A blue wall of grief – Toledo Blade

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Officer Miosotis Familia was murdered, assassinated point-blank and in cold blood, without provocation, on a corner in the Bronx where she was making a difference defusing fear and racial tension.

Her killer, Alexander Bonds, taken down by two other police officers in pursuit after he fired on them and hit a bystander, was both mentally ill and a cop hater. His illness does not explain, or negate, his hate.

By all accounts, Officer Familia was a great cop, and a great human being. She was the kind of cop police chiefs and do-gooders alike dream of. She knew the people on her beat and reached out to them, often in Spanish. She raised three kids and took care of her mother, who lived with her. She was, said a nephew, a warrior in life as well as work.

Officer Familia was the first female New York Police Department officer killed in the line of duty since 9/11, and the third female officer killed in a combat situation in the departments history.

Why does someone like that have to die like that?

This is what the New York City police commissioner, James P. ONeill, said: Make no mistake: Officer Familia was murdered for her uniform and for the responsibility she embraced.

Was she? Wasnt she killed because hate consumed the mind of a crazy man?

Would the chief put it quite this way given time to reflect and consider his words?

Or would he point out that the reason a sick mind and a heart filled with hate targeted a cop is that cops are too often disrespected and misunderstood in America?

Most of us have no idea what a police officers life is like. We dont comprehend what an officer risks every day on the job. We cant know the knot in the belly of every cop as he approaches every car he stops. (Will this be the day? Will this be the one?) We dont see the reality of many of the people police officers deal with daily. Many are people who have never known lifes value, never seen that value treasured or expressed. That often makes them unpredictable and dangerous people.

Being a cop has always been tough. It is tougher than ever today.

And most of us have no idea. None.

We mostly never will because few of us have ever really talked to a police officer. All we know about police work is what we have seen on TV, where good guys and bad guys alike shoot straight and the bad guys act with rational motives.

And how insane has our political culture gotten when it is considered controversial or politically incorrect to say that both black lives and blue lives matter? Of course they do. Of course they are linked. Author Heather Mac Donald has summarized the irony: There is no government agency that has saved more black lives over the last two decades than the police.

The death of Officer Familia is an American tragedy and that the commissioner thinks what he thinks about her death is a second tragedy. Many cops believe their communities often do not have their backs. They feel the blue brotherhood is their only real extended family.

Obviously, every police force, in every American city, should have every possible resource it needs. And when a police officer is assassinated simply for being a cop, all the resource questions must be asked and all procedures reviewed.

But beyond this, our police officers deserve our deeper understanding, our curiosity, our sympathy, and our undying appreciation. And when one falls, our abiding sense of loss and grief.

The rest is here:
A blue wall of grief - Toledo Blade