In New York City, police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were killed Saturday afternoon by a man who indicated online that his motivation was to seek revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner on Staten Island.
At the Daily Beast, M.L. Nestel didn't find it particularly difficult to find people who thought that the officers deserved to die, and almost seemed to excuse their feelings.
Here's the subheadline which supports my contention:
Cop Killings Brings Horror -- and Some Cheers
It’s hard to believe people would cheer the murder of two cops, but stubborn crime in the projects makes people think the police don’t care.
So the crime is the cops' fault because they apparently fail to prevent every crime, and that failure is reason to "cheer" their violent deaths? Imagine how bad the crime would be in Bedford-Stuy if there was no police presence.
Now to the body of Nestel's report:
After the crack of gunfire echoed down Myrtle Avenue where several public buildings that make up the Tompkins Houses, several neighbors raced toward the bloody crime scene.
One 30-year-old local who gave his first name only as Carlos, didn’t hear the gunfire but saw the hysteria and walked to the police tape.
And he couldn’t believe his eyes or ears. He didn’t see shock or sorrow but glee and jubilation.
“A lot of people were clapping and laughing,” he said.
Across New York -- and throughout Brooklyn -- the murder of two police officers has generated a sense of near-universal horror. Carlos said he witnessed a different scene: fired-up locals, staring at two cops killed in cold blood and saying they got what they deserved.
... Kenneth Otero, 30 ... lives in a ninth-floor apartment across the street in Tompkins Houses, the housing projects Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were assigned to.
He says he heard the two shots that killed Liu and Ramos.
“I was watching ‘Daniel The Tiger’ with my kid and I heard two shots like ‘boom-boom,’” he said.
“Some were saying, ‘They deserved it,’ and another was shouting at the cops, ‘Serves them right because you mistreat people!’”
But he believes the cops are going too far in the investigation of the murder of two of their own, with scores of cops and idling vehicles, and powerful spot lights turning the night of Tompkins Street into a surreal daylight.
Really now, mere hours after the murders, the police are putting too many resources into the investigation of the murders of their brothers.
I wonder how hard the rest of the press will work to find and reveal some area residents' despicable feelings Nestel surfaced. That ugliness needs wide exposure.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
