Tuesday, December 23, 2014

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Across New York, Pausing to Honor Police Officers - New York Times




New York police officers embraced as they visited a memorial at the site where Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were killed on Saturday. Mike Segar/Reuters




In a city full of noise, distraction and debate, there were no words.


New York City honored its two fallen police officers Tuesday afternoon with a moment of silence at 2:47, marking the instant at which they were shot on a Brooklyn street corner three days ago.


But even before the city paused, there was an outpouring of condolences and mourning, as New Yorkers found ways large and small to lend support to the police force.


In Times Square on Tuesday morning, Steve Norred, 50, and his wife, Heather, 41, stopped to say thank you to an officer.


“I just wanted to tell him how sorry I was for his loss,” Mr. Norred said.


In neighborhoods around the city, people made a point of stopping to shake the hand of an officer, hug an officer, thank an officer.


Anything to show support for a department reeling from the deaths of Officers Wenjian Liu, 32, and Rafael Ramos, 40.



One day after calling on people to put aside protests and political debate so attention could be paid to the families of the officers, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, visited the memorial that has been growing daily on the Bedford-Stuyvesant street corner where the officers were killed.




Mourners sing hymns at a memorial for two New York police officers who were fatally shot on Saturday. Andrew Burton/Getty Images

On Tuesday morning, as a steady drizzle fell, the police set up a tarp to shield the hundreds of flowers, handwritten messages, framed portraits and American flags blanketing Tompkins Avenue.


Ms. McCray placed a bouquet of white roses on the pavement and then the two stood for a moment. They left without saying a word.


“There is a lot of pain right now,” Mr. de Blasio said later Tuesday, just before pausing for a moment of silence. “We have to work our way through that pain. We have to keep working to bring police and community closer together.”


He called on New Yorkers to put themselves in the place of the families of the officers and to “be there for them right now.”


Mr. de Blasio made his comments at City Hall, where the badges of the officers were displayed on a large television screen.


As he bowed his head, so too did officers across the city at the memorial. Firefighters took a moment to reflect. Some Chinese bus drivers pulled to the side of the road to offer their respects. And city workers took a minute out of their day to pay tribute.


The slaying of Officers Liu and Ramos came at a moment of heightened tension between the police and communities across the country, after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed man in Ferguson. Mo., and the death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man, during an arrest. After a grand jury did not indict a police officer in the death of Mr. Garner, waves of protesters have been demonstrating in the streets of New York.




Mayor Bill de Blasio; his wife, Chirlane McCray; and Pastor Michael Durso visited the memorial on Tuesday. Michael Appleton for The New York Times

While they were mostly peaceful, the focus of much of the protesters’ anger has been directed at police officers, calling for reforms but also at times, lashing out with vicious, personal invectives directed at police officers.


When Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, arrived in New York on Saturday morning, he had made clear on social media sites that he wanted to kill police officers.


In his mind, the police said, the protests over the Garner case served as some sort of inspiration.


But Emerald Garner, Mr. Garner’s daughter, delivered a powerful rebuke to anyone who wanted to use the memory of her father to cause violence when she visited the memorial to the officers.


“I just had to come out and let their family know that we stand with them, and I’m going to send my prayers and condolences to all the families who are suffering through this tragedy,” she told reporters. “I was never antipolice. Like I said before, I have family that’s in the N.Y.P.D. that I’ve grown up around, family reunions and everything so my family, you know, we’re not antipolice.”


As passions seemed to ease for the moment on Tuesday, New York City’s loss was felt far beyond the five boroughs.


Schoolchildren wrote special Christmas cards to thank their local police officers. Charitable organizations offered to cover the education of the young son of one of the officers and to pay for the mortgages on both families’ homes.




Hundreds of bouquets of flowers and handwritten messages have been left at the site. Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Condolences poured in from police departments around the nation.


As far away as San Diego, fellow police officers wrapped black ribbons on their badges in a show of solidarity.


And at police station houses in New York, among the festive markers of the holiday season – the wreaths, the trees, the lights – there were also black banners and flags flown at half-staff.


Throughout the day and into the evening, police officers stood guard around the memorial in Brooklyn as people came and went.


Felicia Oquendo, 61, a retired U.P.S. administrator, rode two buses from Maspeth, Queens, to say prayers for the men and their families.


She normally spends the day before Christmas Eve preparing for the holiday and cooking traditional Puerto Rican dishes for her two daughters and five grandchildren. But this year, she did her laundry the night before and went grocery shopping early so she could spend an hour at the memorial.


“This tragedy tugged at my heart and I had to come and pay my respects and say a prayer for them,” she said.


She says she had been touched in a way that she had not felt since Sept. 11, when she felt compelled to visit ground zero two weeks after the attacks to pray for the victims.


On Christmas Eve, she said, she would be remembering the officers and their families in her own quiet way. “I’ll be drinking my eggnog and eating but they’re going to be in my heart — not just them — but all policemen, all of them.”



Mike Isaac and Jeffrey E. Singer contributed reporting.










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