small group of protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The police have been called killers, racists and generally condemned by the protesters. In recent days, when New York City police officers walked into their headquarters in Lower Manhattan, they were greeted with epithets scrawled in chalk on the pavement. “NYPD KKK,” read one. “Avenge our children,” read another.
Yesterday, officers, wearing black bands of mourning around their badges, walked silently over the writing.
Officials across the department were told to limit statements, including on the many Twitter accounts now sanctioned for use by commanders, “to expressions of sorrow and condolence,” according to a message sent to all precincts. Even in difficult times, the message said, “we will remain consummate professionals”.
Rev Al Sharpton, who helped lead protests against the police in the wake of the Garner decision, held a news conference to condemn the killing of the officers. "If we go into an area where it is an eye for an eye, then it is only a matter of who can outpluck eyes," he said. After the two officers were killed, he said, he had received death threats and he is turning over messages to the federal authorities.
Mr Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, stood by Mr Sharpton and said the man who killed the police officers was not acting in the interest of her son. “I am standing here in sorrow about losing those two police officers,” she said. “That was definitely not our agenda.”
– (New York Times)