It was a dreary, teary Sunday morning and afternoon for the funeral services of officer Wenjian Liu in Brooklyn, N.Y. With police officers from all over the nation and some from abroad, all of them standing in formation along 65th Street, the overcast skies were gray, not blue, and a sprinkle came before the four-hour-long services were over.
There were large contingents of Asians, mostly perhaps Chinese-Americans like Liu, clustered on the sidewalks and watching from their stoops, a few of them sobbing in grief when the funeral procession passed their homes. Others stood, and like the officers, saluted the hearse bearing the slain officer.
Huge screens were placed here and there along the street for the thousands of spectators unable to get inside Aievoli Funeral Home, where a Buddhist priest, an FBI representative, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and members of the Liu family, including Liu’s wife, Pei Xia Chen, spoke about the officer’s passion and commitment.
“He was my soul mate,” his wife said, her words soaked with tears. “Wenjian was my hero.” She said he was an incredible husband, “my best friend.”
Chen thanked her “extended family, my family in blue,” for all that they have done to comfort her during these days of sorrow.
“He was a good man,” de Blasio said of Liu, speaking after it was announced that Gov. Andrew Cuomo would not be there because of the death of his father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo. “He had come here in search of the American dream … and his story is such a powerful narrative, a New York story … he embodied our city’s most cherished values.”
Intermittently, in the long line of officers that stretched from 11th Avenue to 18th Avenue, platoons of officers turned their backs to the screens when the mayor spoke, as they did at officer Rafael Ramos’ funeral last week. They had chosen to defy the commissioner’s request that they refrain from showing that form of disrespect.
Those same officers did an about face, turning to observe Bratton when he spoke, and if he wasn’t as eloquent as he was last week, he was nonetheless thoughtful when recounting Liu’s splendid record during his seven years in uniform.
It was after the 9/11 attacks that Liu, 32, aspired to join the Police Department, Bratton related. “Why do we always lose the good ones?” the commissioner mused at one time after visiting the families of the slain officers. “But then I realized, it’s the law of averages. Almost all of them are the good ones. Very few are not.” He said that Liu believed that “public safety is everybody’s responsibility.” As he had done for Ramos, Bratton held up a badge, posthumously promoting Liu to detective.
The officers were killed Dec. 20 in Brooklyn by a deranged Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who later shot and killed himself in a nearby subway station after the attack.
One of the unintended consequences of killing the two officers removed the demonstrations for police reform from the spotlight. “The funeral highlights tragedy and joy at the same time,” said community activist Joe Gonsalves, who attended Liu’s funeral. “Joy that much support was shown the grieving family, but at the same time it shows the tragic distraction that was being shown to Black folks complaints about police misconduct.”
Almost an hour went by after the services ended inside with thousands of officers still in formation. The appearance of the honor guard, the brigade of bagpipers led by a long cortege of motorcycles, signaled that the funeral was over and the procession could began.
A few drops of rain fell as the procession crawled slowly along the street, muffled drums marking the cadence of the marchers, the buglers’ last notes of taps wafting in the dark skies above as Liu was taken to his final resting place in Cypress Hills.