Letter: Police-citizen shootings must end
Some NYPD cops turned their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio at Wenjian Liu's funeral Sunday, Jan. 4, 2015. Credit: Nicole Fuller
Lately it seems that almost every day we read of Americans killing other Americans ["Community honors slain NYPD officer," News, May 17]. Policemen killed by citizens, citizens killed by police.
Two New York City cops were killed while sitting in their patrol car, two cops in Mississippi were killed during a traffic stop, and a young NYPD cop from Massapequa was killed. Was racial hatred the reason? I wonder.
In Mississippi, one police officer was black and one white; the alleged shooter was black. In the New York shootings, one officer was white, one Hispanic, and one Asian. In Baltimore, Freddie Gray, who was black, died in police custody; three of the officers involved were black and three white.
Do you think Officer Brian Moore's mother would cry any less if her son had been killed by a white man? Do you think the family of the black man shot in the back in South Carolina in April would cry less if the cop was black, not white?
Will we ever achieve reverence and respect for all human life? Let us all raise our voices and condemn this plague of killing.
Joe DiBenedetto, Massapequa
