THE AFTERMATH – AT 8:16 A.M. ET:  I have no doubt that the liberal press will try to get the murder of two New York cops off the front page as quickly as possible.  Doesn't fit the party line. 

But this time I don't think it will work.  The shock has been too great, the possibility of more trouble also too great.  Already the alerts have gone out to police departments to be wary of copycat killers.  From Fox: 

Wear bulletproof vests. Avoid posting inflammatory statements on social media. Don't make arrests unless you have to. Don't patrol alone.

Those are some of the warnings police departments and unions around the country are giving to the rank-and-file after two NYPD officers were ambushed and shot in their patrol car in broad daylight Saturday afternoon.

The murders of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in Brooklyn heightened fears about the safety of law enforcement officials nationwide, though there is no evidence any threats are imminent. The gunman, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, had vowed in an Instagram post to put "wings on pigs" as retaliation for the slayings of black men at the hands of white police.

Brinsley was black; the slain New York Police Department officers were Hispanic and Asian.

Investigators are trying to determine if Brinsley had taken part in any protests over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, whose names he invoked in his online threat, or simply latched onto the cause for the final act in a violent rampage. Protests erupted in recent weeks after grand juries declined to charge officers involved in Garner's death following a New York officer's apparent chokehold and Brown's fatal shooting in Ferguson, Mo.

After the officers' killings, a union-generated message at the 35,000-officer NYPD warned officers that they should respond to every radio call with two cars — "no matter what the opinion of the patrol supervisor" — and not make arrests "unless absolutely necessary." The president of the detectives union told members in a letter to work in threes when out on the street, wear bulletproof vests and keep aware of their surroundings.

Another directive warned officers in Newark, New Jersey, not to patrol alone and to avoid people looking for confrontations. At the same time, a memo from an NYPD chief asked officers to limit their comments "via all venues, including social media, to expressions of sorrow and condolence."

COMMENT:  What is clear is that Mayor de Blasio of New York is losing control of his own police department.  It is the price he pays for running a left-wing campaign against a department that has reduced the murder rate in New York by 80%.  Like most leftists, de Blasio is not interested in results, only the ideology by which those results are achieved.

December 22,  2014