NY Mayor: No Protests Until After Funerals

Mayor de Blasio urges people to 'step back'
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Dec 22, 2014 2:40 PM CST
NY Mayor: No Protests Until After Funerals
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, pauses at the podium during a news conference at Woodhull Medical Center, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2014, in New York.    (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

New York's mayor today called for protests and political debate to pause until after funerals are held for two officers shot and killed inside their patrol car this weekend by a man vowing retaliation for the deaths of black men at the hands of white police. "I think it's important that regardless of people's viewpoints that everyone step back," Mayor Bill de Blasio says in a speech. "I think it's a time for everyone to put aside political debates, put aside protests, put aside all of the things that we will talk about in all due time." Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were ambushed Saturday afternoon by a 28-year-old who wrote in an Instagram post that he would put "wings on pigs." The suspect, Ishmaaiyl Brinsley was black; the slain NYPD officers were Hispanic and Asian.

De Blasio says it's time to focus on the grieving families of the officers. He and Police Commissioner William Bratton met with the families today. "There's a lot of pain," de Blasio says. "It's so hard to make sense of it—how one deeply troubled, violent individual could do this to these good families." New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also urged people on both sides to tone down their rhetoric, phoning into a WNYC-AM radio interview and calling for "rational, sober conversation" later to consider reforms. Meanwhile, the New York Yankees will pay for the education of the two slain officers' children, as the organization has done for the children of cops, fire-fighters, and Port Authority officers killed in the line of duty for the past 32 years, the Daily News reports. (More New York City stories.)

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