by Joe Biden
Giuliani, Lynch, and a handful of others just kept clawing away in the days after the shooting, unmoved by the many generous New Yorkers who had marched against the unjustified death of Eric Garner but also showed up to pay their respects at a makeshift sidewalk memorial for Officers Ramos and Liu—including Garner’s own daughter, who arrived to offer the sympathy of one who truly understood. “I had to come out and let their family know that we stand with them,” said twenty-two-year-old Emerald Snipes-Garner, rising to the occasion in a way that should have made the entire country proud, “and I’m going to send my prayers and condolences to all the families who are suffering through this tragedy.”
By the time I headed to New York for Officer Ramos’s funeral on Saturday, December 27, the city felt like it was on a hair trigger. Hundreds of New Yorkers had refused to suspend their demonstrations as a show of respect for the slain policemen. “We mean no disrespect to anybody,” said an organizer of one march, beneath a sign that read RACIST POLICE TERROR. “But we’re out here to say it’s ridiculous, it’s outrageous, it’s insulting for anybody to ask us to stop these protests.” At the same time, police from around the country had traveled to New York to attend Rafael Ramos’s memorial in a show of support for a brother officer and his comrades. As many as twenty-five thousand law enforcement officers were gathering in Queens to attend the funeral, and some local politicians kept telling them that they were in “grave danger” these days and had “targets on their backs.” Folks like Lynch and Giuliani were still trying to convince them and everyone else that Mayor de Blasio and President Obama were the problem.
Mayor de Blasio seemed happy that it was me representing the administration because he knew I had a close relationship with the police and the civil rights community. The mayor had called me a few days after the shootings to ask for some help in dealing with the growing chasm of distrust between law enforcement and the black community. Truth was, as impossible as the situation might appear, I believed I knew a way across the divide. I had crossed it before, at home in Delaware as well as around the country. There were always the demagogues on both sides of the issue, that was inevitable, but I knew they didn’t represent the vast majority of the people. I have always believed the problem was solvable—because the problem was obvious. There were real, legitimate fears on both sides. And if the problem is fear, the answer is knowledge. Each side has to be willing to try to understand the concerns of the other.
That’s why, way back in the late eighties, when the crime rate exploded, I began to pursue a new—but in fact a very old—concept of policing. That was getting cops back walking the street so they’ll know the shopkeepers, know the kids in the neighborhood, know the neighborhood. And getting the neighborhood to know the cops and to trust them. We had moved away from that concept—the new model was a lone cop riding around in a police cruiser instead of walking the beat—and the best criminologists were advocating the old idea with a new name: community policing. But it was a hard fight to get it done in the late eighties and early nineties because the national Republican Party had begun to talk about devolution of power: anything local should be paid for with local funds, not federal taxes. And they argued that crime was uniquely local. I had to remind my colleagues that most local crime was caused by the drug epidemic, and drugs were a federal responsibility. It took some time, but I finally got real funding written into the crime bill I authored in 1994 that provided an additional one hundred thousand local cops. And it worked.
Violent crime dropped precipitously, from almost 2 million incidents in 1994 to 1.4 million in 2000. The murder rate nationwide was cut nearly in half. Relations between the police and the black community, while far from perfect, were much improved. But community policing became a victim of its own success. As crime went down, so too did public pressure to focus on policing. Polling data indicated that crime had dropped way down the list from being the number-one problem Americans wanted their government to fix. That meant that when the Bush administration came into office and renewed the ideological call for devolution of power, there was no longer much pushback on their argument that crime was a strictly local matter. Why spend federal money on local police when you can lower taxes on the wealthy instead?
I sometimes felt like a lonely voice in those years, constantly warning people that making communities safe is like cutting grass. You cut your grass on a beautiful summer weekend and it looks great. You let it go for a week, it gets a little ragged. You let it go for a month, it looks bad. You let it go for the summer, you’ve got a disaster on your hands.
And that’s exactly what happened. There were fewer and fewer cops on the beat, with the predictable consequence of increasingly strained relations between the police and the black community. Police weren’t getting out of their cars to meet people as much anymore. They were more and more riding around alone, understandably fearful in the toughest neighborhoods, sometimes in surplus military and paramilitary equipment that made them look like invaders instead of protectors. Dramatic footage of high-profile deaths was constantly on television news and spread like wildfire through social media. As awful stories of Eric Garner in New York, Michael Brown in Ferguson, twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and Officers Ramos and Liu took over the headlines, it grew harder and harder for either side to acknowledge the basic humanity of the other.
The local cop in the squad car would look at the fifteen-year-old boy in a hoodie on a street corner as a criminal in training, instead of as an aspiring writer who might one day be the poet laureate and deserved a chance. The people in the neighborhood saw the policewoman in her car as a threat, instead of as a mom who coached basketball, taught Sunday school class, wanted more than anything in the world to make it home safely to tuck in her three children, and deserved the right to do so.
I thought it was time to get back to the proven policy of investing in more and better-trained men and women on the beat. I told Mayor de Blasio a few days before the Ramos funeral that I would send him the statistics on community policing and sit with him after the first of the year, after the latest firestorm calmed down, if he wanted to talk it through.
President Obama had been working hard to find ways to improve relations between the police and all the communities they served, and had developed very specific policy proposals. But there were too many people invested in scoring political points instead of solving the problem, and attacks on the president by people like Lynch and Giuliani made it almost impossible for him to get a fair hearing.
I had been around long enough to know that good policy was always necessary but rarely sufficient. I had worked long and hard over the years to build personal relationships and gain the trust of both sides so that I could reason with both the police and the community in the most inflamed of circumstances. I had always tried to understand everybody’s perspective. “You are the only one who can do this, Joe,” our secretary of education, Arne Duncan, told me just after the shooting in New York. “You are respected by both communities.” Arne may have given me more credit than I deserved, but his encouragement served as a reminder of what drew me to public service and why I had stayed in it for so long. I have come to believe that the first duty of a public servant is to help bring people together, especially in crisis, especially across difficult divides, to show respect for everybody at the table, and to help find a safe way forward. After forty-five years in office, that basic conviction still gave me purpose.
* * *
I was making last-minute edits and notations on my prepared remarks as Jill and I flew on Air Force Two from Washington to New York on that sparkling winter morning. Funerals are for the living, I have always believed, and the job of the eulogist is to acknowledge the enormity of the loss they have just suffered and to help them appreciate that the legacy and accomplishments of their loved one have not died with them. I also try hard to assure them that they are not alone. I had to do that for the Ramos family first, but also for the larger police family that would be
watching Officer Ramos’s memorial service. Police in the city—and around the country—were angry and grieving. Some were also genuinely hurt that so many people seemed to have turned against them. They needed to be reminded that their service was worthy of our honor and respect. Being a cop is not just what these men and women do, I have always said, it is who they are. I could pick out the sort of classmate who would become a cop when I was still in grade school. They were the person who came to your defense when you got jumped in the neighborhood. When you were being bullied, they stepped in. They wanted to protect other people.
I ran my pen along the words on the paper, making little notes about where to pause and what words to emphasize: “In my experience, and I’m sure this applies to every man and woman in uniform within the sound of my voice, every cop joins the force for the same underlying reason: You felt a sense of obligation. You thought you could help. That’s the single element, I think, that runs through all of American law enforcement. When events like this occur, the nation is always reminded of your bravery.” I was reading through the speech for a final time when we pulled up to Christ Tabernacle Church in Queens at around nine thirty that Saturday morning. The church looked like a converted storefront and was way too small to accommodate the massive crowd waiting outside. More than twenty thousand men and women, almost all of them in uniform, stood quietly in the surrounding streets and parking lots preparing to watch a satellite feed of the services on the big screen hoisted above.
I exited the car into a bracing winter day and could feel the tension in the air. The temperature was rising toward forty, but it still felt cold, and the sky was a sharp crystalline blue that looked like it could crack into a thousand pieces. Our escorts hustled Jill and me inside the sanctuary and steered us down to our seats in the front row, while I tried to adjust my eyes to the dark interior of the evangelical church. The church had been Rafael Ramos’s spiritual home and his guide; he was just hours away from graduation from a volunteer chaplain program when he was killed. When I sat down, my knees were almost touching Officer Ramos’s casket, which sat on the bier in front of the stage. The other main speakers were already in their seats; the mayor was there, along with Police Commissioner Bratton and Governor Andrew Cuomo. I felt a slight pang when I saw the governor. He reminded me of Beau, who was in the final days of his term as Delaware’s chief law enforcement officer. From his days as assistant U.S. attorney in Philadelphia to his job as attorney general in Delaware, Beau had worked on crime issues every day and had also worked hard to improve relations between the police and the community so that these deadly tragedies could be avoided. He very much wanted to travel with me, to pay his respects, but his physical disabilities were really beginning to take a toll. “I’m going to wait until I get better, Dad,” he said.
I was called up to the podium to speak first, and as I took the stage the audience sat in reserved silence. I turned first to offer a simple and straightforward expression of condolence from my own family to the Ramos family and was brought up short by the image of the victim’s two teenage sons sitting in front of me. They were much too young to have lost a parent. I found myself unable to shift my gaze from the boys. It was almost like I was watching young Beau and Hunt sitting in those chairs, staring up at me, and it reminded me of the devastation they had faced in losing their mother and what it meant to me that they had survived. It reminded me also that however high the political and public stakes, my mission here in New York was, at its heart, a personal one. If I allowed the Ramoses’ loss to be overshadowed by the politics of the day, I would fail. “What handsome boys,” I said, already off my carefully prepared text. “I remember a similar occasion a long time ago.
“Mom, I assure you,” I told Maritza Ramos, “those boys will get through all of this. I’m sure I speak for the whole nation when I say to you that our hearts ache for you. I know from personal experience there is little anyone can say or do at this moment to ease the pain, that sense of loss, that sense of loneliness. But I do hope you take some solace in the fact that, as reported by the press, there are over twenty-five thousand—twenty-five thousand—members of the same fraternity and sorority as your husband who stand, and will stand, with you, the rest of your life. And they will. It’s an uncommon fraternity.”
The writer who helped me on this speech was the son of a retired New York City police detective who had taken the time to understand Rafael’s life and what his sons meant to him. “Justin and Jayden,” I told them, “he was so, so very proud of you, and just know, as hard as it is for you to believe, he will be part of your life, the entirety of your life.” Then I found myself turning to the young widow and making a guarantee I had made to countless other survivors over the years. “I also know from experience that the time will come, the time will come, when Rafael’s memory will bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eyes. That’s when you know—it’s going to be okay. I know it’s hard to believe it will happen, but I promise you, I promise you it will happen. And my prayer for you is that it will come sooner rather than later.”
I was off script by then, but not at all uncertain about what I meant to say: “I’ve spoken to too many funerals for too many peace officers, too many funerals for brave women and men who keep us safe. And watched their families grieve. And unfortunately, it’s only when a tragedy like this occurs that all their friends, neighbors, and people who didn’t even know them become aware of and reminded of the sacrifices that they make every single, solitary day to make our lives better.… Police officers and police families are a different breed. Thank God for them. Thank God for them.
“Your husband, Mrs. Ramos, and his partner, they were a part of New York’s Finest. And that’s not an idle phrase. This is probably the finest police department in the world. The finest police department in the world. They earned that phrase.…
“When you patrol the streets of New York you circle the earth. The three-story walk-ups, the apartment towers, the aromas of a million kitchens continuing a thousand traditions. Streets full of silence and streets bursting with a hundred languages—whispering. Shouting. Laughing. Crying. In every neighborhood of this most alive of all cities—this chaotic miracle that stands as a beacon for the world.
“The assassin’s bullet targeted not just two officers, not just a uniform. It targeted this city. A city where the son of Chinese immigrants shares the patrol with a Hispanic minister in training.”
And I reminded everybody listening that this greatest and most diverse of American cities had helped to nurture a young college student named Barack Obama. My friend the president learned something here in New York that remained a cornerstone of his career in government service: “There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America,” he had said in the speech that introduced him to the country ten years earlier. “There’s the United States of America.”
* * *
The morning was even brighter when Jill and I were led out of Christ Tabernacle and across the street to await the move of Rafael Ramos’s casket onto the thronging avenue and into the hearse. The sun was glinting off the top of the lead car, but it felt as if the day itself had softened. I found myself standing in a group of dignitaries that included Representative King and, at my right shoulder, Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani could not resist taking a backhand shot at the president. “At least somebody in the administration gets it,” he told me.
I held my tongue. “The president gets it” was all I said, though it didn’t seem to register.
The bagpipers played. A group of New York Police helicopters flew overhead in formation. And the honor guard walked the flag-draped coffin toward the hearse’s open back door. I could see Jayden and Justin across the street from me, their dark suits buttoned against the cold, their brows furrowed, holding their mother’s hands. All the rest of us could do was stand in silence, with hands over hearts. When the coffin was finally loaded and the flag presented to the family, the hearse started for the
cemetery. After it had made the turn off the avenue, I began hearing voices from within the crowd of cops lining the street: “Joe!” “Hey, Joe!” Nobody yelled, “Mr. Vice President!” It was “Joe!” “Hey, Joe!” like they knew me. Men and women in uniform began coming over to shake my hand and I felt an occasional tug as the motorcycle cops riding by reached down to touch my hand. The first part of the day was done, but not the hardest part.
Jill and I had one more stop to make before we left New York—one I had insisted on, though I knew there would be nothing easy about it. We had a forty-five-minute drive down to the Gravesend area of Brooklyn, to visit the family of Wenjian Liu, the other murdered police officer. He was just thirty-two years old, a newlywed who had bought a house big enough for his parents to live with him and his new bride. Liu’s funeral had been delayed because so many of his relatives in China were still trying to get proper travel documents to make the trip to New York, and I knew I would be unable to return for that service. I wanted to pay my respects, at the very least, but as our motorcade skirted Jamaica Bay, Brighton Beach, and Coney Island, I was certain there was much more I could offer the Liu family.