The City of New York, and the New York Police Department, buried one of our (their) own today. Rafael Ramos was buried. Officer Ramos was assassinated last Saturday with his partner, Weinjin Liu. As I watched the funeral this morning, I could not help but be moved by the words expressed by the pastors and government leaders. It is true, police officers put it out there every day.
My uncle, Rich, was a cop. His son, Jim, is a cop. It's a job I could never do, I don't have the patience for law breakers, nor do I have the patience or understanding required to deal with people I would never associate with. Cops do. Every day. I get that. And I appreciate the hell out of it. I'm the guy who walks around the city on Thanksgiving shaking the hands of NYPD officers and thanking them. It's a tradition I started my first Thanksgiving out here, and I will continue it as long as I am here.
Rafael Ramos was a testament to the NYPD and what makes cops great. He was a spiritual man and has a wonderful family. He cared about his community and he cared about his brother and sister officers. From everything I've heard, he was a perfect cop. Who got killed simply because he was a cop.
There's a rift here in the city between the NYPD and the Mayor. I don't understand it, frankly, probably because I'm not a cop and I don't have bi-racial children like the mayor does. The mayor said some things about how he's not comfortable with his kids being dealt with equally by cops and, in saying that, made the cops somewhat irate. To the point where they actually turned their backs to the monitor when he was speaking today at the funeral.
And, therein, lies the problem. We are becoming an intolerant society. We are becoming intolerant of people with different opinions, different ideas, different skin colors, we are becoming intolerant of different. AND THAT HAS TO STOP. But it won't stop, and we all know it, until our government and leaders learn how to be tolerant. Every day we hear stories from just about every house of our government about how they don't agree, about how the views of one political party or group are not tolerant of the view of the other. Every day we see fingers pointed across the aisle or somewhere else. We've become a nation of 'blame the other guy'.
And that leads cops to turn their back on the mayor at a funeral. That leads to a government that can't pass laws. That leads to people treating people differently. A society of intolerance is a society that is doomed to fail.
And if it does, Officer Rafael Ramos will be sorely disappointed.
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