A gunman shot and killed two New York City police officers before taking his own life in a brazen ambush that played out on a quiet Brooklyn street corner Saturday afternoon, New York police said.
Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were shot at point-blank range while sitting beside one another in a police car in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, police said.
“It’s clear that this was an assassination,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference Saturday night. “These officers were shot execution-style, a particularly despicable act which goes to the heart of our society and our democracy.”
“It is an attack on all of us,” he added.
Ramos and Liu, who were shot in the head, were transported to Brooklyn’s Woodhull Medical Center, where they were later pronounced dead, according to New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton, who also spoke at the news conference Saturday evening.
I doubt that there will be demonstrations over the executions of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. These police officers were out of their district, called in for special assignment, and were just grabbing a bite to eat. It is doubtful they even saw their assailant.
Tonight, family members are going to bed asking why? A police officer’s family always knows this is a dangerous job and that the possibility of violence and death is always right around the corner. Are they ever ready for something like this to happen? Probably not. These men were killed, apparently, simply because they were police officers. That sounds like profiling to me.
According to the Dailynews.com:
The shooter — identified as Ismaaiyl Brinsley— boasted about wanting to murder cops in the hours before he ambushed the officers outside the Tompkins Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant around 2:45 p.m. — around the same time Baltimore officers sent a wanted flier to the NYPD.
“I’m Putting Wings On Pigs Today. They Take 1 Of Ours…Let’s Take 2 of Theirs,” Brinsley, 28, wrote on Instagram alongside a photo of a silver handgun.
He also included the sick hashtags: #ShootThePolice #RIPErivGarner #RIPMike Brown.
“This May Be My Final Post…I’m Putting Pigs In A Blanket.”
Brinsley apparently had also shot and seriously wounded his girlfriend in Baltimore County, according to MSNBC news coverage. She is expected to recover following surgery.
Nothing we can say or do makes these senseless deaths less of a loss to the friends and families of the victims. The assailant is dead. He killed himself. The two police officers are death not because of something they did but who they were.
All police departments need to go on high alert. There are surely other nuts out there, looking for an excuse to execute cops. It’s not an easy time to be a police officer. On the one hand, you don’t want to be accused of profiling or excessive force. On the other hand, it appears that our police officers are now targets. That’s not a great spot to be in. It would certainly make me think twice about wanting to become a police officer. It’s going to be difficult to attract the brightest and the best, especially in high crime areas.
New York City has lost two of its finest. The City will mourn the loss of its own officers. There can be no more executions of police officers. A posthumous “Thank you for your service” just seems so inadequate.
Addendum: From WaPo:
Through his National Action Network, the Rev. Al Sharpton released a statement several hours after the shooting condemning the use of violence as a means of affecting change.
“I have spoken to the Garner family and we are outraged by the early reports of the police killed in Brooklyn today,” Sharpton said in the statement. “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.”
In a statement, the family of Michael Brown condemned the “senseless killing” of the officers.
“We reject any kind of violence directed toward members of law enforcement,” read the statement, issued by family attorney Benjamin Crump. “It cannot be tolerated. We must work together to bring peace to our communities. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the officers’ families during this incredibly difficult time.”
This thread has veered off into the 2A realm, well-trodden ground here and elsewhere. Since everyone else is repeating previously stated positions, I’ll join the fun and once again state the obvious – Concealed Carry should be forbidden to anyone other than active duty law enforcement officials. It is no infringement of Second Amendment rights to require those who discern a need to carry deadly force on their persons in daily activities to do so openly. Particularly in jurisdictions like Virginia where virtually anyone can carry concealed under current law, it would be a major step forward to put those weapons out where those of us who do not assess the usual grocery store, Home Depot, Chipotle environment as one where we might be required to mete out death at any instant, can absent ourselves from the proximity of people who view the world to be so threatening. I find the judgment that our environment is that threatening on a daily basis to reflect extremely poor analytical, risk assessment skills. Some others may feel that my assessment that my life isn’t at daily risk from armed assailants whom I could readily dispatch with a pistol is naivete on my part (although 60+ years of data suggests that I probably am correct about this).
We know from recent court decisions that bearing arms (my cavalry sword is always carried openly as I go about my daily chores and is removed only when getting into small cars whose incommodious interiors seem to manifest little thought for those of use who exercise our 2A rights with yard-long steel blades) is a personal right. I don’t have any desire to limit that right, but it is a right subject to reasonable regulation, and letting us know which people are arming themselves by requiring them to do so openly would drastically improve all of our abilities to assess risk as we go about our business.
But back to the original post – Censored is right (#97) that I still haven’t learned anything about what De Blasio did or said to lead the spokesman for the police union to conclude that the Mayor has blood on his hands for the murder of the two policemen. The link provided by Steve Thomas (#74) was nothing more than a opinion column in the New York Post that took up the attack on the Mayor without identifying where the ire comes from. This has been typical of virtually all coverage of this nasty rift between cops and the mayor. The closest I can come to uncovering the mystery is: 1) that the mayor said he has had “the talk” with his African-American son about how important it is for young African American males to be excruciatingly polite and cooperative around police, given the very clear indications that that demographic is vulnerable to a lot of very unhappy outcomes in police confrontation situations, 2) De Blasio spoke at demonstrations about the choke-hold death of Mr. Garner; and 3) De Blasio, during the campaign, opposed the stop and frisk policies that the police had been using.
I sure as hell would have “the talk” with my son about how to behave with police officers, particularly if he were African American. So I don’t see an issue there. As far as the demonstrations, there have been plenty of reports of fringe elements getting involved in those things and saying scurrilous things, but there was no report of the Mayor calling for police killings or in any way endorsing police killings. Opposition to “stop-and-frisk” seems well-grounded constitutionally, and the courts were coming down hard on it in any event. That position strikes me as well entrenched as a conservative, constitutionalist position that should make even the usual Fox News crowd happy. So, the question remains: Why would the police spokesman say what he said? It is a very serious charge of heinous criminal activity.
I heard a local New York reporter who covers municipal issues say that part of the enmity between police and the mayor goes back even beyond De Blasio to unresolved contract negotiations between the patrolmen’s union and City Hall. He said that the there were several collective bargaining agreements that had been hanging fire when De Blasio took office, most of them have been resolved, but the patrolmen’s contract is still unsettled, and that the rhetoric that the police union has used to indicate its displeasure has been extremely heated. If that’s part of what’s going on here, it is unfortunate that a labor/management impasse is taking on such a corrosively anti-civilization tone. We need the police and we need them to feel respect and appreciation not just from the citizens at large, but from the citizens’ elected representatives. But there is also an obligation by the citizens’ elected officials to be good stewards of public finances and to bargain effectively when entering into public employee contracts.
You make some excellent points. I think DiBlasio didn’t paint such a great picture of cops when he was talking about his kid. I sure told my son how to behave with cops. I would have probably had a lot more to say if my son was black. Kids in general are more at risk simply because they think about consequences less than adults.
Newsflash for Ed:
AP San Diego 25 December 2014. A 40-year-old man tried to enter California from Mexico on foot and was stopped by the Border Patrol. As they were taking him to a room for questioning, he jumped a counter and attacked one of the border inspectors. Four Border Patrol and Customs personnel were hurt in the ensuing melee. The man was finally subdued with a stun gun.
Unfortunately, the stun gun killed him.
He was wanted for a felony and he was also a US citizen. I guess anyone can die from a stun gun.
I wonder what the statistics are for dying from stun gun “blast?”
There is an excellent op-Ed in the Washington Post about the appropriate level of force to be applied by police for misdemeanor arrests (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ending-excessive-police-force-starts-with-new-rules-of-engagement/2014/12/25/7fa379c0-8a1e-11e4-a085-34e9b9f09a58_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop). It recommends that officers no longer use force when attempting to arrest someone for a misdemeanor. It makes the point that officers are instantly permitted to employ tactics/force that are much greater than the punishment that would be meted out for the misdemeanors in question. However, when an arrest is resisted, tempers and emotions often rise which make violence more likely.
The authors of the op-Ed recommend a new two-step process. If the officers want to arrest the person for a misdemeanor, the new procedure would be to demand that the person submit to arrest and inform him that failure to submit is a bigger crime than the misdemeanor. However, a violent takedown would be forbidden if the person refusing to submit is being arrested for a minor misdemeanor like jaywalking or selling a single cigarette. Instead the officer would have to obtain an arrest warrant which would then be served later under more controlled conditions.
This would have the effect of defusing emotions and ensuring a controlled arrest is made to minimize the need for force. It would reduce the perception that white officers are coming down hard on minorities, because the arrest warrant would initiate charges for resisting arrest and be vetted by a judge. The police would retain all the same authorities, except that the process for arresting an uncooperative person for a misdemeanor would become a two-step process.
It would probably cost more, but overall I think it is a pretty good idea to defuse a lot of suspicion and distrust and reduce the number of incidents that get out of hand.
It would probably be worth the extra money. Let’s face it….lots of people bellow they are innocent. In this country, who really confesses at the time of arrest.
I’m glad you picked up on that article and linked it, Kelly. I thought it made some important points. Poor old Mr. Garner should have just been given a ticket (at most) and everyone could have moved on.
From what I have read, Garner was being sought as a result of complaints from local merchants that he was selling “loosies” in front of their establishments. Garner also had a long rap sheet, including several arrests for “loosies.” He should have been known to the precinct as a very big (and possibly obstinant) fellow not easily handled by a single cop. That could explain why there were so many cops on the street at the time of the take down, including a Black female sergeant in charge of the detail. I would posit then that this was not simply a chance encounter between a street patrol officer and a violator in which the patrol officer had any choices. And, as the case played out, it should have been the sergeant who was giving the orders on how to proceed, not the cop who grabbed Garner around the neck with, allegedly, a forbidden choke hold.
Those deaths could just be the fate of where the stun gun (or a taser, as well) struck the target. However, I suspect that it is more likely the particular health problems of the target which interact adversely with the stun or taser blast. That is something that no cop can know when he encounters felonious resistance. (Makes me wonder if the NYPD cops had any idea of Garner’s numerous health problems before they physically took him down.)
They should have figured out he wasn’t the healthiest. I would have fired the cop. He violated department procedure. I don’t jump to conclusions that race is always at the bottom of every case of cop error or violation.
Sometimes you just have people hot dogging things.
Garner may have had a long rap sheet, but he didn’t commit a crime that would warrant the death penalty – particularly by use of a forbidden procedure. The cops knew where to find him so he could have been ticketed and dealt with later.
The WaPo also had uninteresting article a few weeks ago about how many poor people in the St. Louis area end up in jail for what should be simple traffic tickets. Apparently there are so many small jurisdictions in the area that a person traveling at night from work to his/her home with a busted tail light might be stopped by several police officers from different jurisdictions for the same infraction – amounting to large fines that they are unable to pay easily. Perhaps Missouri needs to look at the number of small municipalities and see if they can be consolidated.
Ticketed? What was this Garner thing? A parking violation?
Some consolidation HAS happened in St. Louis County. The town of Jennings (right next to Ferguson and where Wilson was previously employed) disbanded its force some time ago and turned control over to the St. Louis County Police Dept. Some other incorporated county entities have done the same, mostly, I think, because of the costs of running a separate department. I suspect that Ferguson might eventually wind up doing it as well. The loss, in my opinion, is that the officers on the smaller forces can get to know many of the townspeople in a sort of “community policing” thing. Another loss is that young officers can get some seasoning at a smaller level before moving on to the larger urban forces or even to state patrols.
I’m not sure what a two-step process would accomplish other than take up a lot of police time away from patrols and other assignments. If someone is going to resist arrest the first time, what makes you think he wouldn’t do the same when confronted later over the same charges? And maybe this time he is armed. In the case of Garner, there were a lot of cops out there at the site of the altercation. How would that change later — except maybe to come a second time more heavily armed and take him at gunpoint.? And we all know what drawn guns can lead to. Garner didn’t look to be of a mind to turn himself in.
@Steve Thomas
I agree completely with you.
If the Bundy “protestors” had been arrested… I would not have cared.
But there was no reason for snipers to be brought to the Bundy ranch to begin with.
You don’t know what they had….snipers might have been necessary. Better safe than sorry.
@Kelly_3406
I like it.
@ Wolve (#153): selling cigs one at a time strikes me as perhaps as serious as a parking violation, maybe less so. Whether you agree with that or not, the ultimate point is that the man died. That strikes me as eminently avoidable. There was no particular threat to the rest of the populace (other than the health hazards of smoking and the lost tax revenue on each cigarette).
The op-ed linked by Kelly makes the general point that there are a whole host of low level infractions that don’t have to put either the police of the citizens in a position of ramp-up to instant death. That seems reasonable to me.
Scout — As I understand this case, the police were reacting to complaints from local merchants that Garner was in front of their establishments selling untaxed cigs illegally – I suppose because the merchants were obliged to sell at a price jacked sky high because of the taxes added by the politicians. Looks to me like this was a directed and planned bust, not just a patrol officer noticing an expired parking meter. This is because of the number of officers in the video, including the sergeant. Garner already had 30 notches on his rap sheet since the 1980’s, two of which were arrests for the same illegal cig violation. I also recall something about assault on the same record. Ergo, when your superiors at the precinct tell you to go out there and bring in Joe So-and-So, you usually don’t have the option to issue him a warning and let him go about his business until you can look him up later. Garner complained that he was innocent. The plaintiffs complained that he was doing it. Who do you believe at that moment? The guy with the rap sheet or the citizen plaintiffs?
In any case, it looks like the police decided against lethal force and also against non-lethals such as tasers or batons or what have you. They used the least lethal method of all, a physical wrestle- down in order to get the cuffs on. Unfortunately, it seems that Garner was in such bad health that even this method resulted in death. Banned choke hold or no banned choke hold? Which was it? Some say it was. The cop involved says it wasn’t. The medical examiner said cause of death was choking. Other reports say also a heart attack on the EMT gurney. The grand jury must have been told all those details . So why the non-indictment? But one additional question does come to mind: If you are a cop of middle or slight build and are asked to take a suspect down physically, where do you grab him if he is 6’3″ and 350 pounds?
Well, that’s an account that you certainly don’t hear about in the media and one that makes plausible sense. You even add the speculation in there. The problem with the media nowadays is that we see a video and are allowed to assume our own version of what happened. What sells the most papers, so to speak? The wolverine version or the evil cop killing the man version? There has to be some explanation why the cop wasn’t disciplined or fired by his superiors.
If you want to stop arrests for selling “loosies,” tell the politicians to stop taxing tobacco to a point where they create a black market for those products.
Wolve, here’s a map of St. Louis County’s Township. This doesn’t even include the area where I lived as a child – it’s a teeny city within the county. Perhaps having all those municipalities contributes to having inexperienced cops. These small forces can’t pay very well or attract better candidates. Even if they contract with SLC, there are still too many little political fiefdoms.
http://www.stlouisco.com/YourGovernment/Elections/Mapping/2014TownshipMaps
Thanks for the map, Censored. Mrs. W’s folks come mostly from Jefferson Township all the way down to Oakville, with some to the west and some still in the City. We used to have some north of the City, but most of them moved west along I-70 with the demographic changes.
I’m not sure anymore how many SLC localities still have their own police forces. The problem with parts of North County, as I see it, is that governance and policing did not keep up with demographics. As I recall, most of the North County communities were originally populated by European blue-collar immigrants. As Blacks moved north out of St. Louis, the Euro-Americans moved further north and west or elsewhere. But the local governments and police forces stayed mostly White. Ferguson is nearly 70% Black, for instance, but with the mayor and town council all White except for one member. The police force seems about the same. Jennings, just south of Ferguson, is, I think, almost 90% Black. Accusations of racism were raised against the mostly White police force in Jennings some years ago. I don’t know the whys and wherefores of that, but they did close the Jennings PD and switch to LEO coverage by the St. Louis County Police Department. That’s why I suspect that Ferguson and some others may go the same way after recent events.
One can try to blame the White politicians and police officers in places like Jennings and Ferguson, but I think one also has to ask Blacks in those places why they have not used their majority numbers to move into politics and take their rightful places in local governance and, by extension, policing and other services.
I’m sure that Wolve’s account (which is similar to stories I’ve picked up from my reading) is more accurate than simply portraying this as evil cops out to inflict grievous bodily injury. Again, however, the point is that death seems like a very avoidable option. The dead in these incidents don’t have to be angels for there to be a genuine societal concern that it is a very bad situation for our police forces and for citizens to have to mete out death at the beginning of the justice intake process.
It may just be the influence of the holiday season, but I’m seeing some pretty good cross-ideological agreement on some important issues here. The need for police discipline in some cases AND a stop to hateful rhetoric against cops, calling Bundy what he was- a man with no legal standing to do what he did and who should have been arrested, disagreement with the police union members turning their backs on the mayor, even common ground on the nature of TV news in general. On that subject, I think we don’t have great on-air reporters (anchors) anymore because no one can afford the staff behind the scenes and around the world that made those old reporters great, and all the networks have to play to the ratings and nothing else.
I think some are being pretty hard on old Ed Meyers, even though I don’t agree with him for the most part. I do understand his points and I always think it’s good to have a contrarian view that upsets the paradigm. My concern is more with police training and leadership than guns per se. The points about lethal force are valid- guns aren’t necessarily lethal and other methods used to subdue and arrest can be. With militarization has come tactics in many areas not conducive to American communities and average citizens. I’m anxious to see the report, now that it’s been released, on the shooting of the unarmed Fairfax man who was shot and killed through his front door by the police. Police make mistakes like the rest of us, and sometimes unwise tactics and training contribute to them.
We are fortunate to live in an area that has a highly trained police force. Charlie Deane set that in place several decades ago with PWC. No, they aren’t perfect but they are top notch. Getting through PWC background check is very difficult. The bar is high on some issues. I don’t know if the standards have changed much under Chief Hudson or not. Perhaps he has modernized some of the qualifications.
Hopefully we will be getting dashboard cameras.
I have seen more common ground also, middleman. Even if we don’t agree, if we can see where the other person is coming from, I think things will be better.
Charlie Deane for president! I love this guy! During the Corey Stewart illegal immigration fiasco, he was a true class act. I’ve yet to talk to a PW police officer (or resident) with a bad thing to say about him.
If we could clone him to be chief at every police department in the country we’d be much better off.
He sure was a class act. Some on the BOCS had bad things to say about him and so did a few local bloggers. We didn’t. [polishing our halo]