Police who came from around the country to attend the funeral of NYPD Officer Rafael Ramos vowed today to return for the service for his partner, Officer Wenjian Liu, who was killed alongside him.
"You won't find this anywhere else. You won't find this in any other field than law enforcement," Officer Dustin Lindaman of the Waterloo, Iowa, police department said. "We're brothers. When one of us goes down, we're going to be there."
Details are still being worked out for Liu's funeral, with relatives expected from China.
There were thousands of police officers outside the Christ Tabernacle Church, in the Glendale neighborhood of Queens, for Ramos' funeral, watching the service on large screens set up so they could hear tributes from Vice President Biden, New York Cov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton.
Fair Lawn, New Jersey, Police Captain Bob Kneer says the officers were executed, and that "shouldn't be happening in this United States of America."
"We are the first line of defense for domestic terrorism and you have to understand one thing, these officers were executed, ambushed," he said.
Biden spoke to the outpouring of support from people around the country after Ramos and Liu were killed as they sat in their car.
"When an assassin's bullet targeted two officers, it targeted this city and it touched the soul of an entire nation," the vice president said.
Some of the visiting police were among the hundreds of cops who turned their backs to the screens when de Blasio spoke. The killing of the two officers came amid heightened tensions between the police and de Blasio over what some police saw as a lack of support for the force on the mayor's part.
Sgt. Myron Joseph of the New Rochelle Police Department said he and fellow officers turned their backs spontaneously to "support our brothers in the NYPD."
Ramos and Liu were killed on Dec. 20, and police said they didn't have a chance to protect themselves and may not even have seen their attacker.
The shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, later killed himself on a subway platform.