NYC's Ex-Mayor Blames Who For The NYPD Deaths?

Following the shocking "execution-style" deaths of two NYPD officers as they sat in their car in Brooklyn Saturday afternoon, former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News whom he believed was to blame: Those who encouraged a "police are bad, the police are racist" mentality, to quote Giuliani, namely the president. Elsewhere, conservatives and others have blamed current mayor Bill de Blasio, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder, whom they argue sparked an "anti-police" mentality that may have contributed to the shootings.

Guiliani told Fox News, according to ThinkProgress:

We’ve had four months of propaganda starting with the president that everybody should hate the police. The protests are being embraced, the protests are being encouraged.

I think it goes to far to blame the mayor for the murder or to ask for the mayor’s resignation. But I don’t think it goes too far to say that the mayor did not properly police the protests ... [Obama and Bill de Blasio] have created an atmosphere of severe, strong, anti-police hatred in certain communities. For that, they should be ashamed of themselves,

The man who's suspected of killing the two officers before turning the gun on himself may have done so as a means of revenge — on Instagram, Ismaaiyl Brinsley promised violence against police to avenge "1 of ours," which many have taken to mean Eric Garner. Though Eric Garner's family were "outraged" by this, Rev. Al Sharpton said Saturday, the nation's leaders in charge during the Black Lives Matter protests this fall and winter — initially sparked by the shooting of Michael Brown early this summer — have been accused of inciting hatred towards police.

Said Sharpton in a statement Saturday:

The Garner family and I have always stressed that we do not believe that all police are bad ... In fact we have stressed that most police are not bad.

So, let's be clear: The person to blame for the chilling shooting of two police officers on a Saturday afternoon was the man who committed the crime. The majority of the protests in New York have been passionate but peaceful, seeking to raise awareness about the treatment of minorities by the criminal justice system rather than inciting violence, so de Blasio had no reason to cull them. Giuliani, moreover, has a history of misunderstanding racial violence; last month, he memorably told NBC's Meet The Press: "Why don’t you cut [black-on-black crime] down so so many white police officers don’t have to be in black areas? The white police officers wouldn’t be there if you weren’t killing each other 70-75% of the time."

So there's that.

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