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New York Mayor Bill de Blasio seeks to end controversy over NYPD killings New York police shooting: Mayor Bill de Blasio rushes to repair rift after officers turn their backs on him
(about 3 hours later)
New York’s under-fire mayor has said it was time to put aside the heated controversy that has gripped the city since the shooting of two police officers and stand with the families of the slain men. He said there should be no protests until the funerals of the men had been carried out. Bill de Blasio, near his first anniversary as New York City Mayor, was rushing today to repair a rift with his own police department after uniformed officers turned their backs towards him during a visit to a hospital where two police officers had been declared dead shortly after being shot in their squad car.
“It's a time for everyone to put aside political debates, put aside protests,“ said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “I would ask that any organisation that were planning gatherings for politics or protests - that could be for another day.” The killing of the two officers in Brooklyn on Saturday by a lone gunman who had earlier posted messages on social media citing recent cases of unarmed black men being killed by white officers has brought widespread criticism of Mr De Blasio, who came to office promising reform of the NYPD and in a speech had expressed sympathy for the movement to end police abuse of black citizens.
Speaking at a charity lunch, Mr de Blasio, who has was accused of having blood on his hands by a police officers’ association following the “execution-style killing” of patrolmen Rafael Ramos and Officer Wenjian Liu, said it was imperative people supported the men’s families. The killing of the two officers, identified as Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, has significantly worsened tensions on the city’s streets which had already been running high in the wake of grand jury decisions not to press charges against officers responsible for killing Michael Brown and Eric Garner last summer in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York.
“These families are now our families and we will stand by them, they are suffering unspeakable pain right now,” said Mr de Blasio, who on Monday morning visited the families of the officers. Yesterday, New York’s Police Commissioner, William Bratton, lamented the newly darkened atmosphere.  “Who would’ve ever thought that we would be back where we were 40 some-odd years ago?” he asked on NBC. Asked when the streets were last so jumpy, he said: “When I first came into policing, my first 10 years were around this type of tension.”
Officers Liu and Ramos were killed on Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn as they sat in their patrol car. Their killer, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who had travelled to New York from Baltimore after shooting and wounding his ex-girlfriend earlier in the day, ran into a subway station and killed himself on the platform. Mr Bratton agreed Mr De Blasio had lost the confidence of some of his officers but expressed regret at the disrespect of the hospital back-turning gesture, led by the NYPD union president Patrick Lynch. “I was at the hospital when that event occurred,” he said. “I don’t think it was appropriate, but it’s reflective of the anger of some of them.”
In the aftermath of the shootings it emerged Brinsley had posted several messages on social media in which he announced his intention to “put wings on pigs”. He suggested he was acting in revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City. “The blood of two executed police officers is on the hands of Mayor De Blasio. May God bless their families and may they rest in peace,” the Sergeants Benevolent Association tweeted at the weekend.
The deaths of the two black men at the hands of white officers sparked protests and outcry in cities across the country. The protests intensified when it was announced no-one was to be charged over the deaths of the men. The blood of 2 executed police officers is on the hands of Mayor de Blasio. May God bless their families and may they rest in peace.
Following the shooting of the two patrolmen, the main police officers’ association issued an unprecedented statement. “The mayor’s hands are literally dripping with our blood because of his words, actions and policies and we have, for the first time in a number of years, become a wartime police department,” it said. Defenders of the Mayor insist his attempts to curb the aggressive policing tactics of the NYPD, including its “stop-and-frisk” policy, was meant to lower tensions. But his standing with the police was damaged further with his Staten Island speech after the grand jury rulings when he noted that his wife is black and said he had spoken to his mixed-race son about how to behave if challenged by the police. Bill de Blasio, the Mayor, came to office promising reform of the NYPD
On Saturday, when Mr de Blasio attended a press conference to talk about the deaths of the officers, a number of police turned their backs on him. Many analysts said the tension between the police and some members of the public had not been so bad for 15 years. Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin prosecutors said last night that a former police officer who killed a black man in a park in April would not be charged because he had acted in self-defence.
Seeking to draw a line under the controversy, the mayor on Monday said that New Yorkers should thank and console police officers they encountered on the street. A makeshift memorial of flowers, cards, hand-written messages and flickering candles continued to grow last night at the site of Saturday’s killing in Brooklyn. “I came to pay my respects. We need to let the police know how much this community needs them, especially right now,” observed Jessica Dunn, 34, a local who laid a bouquet of roses at the site. “I came to show respect.”
 “We have to understand that an attack on them was an attack on all of us,” he said, speaking at a lunch for the Police Athletic League. “Let's accompany these families on their difficult journey. Let's see them through the funerals...then the debate can begin again.” The shooter was quickly identified as 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley. After shooting through the windows of the squad car and fatally wounding both the officers, he fled the scene but was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a nearby underground station. 
He added: “We depend on our police to protect us against forces of criminality and evil. They are a foundation of our society, and when they are attacked, it is an attack on the very concept of decency.” The NYPD Chief of Detectives, Robert Boyce, said that Brinsley, who was black, had a long criminal record. He had been arrested at least 19 times in Ohio and Georgia and spent two years in prison for gun possession. He said even his own mother had been afraid of him. He also left behind a long record on online rants expressing “self-despair and anger at himself and where his life was”, said Mr Boyce.
Among outstanding questions yesterday about Brinsley was whether he had directly participated in recent protests against police mistreatment of blacks organised over recent days and weeks in cities across the country. Earlier on Saturday, he had shot and wounded his ex-girlfriend, Shaneka Thompson, at her home in Baltimore. He then took a bus from Baltimore to New York.
He meanwhile used Ms Thompson’s phone to post a message on Instagram, a popular photo-sharing app, declaring “They take one of ours, let’s take two of theirs”. He then referred to the Brown and Garner cases. Moments before opening fire in Brooklyn he walked up to people on the pavement, told them to follow him on Instagram and declared, “Watch what I’m going to do”.
Republicans have been on the front line of the assaults on Mr De Blasio. The former New York governor George Pataki said via Twitter the shootings were “a predictable outcome of divisive anti-cop rhetoric”. The former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani also blamed President Barack Obama.  “We’ve had four months of propaganda, starting with the President, that everybody should hate the police,” he told CBS.