NYPD
OFFICERS REMAIN AS STATED TARGETS
ACCORDING TO
SOME OF THE WORST OF THE WORST
NYPD OFFICERS
AND NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTS
GATHER AT
IMPROMPTU STREET MEMORIAL
NEAR WHERE
OFFICERS LUI AND RAMOS WERE
ASSASSINATED
LAST SATURDAY
TAGS:
OFFICERS LUI AND RAMOS, TWO NYPD OFFICERS ASSASSINATED,
HATEFUL
RHETORIC AND MURDER,
PROTEST
ORGANIZERS BEAR RESPONSIBILITY
FOR
IRRESPONSIBLE MESSAGING,
THE
“CITY” DOES NOT GRIEVE; THE NYPD DOES
NO
“CEASEFIRE” OF INCINDIARY PUBLIC SPEECH
FOR
HOLIDAY SEASON,
SERIOUS
RIFT BETWEEN MAYOR AND NYPD
(Tuesday, December 23, 2014,
NYC) A cursory review of armed and unarmed conflict amply documents the observation
of a temporary cease fire or brief truce at times of religious days of significance
and sometimes merely to bestow dignity to those lost on the battle field by
having their bodies retreived for proper burial. There exists something so profoundly humane
in an agreed upon and honored cease fire for these purposes that it speaks more
about the combatants and some of the earliest unwritten rules that govern
wartime conflict.
What is transpiring currently
in New York City is by no means a “war”, or anywhere yet near an “armed conflict” or anything close
to it but, it was not an unreasonable thought as of earlier today to think in
the wake of the assassination of two NYPD Officers that both sides of the
raging dispute that has been racking our City for weeks,there would be found common
cause based in human decency to cease and desist in the increasingly hostile
protests, demonstrations and rallies pitting the aggrieved protestors, now
largely an anti-Cop movement, and those who still must conduct their duties as
Police Officers despite the escalation of the confrontations and rhetoric that
comes more from the gutter than from any core belief. If for no other reason at all we have to bury
our dead and this sacred Last Rite has been a time honored reason for a
temporary truce.
Perhaps it was just a naive’
hope; a wish based not in reality but in the thought that some of the vile,
vitriolic rhetoric would become muted at least until after two families are
able to bury their dead but that seems not to be the case. Since the brutal, cowardly assassination of
two NYPD Officers as they sat in their RMP eating lunch, it was only fitting to
think that there would be a break, a “cease-fire” if you will, between the
Police and the anti-Police movement but, sadly, that is not the case. Now that some of the most strident and
boisterous of the “Black Lives Matter” and “Justice for Michael Brown and Eric
Garner” campaigns have received death threats they are fumbling and shaking in
their shoes trying to get the violent genie they unleashed back into the
bottle. That simply will not
happen. Blood has been spilled; blood of
two Police Officers completely unrelated to the precipitating events that
prompted demonstrations and protests in cities and college campuses across the
country for the better part of the last five weeks.
Yes, we were determined to
take the high road out of respect for Officers Lui and Ramos; we thought these
days were not the proper time to engage in the fray or participate negatively
but the total lack of respect by the Mayor and some of his closest advisers has
changed our mind and given us reason to have a voice no matter how small it is
in the cacophonous din of today and throughout the last few weeks. It is relatively easy to allow the nasty venomous
shit spewed from the protestors mouths to just wash off our shoulders; it is quite
another when the Mayor of the City that employs you and some of his most visible
and vocal “out in front” emissaries from the Black and Latino communities, many
who are elected municipal officials, are taking airtime on TV to blame and
blemish the men and women of the NYPD and to belittle the Service and Sacrifices everyone in the Department assumes as part of the Job.
Our City has seen its share of
inept, incompetent Mayors in the not too distance past. But one has to travel back to the NYC of the
late 1960’s and early 1970’s to find a time when there was a such a serious
rift between City Hall and One Police Plaza.
Today that rift is as wide and deep as it has ever been. Mayor de Blasio has so alienated,
disrespected and insulted the NYPD, that he essentially has lost the entire rank and
file of the Department. They do not want him
to attend their funeral if they are killed in the line of duty. It was a
powerful and extremely disturbing sight to see the dozens of Cops assembled at Woodhull
Medical Center where Officers Ramos and Lui were pronounced dead as de Blasio
made his way through that gauntlet of Blue of the gathered Police Officers as in unison they
turned their backs toward him; a dramatic and stunning silent statement that
speaks volumes about the depth of the estrangement between the men and women of
the NYPD and the Mayor of New York City.
A FIASCO IN THE MAKING
When then mayoral candidate
Bill de Blasio pulled ahead of the field of contenders in last year’s primary,
some analysts suggested that it was partially due to an avalanche of TV commercials featuring the bi-racial de Blasio family. De
Blasio really hit his stride when he began to knock the NYPD under the
Direction of then Commissioner Ray Kelly and the assertion that Mayor Bloomberg
was only a “Manhattan Mayor” who cared little for the struggling middle and
lower class working families who were increasingly being forced out of
affordable housing due to the gentrification and rebirth of some neighborhoods
in the Outer Boroughs in particular.
Candidate de Blasio was merciless in his attacks on Bloomberg and Kelly
and he used the “color-coded” hot button phrase, “Stop and Frisk” to excoriate
the policy and those who were responsible for it. The policy from a Departmental standpoint was
officially “Stop, Question and Frisk” (SQF).
It was an effective policy and many New Yorkers in the poorest
neighborhoods, in the highest crime Precincts came to applaud the increased
presence of the NYPD in those areas as well as the SQF tactic. And, as a result of some clever politicking
de Blasio not only shot to the top of the pack but also assembled a “broad
coalition” of members of some of the “lesser served” communities. But this is all just so much history. The point here is that de Blasio was already
revealing some of his deeply held (or conveniently acquired) ideas of what the
NYPD should and should not be doing.
Having a mayoral candidate express disdain for Cops while on the
campaign trail, and to dismiss their proven strategies and tactics, was an
ominous sign to many. By the time
candidate de Blasio became Mayor-elect de Blasio the seeds of future animosity
between his ideas and proposals and the NYPD was cemented.
FIRST STEPS AND MISSTEPS
It didn’t take very long
before more and more New Yorkers began expressing misgivings about their chosen
candidate, now the sworn-in Mayor. His
inaugural address was a cleaned up and tailored summary of his campaign
rhetoric which did not bode well for the NYPD.
His appointment of Bill Bratton as NYPD Commissioner was seen by some as
a positive development but left many in the ranks wondering why Bratton, who
had previously held that position during the first term of Rudy Giuliani’s
administration, would accept that position twenty years after he left NYC and
especially chose to serve under a Mayor who was as anti-Police as any in
recent memory. Even the bungling David
Dinkins was not openly disrespectful or overtly critical towards the NYPD until
late in his administration. No, de
Blasio was an entirely different political animal who saw his landslide victory
as a “people’s mandate”. His announced
first executive action was to be a moratorium on what he called “Stop and
Frisk”, a derisively shortened misrepresentation of the official policy of “Stop,
Question and Frisk”. Commissioner Bratton tried to paint a different picture
over the reality of de Blasio’s intentions in this matter but, he is after all,
serving in the position of the second most powerful man in NYC at the pleasure
of his honor, the Mayor, and had to defer to his boss. Bratton had at that juncture lost faith with
many who were familiar with him from his first tenure in 1PP.
FLASHPOINTS
There was likely not one New
Yorker in a million that had ever heard of Ferguson Missouri or find it on a
map prior to last Summer. That gritty suburb of St. Louis was
suddenly thrust onto the world stage in August after a White Ferguson Police
Officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed an unarmed young Black man, Michael
Brown. The ill-prepared Ferguson PD had
to act promptly as nightly demonstrations after Brown’s death drew larger and more
violent crowds. Fires were set, local
businesses burned to the ground as anonymous groups of looters had their way. The situation escalated to such a fever pitch
that the President of the United States actually sent the Attorney General, the
highest Law Enforcement Official in the country to Ferguson to assure the
protestors – peaceful and unpeaceful alike – that “justice” would be served.
When the Grand Jury in St. Louis County presented a “non indict” decision for Officer Wilson, the
protestors once again took to the streets even more hostile and aggressive than
before.
And then, just weeks later,
comes the death at the hands of the Police of Eric Garner, a well-known petty crook
in Staten Island. His confrontation with
the Police was partially captured on video and Garner could be heard while on
the ground repeatedly saying “I can’t breath”.
A Staten Island Grand Jury just like their counterparts in St. Louis
County, delivered a “non-indict” decision for the Officers involved. These
two events merged and galvanized what became a nationwide “movement” loosely united in their charter chants of “Hands
Up, Don’t Shoot”, “Black Lives Matter”, and “I Can’t Breath”, all expressions born
of the details in the Brown and Garner deaths.
Here in NYC the marchers, some groups of which tied up traffic at key
arteries across the City were, for the most part, not violent,but soon began
attracting a far more aggressive, militant element often leading “die-ins” and
chanting, “What do we want? Dead Cops!, When do we want it? Now”. When thousands of younger and working class
New Yorkers take up a rallying cry seeking “Dead Cops”, this is a sign that
social order is beginning to waver no matter how half-halfheartedly or legitimate
the threat to Police Officers.
The Intelligence Bureau of the
NYPD has a Unit that follows social media and monitors in “real time” surveillance
footage from the over 24,000 closed circuit cameras they have at fixed sites
across the City. They began seeing the
emergence of an increasing number of Facebook pages, Instagram and Twitter
accounts with overt “death to the Police” rhetoric as well as some individuals
boldly posting their intent to kill Cops.
With each passing day it seemed as if that dark underside of social
media was growing and urging more and more like-minded people to take up the
cause of killing Cops. Such threats cannot
be ignored by the NYPD nor should they be.
Even if 99% of those posting such criminal murderous intent are just “key
board cowboys” spewing vitriol behind the safety of the anonymity of cyber space, that other
1% represent a clear and present danger and must be taken seriously.
LANGUAGE MORE INFLAMMATORY THAN ANY “CAUSE”
Words matter, language
counts. Not every set of ears that hears
the same hyperbolic rhetoric hears the same message. That is human nature; we can easily pluck
from an ocean of talk those phrases and concepts which most comport with and
support our own personal ideology. The
speaker of any words also matters. If a
man claiming to be anointed as a reverend, a Man of God, naturally the faithful
in his denomination will hear in his words what others not so similarly
inclined might hear. Any individual in a
position to speak to a wide audience has a responsibility and needs to be held
accountable for actions motivated by his or her speech. The spoken word and the neural capacity that
makes it possible and distinguishes humans from the rest of the creatures of
the earth, is a powerful tool. Words
expressing various thoughts, directed to a certain audience with an intentionality
towards incitement, ought not be dismissed as just so many words.
And there was certainly no dearth
of words after the Brown and Garner tragedies.
From every quarter on talk radio and the cable TV “newsertainment”
networks words spilled out from pundits and politicians alike, from self-proclaimed
community activists, African American advocates, Law Enforcement spokespeople
and something akin to a carnival freak show of belligerents on both sides. Talk is talk; rhetoric is rhetoric until it
crosses a line. Lines were crossed and
instead of dialing back on some of the most racially charged commentary, the “debate”,
as it was, continued unabated. In
retrospect we can see all too late what the eventual outcome was from the incendiary face-off between the anti-Police movement and the Law Enforcement
community. Sadly, it reached its
ultimate nadir last Saturday when a man from a Baltimore suburb got on a bus
heading for the Port Authority terminal on 42nd and 8th
Avenue with the intention of “giving two pigs wings”. Within three hours of 28 year old, life long
criminal Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s arrival in NYC, he shot dead two Officers as they
sat in their RMP eating a mid-afternoon lunch. The cowardly perpetrator driven
by the inflammatory rhetoric and pre-existing “mental health issues” took his
own life as Police Officers closed in on him at a subway station just a few
block from the scene of his bloody, cold-blooded handiwork. Yes, words absolutely mean something and
coded, “dog whistle” phraseology delivered by some of the most rabid race
baiters, can and did result in death.
TOMORROWS
Despite the expressed existence
of a cease fire the NYPD family will bury two of our own in the next few
days. The fact that this is Christmas
week. a time typically celebrated and enjoyed in the company of family and
friends, we have the sacred duty to send our Brothers off in a dignified,
honorable, and respectful manner that is an absolute of the pact we share with
each other. Many New Yorkers will awaken
tomorrow morning and spend the day with their children, open presents, and
share a traditional meal. The NYPD has
traditions of its own that must be represented and observed as well.
Some claim that a lone madman
took the lives of Officers Lui and Ramos; others ascribe his heinous actions to
untreated mental illness. Regardless of
his mental state or motive his actions have sealed his fate forever in the
minds and conscience of every man or woman who has ever, is still wearing or
might wear in the future the NYPD Blue and enforce the laws in our City. They each take an oath but there is a far
more transcendent oath between members of that Blue Community; a piece of each
of our souls dies off whenever one of our Brothers or Sisters is killed in the
line of duty and it is for them and all the others killed before that we uphold
the traditions that are ours.
DEDICATED TO OFFICER LUI AND OFFICER
RAMOS AND
ALL THE OTHERS WHO HAVE LOST
THEIR LIVES IN THE
SERVICE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
MAY THERE SOULS AND FAMILY FIND SOLACE
IN THE WORDS OF THE LORD
UPDATED LINKS
http://nypost.com/2014/12/20/2-nypd-cops-shot-execution-style-in-brooklyn/
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Brooding Cynyx 2014 © All Rights Reserved
