All Lives Matter
The New York Police Department serves as the thin blue line that separates order from chaos and good from evil. The men and women who wear the badge are not black, white, Hispanic, Asian or anything else; they are police, and their blood runs blue.
Last Saturday afternoon, the blood of two police officers was shed on the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant. They were executed by a madman who believed he was avenging the police-involved deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. and Eric Garner of Staten Island.
The perpetrator-identified as Ismaalyl Brinsley-assassinated Police Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu as they sat in their patrol car at the corner of Myrtle and Tompkins avenues. He later took his own life at the Myrtle-Willoughby Avenues G train station.
A career criminal with 19 arrests and a history of mental illness, Brinsley shot his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore, Md., then traveled up to Brooklyn-where he has relatives and other connections-to take the lives of two police officers.
His suicide at least spares us a long jury trial such as the one involving four individuals ultimately convicted of murdering P.O. Edward Byrne in February 1988 while he sat in a patrol car on a Jamaica street. Like this weekend’s execution, that crime shocked the city and brought condemnation from far and wide.
The murders in Bedford-Stuyvesant lead us to wonder if it’s open season on police in New York. Are all the attackers just plain crazy or are some just heated up by other crazies who feel all police are the enemy, and anyone who wears a badge and takes an oath to protect and serve should be eliminated?
In October of this year, a madman attacked four police officers with a hatchet in Jamaica, not too far away from where Officer Byrne was gunned down 26 years ago. Then in November, protesters threw fake blood onto Police Commissioner Bill Bratton while visiting a Times Square protest against the non-indictment of the police officer accused of killing Brown.
There’s no shortage of rabble-rousers who get enjoyment out of making statements that incite riot. They have been working overtime the past few weeks and make believe they don’t hear the anti-police remarks coming from some shouting through the bullhorns at recent, otherwise civil protests.
By the same token, individuals on the opposite side claim that the protestors and other rabble-rousers had “blood on their hands” following last Saturday’s execution-which does absolutely nothing other than to deepen the pain and widen the polarization happening in this city.
The only party responsible for last Saturday’s execution is that madman from Baltimore. He alone is the scapegoat; he alone is responsible for his own dastardly actions.
There is no doubt that, with more than 34,000 members, there are some officers in the NYPD who have no business being there. Low standards on entrance exams invite unqualified officers to join the force. There must be an effort made in this city to weed those officers out to ensure only the best and brighest among us protect and serve.
New York City is not some banana republic where the police and military combine to terrorize the populace, rule with an iron fist and specialize in corruption. It’s not a perfect democracy; it’s never going to be. Change comes at the ballot box every few years, as long as the voters are willing and able to exercise their right to vote.
In the meantime, we owe it to ourselves as New Yorkers to close the ranks and heal, to tell the grandstanders on both sides to step aside and let reasonable people mend the relationship between the NYPD and the people it serves.
All lives matter. Let there be peace in New York City.
