New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton called slain New York City Police Officer Rafael Ramos "a hero" and gave the officer a posthumous promotion during Ramos' funeral today.
"The men and women who hear that blue and wear that badge, we know who Rafael Ramos was," Bratton said at Ramos' funeral. "He was a New York City Police Officer, and he was, he is a hero."
Thousands of uniformed police officers gathered for the funeral at Christ Tabernacle Church, in the Glendale neighborhood of Queens, standing outside the church where it was broadcast on large screens.
Bratton was just one of many high level government officials who spoke, including Vice President Joe Biden and New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio.
Biden called the New York Police Department the finest in the world.
"They were a part of New York's finest, and that not an idle phrase," he said. "This is probably the finest police department in the world, the finest police department in the world. They earn that praise."
I posted this partly to because I wanted to affirm the fact that for the most part I support the police, and I think what they do is both heroic and necessary to keep all of us safe.
My beef is not with the honest cop on the beat, and I do know they exist. My beef is with power hungry assholes and the over militarized police departments that are equipping their officers as if they expect to be invaded by China at any minute.
And yes I do realize that we live in a society with numerous citizens that are so heavily armed that the average police officer is ill equipped to neutralize them WITHOUT having access to the kind of weaponry one might expect to find during a zombie Apocalypse.
But that of course is a whole other argument for a whole other post.
And besides I thought that was what we had SWAT teams for.
But just like we should not lump all cops together we also should not excuse them for blaming the protesters and Mayor de Blasio for these murders.
And scenes like this of the police turning their back on the mayor while he gives the eulogy are inexcusable in my mind. You know I hate to disagree with Vice President Biden but it does not seem to me that the "best police force in the world" would behave in this manner.
