Buddhist Monks to Lead Funeral of NYPD Officer Wenjian Liu
The funeral service for NYPD officer Wenjian Liu, who was killed by a lone gunman with his partner Rafael Ramos last month, will be led by Buddhist monks in Brooklyn Sunday, the day before mourners gather for his wake.
Mourners will meet at the Aievoli Funeral Home Saturday for his wake, followed by his funeral Sunday with a Chinese ceremony led by Buddhist monks, The Associated Press reports.
After the funeral, a traditional police ceremony is expected to be held with eulogies led by a chaplain, followed by the burial at Cypress Hills Cemetery.
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Liu and Ramos were killed at close range on Dec. 20 as they sat in their squad car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn in a likely revenge for the police chokehold death of an unarmed black man. Soon after the shooting, the suspect, identified as 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, fled to a nearby subway station, where he was found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan and some other religious leaders paid their respects to Liu's family Friday, according to NBC News.
Liu, 32, got married just three months ago. "He was looking forward to having his own family," his family said in a statement after his death. "Wenjian was proud to be a New York City officer."
Liu's family emigrated from China when he was 12. He served the police force for seven years, after serving in the police auxiliary.
Ramos was laid to rest last week. More than 20,000 police officers and other mourners packed Christ Tabernacle Church in Queens for his funeral.
"Being a cop was not what they did. It was who they were," Vice President Joe Biden was quoted as saying at the funeral. Addressing officers then, he added, "You all joined for essentially the same reason. There was something about you that made you think that you could help. That you had a duty [to the rule of law]."
The day Ramos was murdered, he was to graduate as a lay chaplain in a program that involves training to deal with people in crisis. He "didn't just have a Bible in his locker, he lived it in his heart," Biden added. "He was a cop for all the right reasons."
Demonstrations against the New York Police Department have been taking place since Dec. 3, when a grand jury failed to indict a white police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, who was killed in July while he was being arrested for selling untaxed cigarettes. This came weeks after a Missouri grand jury also decided not to indict white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of a black teen, Michael Brown.
Brinsley, the 28-year-old gunman, had been arrested 20 times, mostly for petty crimes like stealing condoms from a Rite Aid drugstore in Ohio, and had spent two years in prison for firing a stolen gun near a public street in Georgia.
After shooting his ex-girlfriend at her home outside Baltimore on Dec. 20 following an argument, Brinsley boarded a bus to New York, and called the victim's mother to apologize.
The victim's mother promptly alerted Baltimore County police, who then were able to read messages he had posted on his Instagram account threatening the New York Police Department. "I'm putting wings on pigs today. They take 1 of ours … let's take 2 of theirs," read one of the messages.
