By the New York Post Editorial Board
The thought that their loved one
might not come back from the day’s shift weighs on every NYPD family. For the
survivors of Police Officer Brian Moore, that nightmare just came true.
On Monday, the 25-year-old
undercover cop succumbed to injuries from Saturday evening’s savage shooting in Queens.
Moore and his partner, Erik Jansen,
drove up to Demetrius Blackwell after spotting a suspicious object in his
waistband.
Blackwell allegedly pulled out a gun
and fired into the car, striking Moore twice in the face.
Coming from a family of cops —
including his retired NYPD sergeant father — Moore had already racked up more
than 150 arrests in just five years on the job.
This is the third line-of-duty
fatality to hit the ranks of New York’s Finest in just five months. He follows
Detectives Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, ambushed during the height of
December’s anti-cop protests.
This tragedy is one more bitter
lesson in the risks the men and women in blue take every day they put on the
uniform in service to the 8 million people of this city.
It also serves as a reminder why the
first duty of the city’s elected leaders is to make the jobs of those who
protect New Yorkers easier, not harder.
As we noted Monday, Mayor de Blasio
seems to have gotten it. His support of the NYPD has grown markedly more firm
than it once was. Keep it up, Bill.
Alas, Melissa Mark-Viverito’s City
Council is still pushing to
decriminalize certain offenses,
and so make it harder for cops to require ID when stopping people. And never
mind how many guns just that kind of policing has taken off the streets.
One other note: Saturday’s fatal
encounter demonstrates yet again that cops’ judgment on who might be carrying
is far better than the cop-bashers’, including anti-stop-and-frisk Judge Shira
Scheindlin, will admit.
The constant second-guessing has
gone far enough — and then some.
As New York pauses in the days ahead
to celebrate Officer Moore’s life and salute his service, city officials might
take such lessons to heart.
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