The fatal ambush of two New York City policemen Saturday by a deranged gunman who later killed himself was a senseless tragedy.
The shootings appear to have been premeditated as an act of revenge for series of shooting deaths of unarmed black in encounters with police across the country.
The incident dramatizes the inherent danger in police work.
And it heightens already tense relations between police and some segments of their communities, particularly people of color.
Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn when 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who was black, shot them with a 9-millimeter pistol.
In an Instagram post Brinsley had pledged to put “wings on pigs” in retaliation for the deaths of black males in encounters with white police.
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His targets were officers of color.
Ramos and Liu were Hispanic and Asian. Both were well-regarded in their communities.
Hours before that, Brinsley had shot and wounded his ex-girlfriend during an argument in her apartment in Maryland.
Brinsley was no stranger to police.
The New York Times reports that he had been arrested 20 times and had spent two years in prison after firing a stolen gun near a public street in Georgia. He also had suffered from mental illness and police say he once tried to hang himself.
The pain and grief and even anger in the wake of the officers’ deaths are deep and understandable.
But some of that anger is misplaced.
To blame protesters who have raised reasonable questions about the possible misuse of deadly force by police for Saturday’s tragedy, as some have done, is unfair and unhelpful.
Brooklyn borough President Eric Adams, a former New York police captain, put in best in quotes in The New York Times: “We need to use the pain that all of us are experiencing and turn it into purpose.” “Calling for reform is not a call for harm of police officers,” Adams added.
“Blue Lives Matter” many wote in support of the slain officers and their families on social media -- a twist on the popular phrase in protest of the killings of African American civilians by police, “Black Lives Matter.”
All lives matter. When the lives of innocent civilians or police officers are lost, we all should mourn.
As we continue an important dialogue about police-community relations nationally and in Greensboro, we should keep that in mind.
