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10 years after the targeted killing of 2 NYPD officers, policing in NY has changed
By
Charles Lane
Published Dec 20, 2024
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(Photo by Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
By
Charles Lane
Published Dec 20, 2024
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Ten years ago today, two NYPD officers were shot and killed while sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn.
It was a shocking act of violence that came on the heels of citywide protests over police brutality in the wake of Eric Garner’s death. Garner had been placed in an prohibited chokehold by an NYPD officer who was never charged with a crime.
The 2014 killings of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu as they sat in their patrol car marked a turning point in New York City's relationship with law enforcement. Law enforcement experts said the tragedy caused police to put new safety measures in place for officers, and public sentiment about criminal justice reform has swung back and forth over time. Families of the men killed said there is more work to do to improve police-community relations.
Police said they felt unsupported by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had expressed empathy for the protesters, and that fury culminated when hundreds of officers literally turned their backs on him — both at the hospital on the day of the officers’ slayings and at one officer’s funeral.
A decade later, the city has gone through even more protests, especially in 2020, when lawmakers followed through on calls for criminal justice reform and reducing funding for the NYPD. After the reforms, a growing number of people started complaining that they felt a sense of disorder and danger on the streets. In 2021, residents elected Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain who ran on a law and order platform.
Today, police are still trying to rebuild their relationship with the public, and vice versa.
“ Morale in the job in the police department was really bad,” Jose Falero, Ramos’s friend and fellow police officer, said in an interview Wednesday. “Obviously George Floyd happened and that did not help things, but it just reminded us that we needed to continue to work harder. "
On Dec. 20, 2014, police officers Rafael Ramos, 40, and Wenjian Liu, 32, sat in their car at the intersection of Myrtle and Tompkins avenues in Brooklyn. Witnesses said Ismaaiyl Brinsley walked up to the passenger window and shot his semiautomatic handgun four times, hitting both officers in the head and torso. Brinsley then fled into the Myrtle-Willoughby Avenues subway station and killed himself with the same gun.
Earlier that day, Brinsley shot his girlfriend in Baltimore and traveled to New York. En route, he posted messages to social media saying that he planned to take revenge against police. He cited two recent incidents in which police had caused the deaths of Black men: Eric Garner in Staten Island and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
“I'm putting Wings on Pigs Today," Brinsley wrote beneath the image of a semiautomatic pistol.
While the tragedy hurt officer morale, it also spurred the NYPD to implement safety measures that make officers safer, according to former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who led the department at the time.
"Out of that tragedy came a lot of positives," he said. "There was just a lot of acceleration of technology acquisition and improved officer safety measures."
Measures included bulletproof patrol cars and officer smartphones. Bratton said the NYPD also created two new units to respond to and manage intelligence: the Strategic Response Group, which has generated its own controversy, and the Critical Response Command, two units charged with counter-terrorism and protest response.
Bratton noted that on the day of the murders, crucial intelligence about Brinsley’s plans was being transmitted from Baltimore. But it came through outdated paper-based teletype machines and did not reach officers like Liu and Ramos, who were on patrol.
Six years after the murders, protests again broke out when an officer murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis. In New York, those protests and reform efforts culminated in the repeal of the state law known as "50-a," which shielded police disciplinary records from public view. The 2020 protests also gave rise to the “defund the police” movement, causing a $1 billion drop in NYPD funding. Lawmakers also gave the state Attorney General’s office more authority to investigate local police departments.
Many of those reforms are still in place. The NYPD’s budget has rebounded, standing at about where it was before those “defund the police” steps, not accounting for inflation, according to reports from the City Council and the city’s Independent Budget Office.
“ Policing is much, much better than it has been probably in the whole history of the country,” Jim Bueermann, a former California police chief and president of Future Policing Institute, a reform-minded policing think tank, said. “Police leaders are more highly educated and more attuned to community needs.”
Bueermann said the killing of Ramos and Liu was a tragedy that uniquely affected officers in New York. Nationally, there have been other ambush slayings of officers that similarly affected the departments and communities where they happened. Overall, Bueermann said, 2014 was a year that started a social movement that ultimately professionalized departments across the country with more educated officers who better reflected their communities' demographics. The NYPD at large reflects the city’s demographics, but roughly half the people in leadership are still white.
Under Mayor Adams' administration, the NYPD has returned to more aggressive policing, targeting low-level arrests and criticizing cash-bail reforms of 2020. But the president of the rank-and-file NYPD officers union said the anti-police sentiment from around the time Liu and Ramos were killed still exists.
“The hateful anti-police rhetoric that inspired [Ramos and Liu’s] killer is still far too prevalent, and it’s still putting cops and our families at risk,” Patrick Hendry, president of the NYC Police Benevolent Association, said. “To truly honor the memory of these two heroes, we need the public to rally behind the cops who carry on their work.”
Healing the relationship between police and the community is especially important to Ramos and Liu’s friends and families.
Maritza Ramos, Rafael Ramos’ widow, along with Ramos' friend and fellow officer, Jose Falero, established the Detective Rafael Ramos Foundation. The group organizes toy giveaways where uniformed officers interact with local children in order to build a trusting relationship.
On Wednesday, the organization visited P.S. 54, the Detective Rafael Ramos School, to give away toys ahead of the anniversary of his death. Roughly 100 children received toys and listened to the NYPD band play Christmas carols.
“ My husband died unfortunately because someone thought that all cops are bad,” Maritza Ramos said in an interview before the giveaway. “The only way to change that is for people to see cops in a positive light.”
Pei Xia Chen, the wife of Wenjian Liu, also created the Wenjian Liu Foundation to support the families of first-responders who have died. After her husband’s death, Pei Xia Chen said, she was helped by a black lab named Liuliu who gave her unconditional support and companionship. Her foundation has trained nine therapy dogs for the families of other NYPD and FDNY employees who have died.
In an interview Wednesday, she said she has also thought a lot about policing in the years since 2014.
“ The media, the politicians, they are all making police to be evil,” she said. “I think we should have a little bit more support… don't attack them.”
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Charles Lane
Charles is a Day-of reporter focused on breaking news and enterprise. He’s very friendly and can be reached at [email protected], or more securely on whatsapp/signal 631-295-6715
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