More than 20,000 cops—significant numbers of them from other states—turned out Dec. 27 as the city paid its final respects to Rafael Ramos, the NYPD officer whom Police Commissioner William J. Bratton described as having “represented the best of our values” before he and Wenjian Liu were murdered by a crazed gunman outside a Brooklyn housing project seven days earlier.
On a sunny, unseasonably warm morning, officers packed into Christ Tabernacle Church in Glendale, Queens and filled the streets covering several blocks outside to which the proceedings were broadcast on large projection screens. Officer Ramos was lauded by Vice President Joe Biden, Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio as a caring officer and family man who brought his spirituality—he was studying to be a chaplain—to the way he did his job.
‘Will Bring a Smile’
Addressing his widow and two sons, the Vice President—speaking from the personal experience of having lost a wife and child to an auto accident four decades ago—told them, “A time will come when Rafael’s memory will bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye.”
Mr. Biden, calling the NYPD probably the finest police department in America, said to those gathered, “When an assassin’s bullet targeted two officers, it targeted the whole city, and it touched the soul of an entire nation.”
Mr. Cuomo also spoke directly to the family, saying, “You represented yourself, your father, your husband, with dignity and pride” in their handling of the days following his assassination by a career criminal who took his own life shortly after slaying the two officers. (Funeral services for Officer Liu will be held Jan. 4.)
The Governor then turned his remarks to the throng of officers assembled, saying, “You are a force of true professionals who protect our people with the highest level of skill and dedication.” Referring to their handling of the demonstrations that erupted over the preceding three weeks in the wake of a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict a police officer for his role in the death of Eric Garner, he lauded NYPD officers for “protecting the right of freedom of speech, even in the face of abusive chants and tirades” by the protesters.
‘We All Stand With You’
“Every New Yorker stands with you today,” he told them. “When you put on that badge as a police officer, you are no longer just a man or a woman. You represent public safety, and law and order. An attack on you is an attack on us all.”
In a remark clearly aimed at those who have accused the department of being racist, Mr. Cuomo noted that the NYPD consists of officers from “50 different countries who speak 64 different languages.”
Mr. de Blasio then stepped forward to give his eulogy, and hundreds of cops—as well as at least one contingent of firefighters standing along 165th St., around the corner from the church—responded by turning their backs to his image on the video screens. It was a reprise of the reaction of the heads of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association and the Sergeants’ Benevolent Association as well as other officers gathered outside Woodhull Hospital a week earlier following the killings, based on what they described as a belief that the Mayor had “blood on his hands” for not supporting cops sufficiently and having said following the non-indictment that he had cautioned his teenage son Dante as he grew up about being careful in any encounters with police. (Two of the firefighters, asked following the services what prompted them to follow the cops’ lead, shook their heads to indicate they didn’t want to talk about their gesture).
‘Hearts Are Aching’
“Our hearts are aching today,” Mr. de Blasio told the mourners. “We feel it physically. New York has lost a hero. I extend my condolences to another family—the NYPD, which is hurting so badly now.”
He said Officer Ramos “loved playing basketball with his sons in Highland Park” and was “a man of family, a man of faith. He spent the last 10 weeks of his life studying to be a chaplain. He wanted to serve people spiritually; he was always serving. It meant so much to him being a member of the finest police service in this country.” (Officer Ramos had worked as an NYPD School Safety Agent for several years before becoming a Police Officer two years ago at age 38.)
“He was a peacemaker in his large family, always bringing people together,” the Mayor continued. “He was a peacemaker in his church, and he was a peacemaker in the streets of New York.”
A retired police officer throughout the ceremony stood on Myrtle Ave, directly in front of the bank of TV cameras set up on an NYPD flatbed truck, holding a sign that said “God Bless the NYPD” and then, beneath the NYPD’s insignia, “Dump De Blasio.”
Commissioner Bratton, interviewed on “Face the Nation” the following morning, said of the cops’ turning their backs that, whatever their grievances with the Mayor, “I think it was very inappropriate at that event.”
Signs of Concern
As a bugler played “Taps,” more than a dozen helicopters—most from the NYPD but at least one representing the New Jersey State Police—buzzed over the crowd on the street. “America the Beautiful” was played as the procession formed for the ride to nearby Cypress Hills Cemetery, even as heavily armed officers stood on rooftops of buildings surrounding the church. The long line of cars following the hearse carrying Officer Ramos’s body and the one right behind with his family proceeded up Myrtle Ave, heading in the opposite direction from the Brooklyn part of the avenue on which he’d been fatally shot a week earlier. The masses of police officers headed off in the same direction, toward cars they had parked in the streets in many cases two miles away because of the huge traffic jams on the Jackie Robinson Parkway and the closed-off streets below it.
The following day, PBA President Patrick J. Lynch issued a statement saying, “Those of us who wear the blue of the NYPD have experienced love, support and respect in many forms from people from all over the nation, but none means more to us than the slight smile and nod of the head we have been receiving from New Yorkers as we patrol our city’s streets doing the job we love. To those who demonstrate their support for the job we do with a nod and smile, we say thank you, it means a great deal to us.”
It was a vastly different tone than the one he had used 16 days earlier, during a PBA delegates’ meeting when his remarks—leaked to Capital New York—had included a call to use “extreme discretion” in dealing with “enemies” of cops, which was perceived to be a shot at those who had criticized the police in the wake of the death of Mr. Garner five months earlier.
Memorial At Slay Site
Almost immediately following the murders of Officers Ramos and Liu, a memorial was created that steadily grew outside the housing project that they were assigned to monitor. Mr. Lynch’s statement extended beyond that particular tribute, saying, “To those who have made donations in support of the families and to all of those who have dropped by local stationhouses with flowers, candles and a kind word, we say thank you.”
Officer Liu’s wake will be held Jan. 3 at the Aievoli Funeral Home in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, with the funeral scheduled for 10 a.m. the following day at the same location.
Bratton’s Call for Truce
Last week began with a press conference at Police Headquarters Dec. 22, where Mr. Bratton said he had asked police-union leaders to “stand down” until after the funerals. Mr. Lynch and SBA President Edward D. Mullins had partially blamed the officers’ murder on Mr. de Blasio, who they said had blood on his hands.
At the same press conference, Mr. de Blasio, attempting to begin healing the rift with police officers angered by his response to the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo in Mr. Garner’s death, asked the protesters who had turned out daily since the decision was announced Dec. 3 to put a moratorium on their rallies.
“I’m asking everyone—and this is across the spectrum—to put aside protests, put aside demonstrations,” he said. “Until these funerals are past, let’s focus just on these families, and what they have lost. I think that’s the right way to try and build towards a more unified and decent city.”
Can’t Get No Respect
The union leaders immediately ceased hostilities, but not all the demonstrators indicated they would cooperate with Mr. de Blasio’s request.
“The Mayor says ‘Stop that,’ we say ‘F—-that!’” chanted some activists who were among several hundred marchers in midtown Manhattan the night after de Blasio’s plea.
Speaking with more civility, Joo-Hyun Kang, executive director of Communities United for Police Reform, told the New York Times, “It is wrong to connect the isolated act of one man who killed NYPD officers to a nonviolent mass movement. Silencing the countless voices of New Yorkers who are seeking justice, dignity and respect for all is a mistake.”
“It’s deeply divisive to hold political protests during this period of remembrance,” Mr. de Blasio said the following day.
He also denounced some of the language used by demonstrators. “Chants by those on the fringe comparing our police to the KKK are not the voices of a credible cause,” he said. “They are hateful words that attempt to divide this city in a time when we need to come together.”
He did not express disapproval of such language until asked about it at the Police Headquarters press conference. Even then, he criticized the media for what he called an overemphasis on harsh declarations by demonstrators.
‘Enabling’ the Loudmouths
“What you manage to do is pull up the few who do not represent the majority, who are saying unacceptable things, who shouldn’t be saying those things,” he said. “...The vast majority of our citizens are good and decent people who do not say negative things, racist things, nasty things to police...The few who want conflict attempt that. And unfortunately, so many times, you guys enable that.
“...There are some people who [curse the police]. It’s wrong. It’s wrong. They shouldn’t do that. It’s immoral, it’s wrong, it’s nasty, it’s negative—they should not do that, but they, my friend, are not the majority. Stop portraying them as the majority.”
Mr. de Blasio also said, “Any statement suggesting violence towards police needs to be reported to the police so we can stop future tragedies. That is our obligation. The attack on these two officers—the assassination of these two officers—was an attack on the city of New York as a whole—on every one of us, on our values, on our democracy. We cannot tolerate such attacks. Anyone with the ability to help us stop them must step forward.”
The NYPD issued a statement Dec. 24 saying, “So far, we have assessed hundreds of online postings and calls to 911 and 311 that have resulted in about 40 threat investigations, of which about half have been closed or referred to other agencies. Although we have made four arrests, officers are advised to remain vigilant at all times.”