“What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” That was the chant of protesters in New York City just over a week ago. Sadly, they have now gotten their wish: Two NYC police officers were shot dead Saturday — execution style — in what the killer described as an act of “revenge” for the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
The murderer, 28-year-old black man Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, had shot his girlfriend earlier in the day in Baltimore, Maryland, and then drove 190 miles to NYC to carry out the rest of his plan. He then took his own life in a subway station shortly after the attack as police closed in on him.
The two victims, police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were working overtime participating in an anti-terrorism drill in the dangerous Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn when the attack occurred at approximately 3 p.m. Saturday.
The New York Post reports on the story:
“I’m Putting Wings on Pigs Today,” a person believed to be the gunman wrote on Instagram in a message posted just three hours before the officers were shot.
“They Take 1 Of Ours…Let’s Take 2 of Theirs,” the post continued, signing off with, “This May Be My Final Post.”
… He used the hashtag #ShootThePolice, along with two other hashtags referencing Garner and Brown.
Brinsley walked up to the cops’ patrol car at the corner of Myrtle and Tompkins avenues, approaching from the sidewalk.
Witnesses told police that Brinsley wordlessly blasted into the patrol car’s front passenger-side window.
Then he stood stock still for a few moments, fleeing into the subway only when he heard the sirens of a second police car.
Officer Liu was a newlywed, having just gotten married in October, while Officer Ramos had just celebrated his 40th birthday on Dec. 12 and had a 13-year-old son. As for Brinsley, a rapper who participated in the recent anti-police protests, his life followed a very different arc. A reported gang member, he had a long criminal history — including arrests in Georgia in 2006, 2007, and 2011, and a 2009 indictment in Ohio — for crimes such as carrying a concealed weapon, shoplifting, criminal trespass, robbery, reckless conduct, tampering with evidence, criminal property damage, and illegally discharging a firearm.
Nonetheless, he remained on the streets long enough to commit his sickening act yesterday — and now some are worried about tomorrow. As the Post writes, one NYC cop, “who is black, said he fears that ‘this is just the beginning. There are people out there who will want to be copycats. The tension out there is the worst I’ve ever seen it.’”
And the tension among police, public officials, and activists is reaching a fever pitch as well, with many saying that the current anti-police climate has been created by those in high places. For instance, “Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik told Newsmax that Saturday’s execution-style shooting … was ultimately encouraged by Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Rev. Al Sharpton,” the news organ reported. Newsmax continued:
“de Blasio, Sharpton and all those who encouraged this anti-cop, racist mentality all have blood on their hands,” he said. “They have blood on their hands.”
… “Who was encouraging these protesters? De Blasio, Sharpton and other elected officials and community leaders. They encouraged this mentality. They encouraged this behavior.
… “[T]hese two cops are dead because of people like them,” Kerik said. “They don’t owe the cops an apology.
“An apology isn’t good enough. They have blood on their hands.”
New York City Mayor de Blasio is a radical leftist who honeymooned in Cuba — in violation of the ban on travel to that country — and worked for the Marxist Sandinista regime of Nicaragua in the 1980s. And Sharpton is well known as a race-baiting, rabble-rousing demagogue; the “Dead cops!” chanters mentioned earlier were part of his December 13 “Million Marchers” protest, and on that day he personally led a march in Washington, D.C., in which the slogan “No justice, no peace” was disgorged.
And the man who once aided and abetted Marxist revolutionaries now faces a revolution himself. As the Daily Mail writes:
Hundreds have taken to social media to say that de Blasio has ‘blood on his hands’ and should ‘be charged with murder’ after the two men were killed ‘execution style’ in Brooklyn.
What’s more, many feel that de Blasio should not attend the officers’ funerals, this after many members of the NYPD signed a petition asking that the Mayor not attend their service should they be killed in the line of duty in light of his recent actions.
This as hundreds of NYPD members turned their backs on de Blasio as he entered a news conference Saturday afternoon.
Harry Houck, a retired NYPD detective, went on CNN to attack both de Blasio and Al Sharpton.
‘I guess Al Sharpton got what he wanted,’ said Houck of the civil rights leader.
… Twitter was even more brutal, with one man, Cole Phelps, writing; ‘Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama, Bill De Blasio & Eric Holder should be CHARGED with the MURDER of both #NYPD Officer’s.’
… Former New York Governor George Pataki also came out against de Blasio and Holder, saying; ‘Sickened by these barbaric acts, which sadly are a predictable outcome of divisive anti-cop rhetoric of #ericholder & #mayordeblasio. #NYPD’
In addition, a Move On petition demanding de Blasio’s resignation already has more than 5,000 signatures.
Yet whatever the mayor’s and Sharpton’s degree of guilt, they’ve had willing accomplices in the media, the halls of politics, and elsewhere. Not only did the media popularize and promote the “Hands up, don’t shoot!” claim — relating to the thoroughly discredited notion that Mike Brown had surrendered to Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson when he was shot — but congressmen have actually repeated it on the House floor. This prompted Dr. Thomas Sowell to state that this demagoguery was shameless enough to remind him of Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, infamous for saying “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
What’s more, some know it’s a lie but nonetheless embrace it. It was reported late last month that while many leftists knew Mike Brown didn’t actually have his hands up when shot, they were content to repeat the hands-up meme with the justification that it was a “symbol” of a wider struggle, a “metaphor.” They say it doesn’t matter if the slogan is literally true.
Tell that to Ralph Weems, a white Mississippi man who suffered brain damage after being beaten by a black mob upset about the Brown shooting. Tell it to the relatives of Bosnian immigrant Zemir Begic, who, also in Ferguson’s wake, was murdered in a hammer attack by youths who a witness said were screaming “Kill the white people.” And tell the many victims of revenge attacks after the Trayvon Martin slaying that twisting the truth on racial issues doesn’t matter.
As in movies, the problem with symbolism in real life is that many do interpret it literally. This can help a lie “get halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on”; and it certainly did with the Ferguson falsehood, as many uninformed citizens who never “get the memo” are unaware of the hands-up meme’s downgrade from “fact” to useful fiction. And what will rub racial wounds more raw, what will inspire more rage and desire for vengeance, than the image of a black youth — on his knees and with hands up — being coldly shot to death at point-black range by a white police officer?
A mere two days before the New York City police assassinations, a story broke about a paramedic with the Philadelphia Fire Department who posted a photo (shown) to Instagram of two black men pointing a gun at a police officer’s head — it also labels police “the enemy.” But the real enemy, some observers would say, are those who stoke the fires of racial unrest with rhetoric forged on lies and feeding, every day, on blood.
Photo at top of article: AP Images
