The first time around when the mayor went to pay his respects to one of New York’s fallen heroes, the rest of the New York police department allowed their union leader to get the best of them, and showered the mayor with the uttermost disrespect – turning their backs on the man as he attended the funeral.
But something has changed, and today as the mayor made his way through the wake of the second fallen officer, he was saluted by other police officers at the scene, thanks in part to a stern letter written by Police Commissioner, Bill Bratton.
Ahead of the wake for Wenjian Liu, Commissioner Bill Bratton told officers to refrain from the “act of disrespect” seen at the funeral of Liu’s partner, Rafael Ramos, when thousands of officers turned their backs on de Blasio.
“A hero’s funeral is about grieving, not grievance,” Bratton wrote in a memo to be read on police roll calls over the weekend. The funeral is set for Sunday.
Liu, 32, and Ramos, 40, were shot to death on Dec. 20 as they sat in their squad car in Brooklyn. Their killer, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who killed himself soon after, had said he was seeking to avenge the deaths this summer of two unarmed black men at the hands of white police officers.
On Saturday, a few hundred mourners, most of them police officers in dress blue uniforms, lined up outside the funeral home on a frigid, snowy afternoon.
De Blasio and Bratton entered the funeral home together shortly after it opened, with officers standing guard by the entrance saluting both men as they went inside. The wake was closed to the public.
