Wenjian Liu, one of the two NYPD officers who were killed in an ambush late last year, was honored with an emotional funeral. But some officers chose to take the opportunity to show their disregard for Mayor Bill de Blasio.
New York City police stand in silence as they listen to the funeral service for New York Police Department officer Wenjian Liu.
Mike Segar / Reuters
NEW YORK CITY — Wenjian Liu, a member of the New York City Police Department who was murdered on the line of duty late in December, was buried on Sunday after a funeral that confronted a mourning family with the tense politics of a divided city.
Liu, a Chinese immigrant who arrived in the United States at age 12, was killed on Dec. 20, when he was ambushed by a lone gunman who travelled to New York with the express purpose of shooting at police. His partner, Rafael Ramos, was also killed. Liu was 32, and is survived by his parents, his wife, and a large extended family.
Thousands of mourners, both civilian and uniformed, braved freezing temperatures and light rain to pay their respects to the fallen officer. They gathered in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood that was once an Italian enclave but that has recently become more and more diverse — much like the police department where Liu served seven years.
The funeral was deeply emotional, with several spectators weeping as Liu's family remembered his kindness and generosity, delivering eulogies in both Chinese and English.
"He was my soul-mate, he was my best friend," said Pei Xia Chen, Liu's widow, as she struggled to hold back the tears. Chen and Liu had been married only two months at the time of his death.
Pei Xia Chen.
Carlo Allegri / Reuters
But Liu's funeral also had moments of tensions. When New York Mayor Bill de Blasio began his eulogy, hundreds of police officers began to slowly turn away from him.
The gesture was a tacit vote of no-confidence in the mayor, whom many in the NYPD's unions see as partly responsible for the deaths of Ramos and Liu.
Late last year, de Blasio showed solidarity with demonstrators demanding an end to police brutality, after several unarmed black men were killed by white police officers across the country.
The leaders of several of the police unions said that the mayor's comments contributed to an anti-cop climate that resulted in the killings of Ramos and Liu. Some of those same unions are currently negotiating their contracts with City Hall.
Officers had turned their backs to de Blasio twice before — first on the night of the shooting, when he visited the hospital where Ramos and Liu were being treated, and again at Ramos' funeral. Both Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and Liu's widow had expressly asked officers not to repeat the gesture on Sunday.
De Blasio's speech centered on the ways in which Liu embodied "everything that we as New Yorkers aspire to be," and concluded with a call to unity.
"As we start a new year, a year we are entering with hearts that are doubly heavy from the loss of Detective Liu and the loss of Detective Ramos, let us rededicate ourselves to those great New York traditions of mutual understand and living in harmony," de Blasio said, speaking from inside the funeral house, where he could not see the backs of the officers.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1ypcC72
No comments:
Post a Comment