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| Rev. Al Sharpton, center, speaks about Saturday's killings of two New York City police officers, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2014 during a news conference at the National Action Network headquarters, in New York. Behind him are, from left, Esaw Garner, widow of Eric Garner, attorney Michael Hardy, Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, and attorney Jonathan Moore. Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who vowed online to shoot two "pigs" in retaliation for the police chokehold death of Eric Garner, ambushed two New York City officers in a patrol car Saturday and fatally shot them in broad daylight before running to a subway station and killing himself, authorities said. |
NEW YORK (AP)
-- Civil rights leaders Sunday condemned the ambush killings of two New
York police officers and expressed fear that the backlash over the
bloodshed could derail the protest movement that has grown out of the
deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
In
the raw hours following the killing of the officers, police union
officials and politicians accused those who have protested the deaths of
Garner and Brown of fanning anti-police fervor. Patrick Lynch,
president of the Patrolman's Benevolent Association in New York, said
there was "blood on the hands" of demonstrators and elected officials
who have criticized police tactics.
The Garner
and Brown families issued statements repudiating the officers'
killings, while civil rights leaders took to the airwaves to try to put
some distance between the movement and the crime.
"To
link the criminal insanity of a lone gunman to the peaceful protests
and aspirations of many people across the country, including the
attorney general, the mayor and even the president, is simply not fair,"
NAACP President Cornell William Brooks said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
Brooks said the shootings were "certainly not a step forward" for the movement.
Officers
Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were gunned down at close range in their
patrol car in Brooklyn on Saturday by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who then
committed suicide. Before the attack, Brinsley, 28, wrote on an
Instagram account: "I'm putting wings on pigs today. They take 1 of
ours, let's take 2 of theirs."
He used the
hashtags Shootthepolice RIPErivGardner (sic) RIPMikeBrown - references
to two blacks who died at the hands of police. Garner died in a New York
City officer's chokehold, and Brown was shot by an officer in Ferguson,
Missouri. Grand juries decided not to bring charges against either
officer.
In the wake of the ambush, former New
York Mayor Rudy Giuliani lashed out at New York Mayor Bill de Blasio,
President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Speaking on Fox
News, Giuliani said:
"We've had four months of propaganda starting with
the president that everybody should hate the police."
"They
have created an atmosphere of severe, strong, anti-police hatred in
certain communities, and for that, they should be ashamed of
themselves," he said.
In a tweet, former New
York Gov. George Pataki called the killings the "predictable outcome of
divisive, anti-cop rhetoric of Attorney General Eric Holder and Bill De
Blasio."
The accusations stoked fears that any gains made in the protest movement would be lost.
"We've
been denouncing violence in our community," no matter who the target
is, New York community activist Tony Herbert said. He said he worries
that the shooting will be used to discredit the larger cause.
"It
sullies the opportunity for us to make inroads to build the
relationships we need to build to get the trust back," he said. "This
hurts."
Similarly, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who
has called for peaceful protests, condemned "eye-for-an-eye" violence
and called it absurd to blame protesters or politicians for the
officers' deaths.
"We are now under intense
threat from those who are misguided - from those who are trying to blame
everyone from civil rights leaders to the mayor rather than deal with
an ugly spirit that all of us need to fight," he said.
Sharpton
added: "There are those of us committed to nonviolence and making the
system work. And there are those committed to anarchy and recklessness
who could care less about the families of police or the families who
have raised questions about police accountability."
Irene
Sundiata Myers, a black woman who was selling roses and inspirational
words Sunday on Harlem's Malcolm X Boulevard, said that because of
Saturday's ambush, some officers might think twice about pulling the
trigger on black men.
"It will change the
attitude of police across the country in terms of how they go about
killing black men, if they begin to think that there's a possibility
that there will be a retribution," she said.
