Groups of police officers again turned their backs on New York City mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday, as he read a eulogy for the fallen detective Wenjian Liu.

As many as 20,000 uniformed police officers from across the US gathered for Liu’s funeral in Brooklyn, with a majority facing screens as the mayor spoke inside the Aievoli Funeral Home in Bensonhurst. The number of protesting officers appeared far smaller than at last week’s funeral for Liu’s partner, Rafael Ramos.

Those officers closest to the funeral home, including a group of around a dozen Asian-American NYPD officers, did not turn their backs. But hundreds of officers who lined the the road further up 65th street did.

NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton, who with FBI director James Comey also spoke at Sunday’s funeral, had issued a request for officers not to turn their backs on the mayor once again.

De Blasio had entered the service away from the crowds of police as an NYPD helicopter hovered overheard and three officers surveyed the crowd through binoculars on a nearby rooftop.

“As we start a new year,” he said, addressing the funeral service, “a year we’re entering with hearts that are doubly heavy, let us rededicate ourselves to those great New York traditions of mutual understanding and living in harmony. Let us move forward by strengthening the bonds that unite us, and let us work together to attain peace.”



Liu, a New York Police Department officer, was shot dead with his partner two weeks ago, as they sat in their patrol car on a street corner in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood.

Liu’s funeral was was expected to contain further Buddhist ceremonial elements in private. At the funeral home a traditional police ceremony with eulogies was led by a chaplain. Members of the officer’s family also spoke.

The funeral followed a somber wake the day before, when mourners lined up on a cold, rainy day to pay their respects.



Liu, 32, had served for seven years and had been married for only two months. The gunman, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, killed himself shortly after shooting the two officers. Investigators say Brinsley was an emotionally disturbed loner – he had shot and wounded his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore before travelling to New York – who had made references online to the killings this summer of unarmed black men at the hands of white police officers, vowing to put “wings on pigs”.

Officers Rafael Ramos, left, and Wenjian Liu were shot dead two weeks ago. Photograph: NYPD/EPA

The officers’ deaths strained the relationship between city police unions and de Blasio, who union leaders have said contributed to an environment that allowed the killings by supporting protests following the deaths of Eric Garner on Staten Island and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Pat Lynch, the head of the rank-and-file police union, which is negotiating a contract with the city, turned his back on the mayor at a hospital on the day of the killings and said their was “blood on the steps of City Hall, in the office of the mayor”.

Last Saturday, hundreds of officers standing outside Ramos’ funeral turned their backs to a giant TV screen as de Blasio’s remarks were broadcast.

Many people, including Cardinal Timothy Dolan, have called for calm. This weekend Bratton sent a memo to all commands urging respect, declaring “a hero’s funeral is about grieving, not grievance”.

At the wake for Liu on Saturday, officers saluted de Blasio as he entered the funeral home.

On Sunday, before the funeral, Detective Calvin Laughlin, an African American officer from Piscataway in New Jersey, told the Guardian: “De Blasio is going to be saluted. What he said was true. It needed to be said, and some people took it the wrong way. In every profession there is 1% bad apples – doctors, teachers, police officers. But I’ve been 20 years in the job and I love to serve.”

Detective sergeant Dan Vierra, from Ceres in central California, however, said he would support NYPD officers if they chose to turn their backs on the mayor again.



“I don’t know what the current situation here is,” he said, “it’s not our fight, but we do represent the brotherhood of law enforcement and if they feel strongly enough in their plight against the mayor we would have to agree with them because they’re in the same uniform we’re in.”

He had brought five officers with him to the funeral.

A number of NYPD officers would not comment on the issue.

A police officer salutes as mayor Bill de Blasio walks in to Officer Wenjian Liu’s wake in Brooklyn on Saturday. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

On Saturday, de Blasio, Bratton and New York governor Andrew Cuomo attended the wake for Officer Liu.

“This is a really tragic story,” Cuomo told reporters. “This is really pointless. It had nothing to do with [Liu and Ramos]. They did nothing wrong … it was pure and random hatred.”

Cuomo was unable to attend Sunday’s funeral, due to the death on New Year’s Day of his father, former New York governor Mario Cuomo.

Liu’s funeral arrangements were delayed so relatives from China could travel to New York. Burial was scheduled to follow at Cypress Hills Cemetery. On Saturday, a small vigil was established in Chinatown and community members gathered, burning pieces of paper in honor of Liu in keeping with Chinese tradition.