Editor's Note: (James A. Gagliano is a CNN law enforcement analyst and retired FBI supervisory special agent. He is also an adjunct assistant professor and doctoral candidate at St. John's University in Queens, New York. Follow him on Twitter: @JamesAGagliano. The views expressed in this commentary are his. Read more opinion on CNN. )
(CNN) The news stunned the senses -- an armed assailant approaches a marked police van in the Bronx on Saturday evening and opens fire on two on-duty police officers, wounding one with injuries to his face and neck. The unprovoked attack leads to an intensive manhunt for the suspect who remained at large until the following morning. Then on Sunday, police surveillance video captures a man -- later identified as the same suspect -- nonchalantly strolling into the NYPD's 41 precinct before opening fire on police, wounding a lieutenant in the arm before tossing away his pistol and lying down on the ground.
The suspect was immediately taken into custody, having run out of bullets. Both injured police officers were being treated at Lincoln Medical Center in the Bronx, and are expected to make full recoveries. And according to a law enforcement official, the alleged shooter, 45-year old Robert Williams, was motivated by a hatred of cops.
At a press conference Sunday morning, NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea noted that organized protests condemning excessive force by police may have contributed to an anti-cop environment. Shea asserted that "(t)hese things are not unrelated. We had people marching through the streets of New York recently. Words matter. And words affect people's behavior." He also noted that the suspect had been convicted of attempted murder in 2002 after shooting a person, committing a carjacking and opening fire on police officers. He was released on parole in 2017.
The suspect's grandmother, 80-year old Mary Williams told reporters that her grandson hadn't had any problems with police recently.
Policing is an inherently dangerous profession. Any grown adult who elects to join its ranks must certainly consider the consequences. You swear an oath to protect and serve -- dutybound to run to the sound of gunfire and chaos. Pinning on a shield is to join a proud lineage of selfless public servants who have accepted the perils of their chosen profession, remaining at peace with the knowledge that their current shift may contain dangers that result in it becoming their last.
The attempted assassinations in the Bronx stirred some deep emotions within me.
I spent a quarter-century in the FBI and several of my assignments were on FBI-NYPD task forces. One of my first partners was FBI Special Agent Stephen J. Byrne. His younger brother, NYPD Police Officer Edward R. Byrne, was assassinated 32 years ago by an assailant who executed him in his patrol car on February 26, 1988. The rookie cop was assigned to a South Jamaica, Queens precinct, and had been directed to pull overnight shift outside the home of a frightened trial witness who was cooperating with police. Byrne's savage assassination was the result of an imprisoned drug lord's edict to exact retribution for his incarceration.
The 1960s and 1970s saw a number of high-profile assassinations -- especially in New York City -- during the period of social unrest and domestic terror. Police became the likely targets of groups like the Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army (BLA), and Symbionese Liberation Army. The BLA's assassinations of two NYPD cops, Greg Foster and Rocco Laurie, shocked the nation in 1972.
It has always been dangerous to be a cop in America. But, I would argue that beginning with the summer of unrest that followed Ferguson, Missouri, Police Officer Darren Wilson's shooting of Michael Brown and the advent of Black Lives Matter Movement in 2014, policing and race arrived at a dangerous intersection. And while America certainly has a complicated racial history and there exist documented incidents of policing being used as oppressive institution in support of racist policies, conversations on police-civilian interactions can be polarizing and divisive.
The Obama Justice Department ultimately determined the Ferguson incident to be a justifiable police-shooting. But the report also identified a "pattern and practice" of discrimination by some personnel in the department, providing an argument for those who view our justice system as biased.
And after Eric Garner died while resisting arrest and being placed in a department-prohibited choke hold that same summer on Staten Island, Ismaaiyl Brinsley posted on Instagram that "I'm Putting Wings on Pigs Today" and "They Take 1 Of Ours...Let's Take 2 of Theirs," before traveling from Baltimore to Brooklyn and assassinating NYPD cops Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in their parked patrol car.
Then followed a sad progression of cop killings. In July 2016, five Dallas law enforcement officers were slain by a sniper, identified as Micah Xavier Johnson, a combat veteran of the war in Afghanistan. This incomprehensible attack was soon followed by the tragic news that a Missouri man, Gavin Long, had ambushed and murdered three law enforcement officers, while wounding three others in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And in July 2017, a 12-year veteran NYPD cop, Miosotis Familia, was also assassinated in her police vehicle for the "crime" of being a cop.
We are experiencing a general downward trend in on-duty deaths of police officers, but that mirrors the overall downtrend of violent crime in general, and there has also been a perceptible decrease in police shootings of unarmed civilians -- incidents that have led to attacks, directly or indirectly, on police in the past.
We should all agree that it is necessary and appropriate to scrutinize every officer-involved shooting. Surprisingly, it wasn't until last year that the FBI announced it would oversee the first national database for police use-of-force incidents. Tracking this data and transparently reporting it will go a long way towards regaining community confidence that the vast majority of police officers are professional and restrained in the conduct of their duties.
Politicians certainly don't help the situation. They can purposely or inadvertently pour gasoline on simmering tensions between police and inner-city communities. Critics of liberal politicians argue that "coddling of criminals" has created a permissive environment ripe for emboldened exploitation. President Trump went so far as to blame the Bronx attacks on the "weak leadership" of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Police should be held to account as armed instruments of the state. But we should also rethink the demonization of policing methodologies like "Broken Windows" and "Stop, Question and Frisk." A critic may argue that correlation does not necessarily equate to causation. And that is fair. But those policies were implemented in good faith to address a period fraught with fear and terror. Refusal to acknowledge that they might have had an impact on saving lives is unserious.
And so, this has ushered in the current period of perpetual protests and charges that police are not the solution, but instead, "are the problem." Shockingly, some criminal justice reform activists even argue consideration be given to an "abolish the police" effort that advocates for outright elimination of the profession altogether.
Throughout it all, the vast majority of our nation's law enforcement professionals continue to ignore the sharp criticism and the reckless smears. Their obligation is to protect and serve all of us -- not just the profession's fans and supporters. That is what being a professional requires.
But might all the criticisms, the blatant disrespect such as water-dousing uniformed police, and public denigration of police ultimately lead to a smaller pool of applicants for police positions? What if no one volunteers to take this dangerous and thankless job? That should give us all pause for thought. We need our police. And they need us to have their backs now more than ever.
Back the Blue.