US police departments on alert after two NYPD officers ‘assassinated’

Big city police departments and union leaders around the country are warning their rank and file to wear bulletproof vests and avoid making inflammatory posts on social media after a man ambushed two New York City officers on Saturday and shot them to death inside their patrol car.

The slayings of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu on Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn heightened fears about the safety of law enforcement officials nationwide, though there is no evidence any threats are imminent. The gunman, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, vowed in an Instagram post to put “wings on pigs” in retaliation for the killings of black men at the hands of white police.

At a press conference Saturday evening, Commissioner William Bratton of the NYPD, the largest police department in the country, said that the two officers were “quite simply assassinated,” adding that “they were targeted for their uniform.”

Investigators are trying to determine if Brinsley had taken part in any protests over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, whose names he invoked in his online threat, or simply latched onto the cause for the final act in a violent rampage.

Police nationwide have faced criticism in the wake of Garner’s death after a chokehold by a white New York Police Department officer and Brown’s fatal shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white police officer. Protests erupted in recent weeks after grand juries declined to charge the officers involved in both cases.

After the officers’ killings, a union-generated message at the 35,000-officer NYPD warned officers that they should respond to every radio call with two cars — “no matter what the opinion of the patrol supervisor” — and not make arrests “unless absolutely necessary.” The president of the detectives union told members to work in threes when out on the street, wear bulletproof vests and keep aware of their surroundings.

Another directive warned officers in Newark, New Jersey, not to patrol alone and to avoid people looking for confrontations. At the same time, a memo from an NYPD chief asked officers to limit their comments “via all venues, including social media, to expressions of sorrow and condolence.”

In Philadelphia, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey urged the leaders of protests over the deaths of Garner and Brown to “call for calm and not let this escalate any further.” In Boston, Police Commissioner William Evans said police issued an alert to officers to warn them about the New York City slayings and added that the department had issued several alerts after the decision by the Ferguson grand jury.

Leaders of recent protests, including longtime New York civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton, have condemned the officers’ murder.

About 100 protesters, part of a group that recently met with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to call for police reforms, held a demonstration on Sunday night in Harlem. In contrast to usually boisterous protests critical of police, participants marched in silence bearing candles. A candlelight vigil for the slain officers was held in Brooklyn near the scene of the shooting.

President Barack Obama, briefed on Saturday about the police deaths while on vacation in Hawaii, called Bratton on Sunday to express condolences for the killing.

Despite the more conciliatory tone since Saturday, the shooting has exposed a distinct fault line between de Blasio and factions in the city’s police department.

Hours after the shooting, Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said, “The blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall, in the office of the mayor.” Also over the weekend, a number of police officers turned their back to the mayor when he went to the hospital where Liu and Ramos were taken after they were shot.

Efforts by de Blasio to reform the city’s policing methods, including a campaign to end the controversial stop-and-frisk police stops that fell heavily on black and Latino New Yorkers, had already disenchanted some officers in the department, though Bratton has publicly defended the mayor on numerous occasions.

But in the aftermath of protests over a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict a white officer over the death of the unarmed, black Garner, some in the department voiced criticisms that the mayor did not sufficiently support them.

De Blasio’s recent public comments that he told his biracial son Dante about “how to take special care with any encounter he may have with police officers” was perceived by some as a dig at police. 

But the mayor has publicly praised the police since the Garner case, repeatedly defending police officers, something that he did again speaking about the Liu and Ramos slayings.

“They [the police] are a foundation of our society, and when they are attacked, it is an attack on the very concept of decency,” he said on Saturday. He described the killing of the two officers as “an attack on all of us.”

On Monday, de Blasio called for a pause in protests and political debate until after funerals are held for the two officers.

“I think it’s important that, regardless of people’s viewpoints, that everyone step back,” he said in a speech at the Police Athletic League. “I think it’s a time for everyone to put aside political debates, put aside protests, put aside all of the things that we will talk about in due time.”

Also on Monday, Bratton told NBC’s “Today” program, “This issue is really starting to go down partisan lines, Republican-Democrat. This is something that should be bringing us all together, not taking us apart.”

Bratton said he considers it inappropriate for police officers to turn their backs on the mayor. He said labor talks and pension concerns were fueling their discontent.

“There’s a lot of moving currents that have created the tensions,” he said.

At a news conference in New York on Sunday, Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce detailed Brinsley’s long criminal record, hatred for police and the government and apparent history of mental instability, including an attempt to hang himself a year ago.

Hours before shooting the officers, Brinsley shot and wounded his ex-girlfriend, Shaneka Thompson, at her home in Baltimore. After leaving Baltimore, authorities said, Brinsley took a bus to New York City and used Thompson’s phone to write on Instagram, “They take 1 of ours, let's take 2 of theirs.” He ended the post with references to the Brown and Garner cases.

Underscoring the dangers faced by police around the country, another officer was shot dead in Tarpon Spring, Florida, just hours after the New York slayings on Saturday.

Authorities charged Marco Antonio Parilla Jr., a 23-year-old released from prison in March and wanted for an alleged probation violation, with the first-degree murder of Officer Charles Kondek. “A tragedy caused by a coward,” said Tarpon Springs Police Chief Robert Kochen. “It’s devastating.”

Parilla’s actions in the Florida case did not appear to be motivated by ones similar to those attributed to Brinsley.

Al Jazeera and wire services