Page 2 - ARUBA TODAY

A2 UP FRONT
Monday 10 February 2020
Outrage after gunman ambushes NYC police twice in 12 hours

Continued from Front police in recent months, turned fire but missed, and
including a large protest police personnel dashed
“It is only by the grace of in Grand Central Terminal. out of an adjoining room
God and the heroic ac- He suggested the protests just in time to avoid the pur-
tions of those inside the helped create an anti-po- suing gunman. Two security
building that took him into lice environment. cameras captured video
custody that we are not “These things are not un- of the chaotic scene.
talking about police offic- related. We had people Gov. Andrew Cuomo said
ers murdered inside a New marching through the in a tweet Sunday he was
York City police precinct,” streets of New York City re- “horrified by the multiple
Police Commissioner Der- cently,” Shea said. “Words attacks” on police.
mot Shea said at a news matter. And words affect New York police stand outside the 41st precinct at the scene of “NY’s law enforcement of-
conference. people’s behavior.” a police involved shooting, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2020, in New York. ficers put their lives on the
The officer injured in the first Shea didn’t offer any evi- Associated Press line every day to keep us
shooting, Paul Stroffolino, dence that the gunman safe,” he wrote. “These at-
was released from the hos- in this weekend’s attacks The attacks recalled other Robert Gangi, executive tacks are heinous.”
pital Sunday to applause knew of those protests or unprovoked assaults on director of the Police Re- President Donald Trump im-
from a sizable contingent was influenced by them. police officers sitting in their form Organizing Project mediately used the shoot-
of fellow officers. The offic- Mayor Bill de Blasio, who patrol vehicles. advocacy group, said it ings to assail New York’s
er, a bandage visible on his won office partly on a In 2017, a gunman killed was “irresponsible” for Shea Democratic mayor and
neck, gave a thumbs-up to promise to reform overly Officer Miosotis Familia as and de Blasio to say the governor.
the crowd. aggressive policing of mi- she sat in her patrol vehi- violence this weekend was “I grew up in New York
Shea called the gunman a nority communities, also cle in the Bronx. In 2014, linked to the recent dem- City and, over many years,
“coward” and said he had suggested that anti-police two officers, Rafael Ramos onstrations, which he said got to watch how GREAT
a lengthy criminal history, sentiment had gotten out and Wenjian Liu, were shot involved activists “protest- NYC’s ‘Finest’ are. Now,
including a 2002 shooting of hand. dead in their patrol car in ing in a legitimate fashion.” because of weak leader-
and carjacking in which “Anyone who spews ha- Brooklyn by a man upset Of the gunman, though, ship at Governor & Mayor,
he also fired a gun at po- tred at our officers is aiding about recent police killings Gangi said there is “no stand away (water thrown
lice officers. Shea said the and abetting this kind of at- of unarmed black men. defense for a lunatic who at them) regulations, and
man was paroled from mosphere; it is not accept- The killings of Ramos and opens fire on police.” lack of support, our won-
prison in 2017 after an at- able,” de Blasio said. “You Liu had also followed large The first attack happened derful NYC police are un-
tempted murder convic- could protest for whatever street protests and some just before 8:30 p.m. Sat- der assault. Stop this now!”
tion.The commissioner also you believe in, but you officers blamed de Blasio urday, when the gunman he tweeted.
lashed out at criminal jus- cannot vilely attack those for expressing solidarity with walked up to the van ask- The attacks happened in
tice reform activists who who are here to protect the demonstrations, and ing the officers for direc- the Bronx’s 41st Precinct,
have held demonstrations us. It creates this kind of dy- turned their backs on the tions and then fired shots, a once crime-plagued dis-
against excessive force by namic.” Democrat at the funerals. grazing Stroffolino, who trict whose former head-
was behind the wheel, in quarters was infamously
the chin and neck and nar- branded “Fort Apache”
rowly missing an artery. and was the subject of a
Police released a photo- 1981 film starring Paul New-
graph of the suspected man.
shooter and were comb- In recent years, though, the
ing the city for him when neighborhood has gotten
he walked into the police much safer. There were five
station coordinating the killings reported in all of last
manhunt, strolled to the year and 164 robberies,
desk and pulled a gun. The down from 44 killings and
wounded lieutenant re- 1,095 robberies in 1990.q