U.S.
Seth Wenig/AP
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — The sight of a streetside memorial in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood is relatively common in a part of New York City familiar with random or vengeful acts of gun violence. But the collection of candles, American flag and handwritten condolences being for two police officers is rare.
A vigil at the corner where a disturbed gunman took the lives of two New York City police officers drew dozens of people on Sunday, a day after the shootings. They placed flowers and wreaths, said prayers and paid respects to the officers.
Neighborhood residents at the scene stressed their belief that violence isn’t the answer to problems between police and communities of color. They also said the Saturday afternoon killings shouldn’t be associated with protests or demonstrations against police violence.
“He speaks for no one but himself,” said Abi Jacobs, 33, a lifelong neighborhood resident, of the alleged killer Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28. Police say Brinsley shot himself after killing Officer Rafael Ramos and Officer Wenjian Liu of the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
“The community supports police officers," Jacobs said. "No one wants to see dead police officers.”
The site of the killing is near the unofficial boundary where the mostly black and Hispanic Bedford-Stuyvesant blurs into an Orthodox Jewish enclave in Williamsburg, a neighboring Brooklyn neighborhood.
Rabbi Menachem Heller, of the Chabad of Bushwick, condemned the killings and like other local clergy said they had no relation to activism against police violence. Civil rights protests erupted around the country this year after several police killings of unarmed black people in Missouri, Ohio and New York City.
“There are always certain elements that try to stir up conflict, but here we’re neighbors,” Heller said.
Keith Brown, 34 and Tatania Alexander, 23, who are members of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps, were among the neighbors who first responded to reports of the double shooting.
Saturday "was just a routine day, a call came over and it’s pretty hard for us because these are officers that we see on calls every day. It’s a little bit rough when you have to help a family member out,” Brown said.
“We don’t think about the politics. Our job in Bedford-Stuyvesant is to tend to anybody. We meet everybody, this is a multicultural community. Everybody sticks together,” he said, adding the corps has a positive relationship with the NYPD.
Alexander said that police were already on the scene when she and Brown arrived, and that people cooperated to pull Ramos from the patrol car and place him on a stretcher. He was shot in the head, chest and leg. Liu, who was shot in the head, was tended by the New York Fire Department's ambulance division.
“We strapped (Ramos). My partner started compression, CPR,” she said. “The only thing I could do is think to myself 'He has a family to go home to.' It’s hard. It’s hard to think about.”
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