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 The service for Rafael Ramos was one of the largest police
funerals in the city's history, with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden
among the dignitaries. But the tradition-bound ceremony was marked
by an unusual protest against Mayor Bill de Blasio.
As he rose to deliver the customary mayoral eulogy, thousands of
uniformed officers outside silently turned their backs on him in a
pointed display of disrespect as his image filled the large screens
broadcasting the service.
Angered by the mayor's qualified sympathy for nationwide
demonstrations calling for police reform, some New York police
officers had similarly shunned de Blasio as he arrived a week ago at
the hospital where Ramos and his police partner, Wenjian Liu, were
declared dead.
"He believed in protecting others," de Blasio said as he stood
behind Ramos' coffin, which was draped in the police department's
flag and bathed in blue light, "and those who are called to protect
others are a special breed."
 Singled out for their uniforms, the slaying of Ramos, 40, and Liu,
32, as they sat in their patrol car has become a rallying point for
police and their supporters around the country, beleaguered by
months of street protests accusing police of racist practices.
Offering a counter-narrative to the anti-police chants at many
protests, Vice President Biden made the first of several speeches
that touched on the marked increase in the racial diversity of the
city's police force, which only a few decades ago was almost
entirely white.
"I believe that this great police force of this incredibly diverse
city can and will show the nation how to bridge any divide," Biden
said during the service at Christ Tabernacle Church in the suburban
Queens neighborhood in which Ramos lived with his wife, Maritza, and
their two teenage sons.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the department had officers
hailing from more than 50 different nations and included speakers of
64 languages. He went on to criticize some of the protesters who
have held rallies in the city on a nearly daily basis.
"The NYPD protected the right of free speech even though they
themselves were the targets of false and abusive tirades by some,"
he said.
SORROW MIXED WITH ANGER
Streets outside the church were filled for blocks with neat, quiet
crowds of officers in blue uniform, including delegations from
Boston, Atlanta, St. Louis and New Orleans. Biden said some 25,000
people were thought to have come.
Before joining the police department relatively late in his career,
Ramos, known to his friends as Ralph, had worked as a school safety
officer.
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"He knew how to handle people, and the younger guys looked up to
him," said Bill Bratton, the city's police commissioner. A regular
face as an usher at Christ Tabernacle, Ramos had nearly completed a
course to become a police chaplain.
Bratton, a far more popular figure among police than the mayor,
announced that he had posthumously appointed Ramos to the position.
The officers' killer, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, was described by city
officials as an emotionally troubled man, and fatally shot himself
soon after the attack.
Brinsley, who was black, had written online that he wanted to kill
police to avenge the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown -
unarmed black men killed by white policemen in New York and
Ferguson, Missouri, this summer.
Their deaths and the decisions not to prosecute the officers
responsible ignited nationwide protests, renewing a debate about
race in the United States that has drawn in President Barack Obama.
In his first year as mayor after campaigning for police reform, de
Blasio has struggled to balance the interests of police critics who
helped elect him and the officers who now work for him. This week,
he was assailed by voices on both sides, with activists angered by
his call, which they ignored, that they pause their protests.
Ramos' family said the mayor was welcome at the funeral, but even
many officers who did not turn their backs said they sympathized
with the gesture.
"A lot of people feel he has taken a side, and that side is not
ours," a New York police officer said on condition that her name be
withheld because of a department ban on unsanctioned media
interviews.
Patrick Lynch, president of the city's largest police union, said
within hours of the deaths of Liu and Ramos that there was "blood on
the hands" of the mayor.
"We have to understand the betrayal that they feel," Lynch, in an
interview outside the church with CNN, said of the officers'
protest. "The feeling is real, but today is about mourning. Tomorrow
is about debate."
(Editing by Mark Heinrich and Dan Grebler)
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