

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, center, arrives at the funeral of slain New York Police Department Officer Rafael Ramos at the Christ Tabernacle Church on Saturday in the Glenwood section of the Queens borough. Ramos was shot, along with Officer Wenjian Liu, while they were sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn on Dec. 20. (Kevin Hagen/Getty Images)

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton called frustration in New York and across the country surrounding policing the "tip of the iceberg" during an appearance Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"This is about the continuing poverty rates, the continuing growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor," he said. "It's about unemployment issues. There are so many national issues that have to be addressed that it isn't just policing, as I think we all well know."

Hundreds of officers outside Christ Tabernacle Church turned their backs on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio when he spoke Saturday at the funeral of Officer Rafael Ramos, 40, who, along with Officer Wenjian Liu, 32, was fatally shot last week in Brooklyn. Bratton said the rift between the mayor and the police department was probably "going to go on for a while longer."

"The issues go far beyond race relations in this city," he said. "They involve labor contracts. They involve a lot of history in the city that's really different from some of what's going on in the country as a whole."

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani said during his appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday that de Blasio should apologize to the NYPD.

"I said it Day One," he said. "And I think he would get this over with if he did it. ... He created an impression with the police. I don't know that he wanted to do it. He probably didn't, but he created an impression with the police that he was on the side of the protesters."

The former mayor said that although some of the protesters "were entirely legitimate," others were "horrible, yelling 'kill the police.'"

Giuliani also stood by his previous remarks that President Obama has contributed to the anti-police atmosphere, because of his relationship with the Rev. Al Sharpton, whom he called a "poster boy for hating the police."

"Often, when he's talking about police issues, he has Al Sharpton sitting next to him," Giuliani said. "You make Al Shaprton a close adviser, you are going to turn the police in America against you."

Bratton said officers "feel that they are under attack from the federal government at the highest level" and that he hopes Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder "see the police."

"See why they have the anxieties and perceptions they have," he said. "We have a lot of talking we're going to have to do here to understand all sides of the issue. This is not a one-sided issue."

He said that trust issues between the black community and officers were a real problem and that fixing them would be a "painful" and "open process."

"I interact quite frequently with African Americans," he said. "And there's not a single one that has not expressed this concern ... There's no denying that among the black community there are those concerns."

Bratton also commended the New York Police Department for its "remarkable restraint" in the past several weeks of protests over police actions.

This post has been updated with additional comments from Bratton and Giuliani.