To the Editor:
In response to the killing of the two police officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, in New York City on Dec. 20, Mayor Bill de Blasio rightly said, “It is an attack on all of us,” “it’s an attack on everything we hold dear,” “when a police officer is murdered, it tears at the foundation of our society,” and “it’s an attack on the very concept of decency.”
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the police officers’ deaths “an unspeakable act of barbarism.”
As an ordinary citizen who, like all of us, relies on law enforcement to preserve and protect the social order, I could not agree with the mayor and the attorney general more fully. The importance of the function of the police (and fire, EMS, EMTs, etc.) in a civil society cannot be overstated. However, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Rumain Brisbon, Tamir Rice, and Akai Gurley are also dead, and I find myself wondering if the same feelings couldn’t be expressed over their deaths, that they were also an “attack on all of us,” “an attack on everything we hold dear,” “an attack on the very concept of decency,” and maybe even “an unspeakable act of barbarism.”
Liu, Ramos, Garner, Brown, Brisbon, Rice, and Gurley are now dead and lost to us, and their families, forever. Their deaths are all equally senseless and tragic. All lives matter.
Caleb Caldwell
Oak Bluffs