Pair of NYC policemen ‘assassinated’ on duty
Reuters, NEW YORK
Mon, Dec 22, 2014
Two New York City police officers were shot by a suspect who then killed himself, police said, after a social media post indicated that the suspect might have been seeking revenge for recent deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of law enforcement officials.
The two New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers, Rafael Ramos, 40, and Wenjian Liu, 32, were ambushed in their patrol car on Saturday afternoon, NYPD Police Commissioner William Bratton said.
“They were quite simply assassinated, targeted for their uniforms,” he told a news conference after the attack, the first in which NYPD officers had been killed by gunfire since 2011.
The two men were attacked outside a housing project in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn at a tense time for the NYPD, the largest police force in the US.
Protests over policing tactics have roiled the city since a grand jury chose this month not to indict a white NYPD officer in the killing of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died after being placed in a prohibited chokehold during a July arrest on Staten Island.
The shooter fired through the passenger-side window of the officers’ marked patrol car, striking both in the head before they had a chance to respond, Bratton said.
The suspect fled on foot, followed by other police officers, then took his own life on a subway platform, he added.
US President Barack Obama condemned the killings, saying: “Two brave men won’t be going home to their loved ones tonight.”
US Attorney General Eric Holder promised the support of the US Department of Justice throughout the investigation.
Bratton said the suspect, identified as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, had made “anti-police” comments online.
Shortly before the double shooting, a message on an Instagram account apparently belonging to Brinsley said: “They Take 1 Of Ours ... Let’s Take 2 of Theirs.”
The post was followed with hashtags referencing Garner and Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager shot and killed by a white officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in August.
Bratton said that investigators were checking whether Brinsley had attended any of the protests.
The killings also revealed bitter anger among some police toward New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who they see as not being supportive in the face of public anger.
Several officers turned their backs on De Blasio when he arrived at the Brooklyn hospital where the two officers were taken after they were shot, video showed.
Patrick Lynch, head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the nation’s largest municipal police union, said: “There’s blood on many hands tonight.”
It was unclear why the suspect chose Brooklyn.
Authorities said Brinsley, who previously lived in Georgia, had shot and wounded his girlfriend in Baltimore early on Saturday morning before heading north to New York City.
Baltimore County Police said in a news release that officers had learned of the Instagram threat and contacted the NYPD by telephone about 30 minutes before the shooting, following that warning with a faxed photo of the Brinsley.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2014/12/22/2003607306
Structure of the Lead：
WHO-
WHAT-
WHY-
Keywords：
1. assassinated 暗殺
2. tactics 策略
3. chokehold 控制遭到
4. condemned 譴責
5. hashtags 標籤
6. municipal 市政
In my opinion, I think revenge is not a good thing for people.
回覆刪除Living in the world, we should be peaceful.
Using such a extreme way to harm people is not useful but make the world worse.
After reading this news, I cannot agree them to do this thing because it is too cruel.
回覆刪除They should communicate instead of revenging.
We live on the same world so we should live peacefully.
They took revenge to the innocent people is really bad.
回覆刪除Everyone has their own family, nobody has the right to snatch anyone's life away.