Two NYPD Cops ‘Assassinated’ in Brooklyn Ambush – ABC News

Two New York City police officers were “assassinated,” shot “execution-style” as they sat in their patrol vehicle in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, city officials said.

NYPD Commissioner William Bratton said the two were shot with “no warning, no provocation.”

“Two of New York’s finest were shot and killed, with no warning, no provocation,” Bratton said. “They were quite simply assassinated.”

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio described the shooting of the two as they sat in a critical response vehicle in a Broklyn housing project as being carried out “execution style.”

The suspect in the shooting was also dead, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the officials said.

The gunman walked up to the officers sitting inside a patrol car and opened fire shortly before 3 p.m., officials said.

The suspect ran into a nearby subway station and shot himself, officials.

This is the NYPD vehicle that forensic techs are focusing on after 2 officers were shot in Brooklyn. pic.twitter.com/oh9ue9yfLf

— Micah Grimes (@MicahGrimes) December 20, 2014

Hours after the shooting, dozens of police in tactical gear cordoned off a roughly three-block area around the site of the shooting, while other officers watched over the scene from rooftops in the area.

The shooting comes at a time when police nationwide are being heavily criticized for the deaths of unarmed black men. In New York City, Eric Garner, a black man who was stopped by police for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes, died after an officer put him in a chokehold.

“I can’t breathe” — words Garner could be heard gasping during his arrest, which was captured on an amateur video — have become a rallying cry for demonstrators across the country.

One city councilman told ABC station WABC-TV in New York that the shooting in Brooklyn was “the worst thing that could have happened.”

Until today, no NYPD officer had been fatally shot since December 2011, when Peter Figoski, a 22-year veteran, responded to a report of a break-in at a Brooklyn apartment and was shot in the face by one of the suspects hiding in a side room. The shooter, Lamont Pride, was convicted of murder and sentenced in 2013 to 45 years to life in prison.

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