NAACP chief: Don’t blame Democrats for NYPD shootings

The head of the NAACP said it is “not fair” for the leader of a prominent police union and former Gov. George Pataki (R-N.Y.) to blame Democratic politicians for the deaths of two New York City police officers.

{mosads}“I don’t believe it’s fair to link the criminal insanity of a lone gunman to the peaceful protest and aspirations of many people across the country, including the attorney general, the mayor, and the president is simply not fair,” Cornell William Brooks, the president of the NAACP, told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were shot and killed Saturday afternoon while sitting in their patrol car by a man who posted messages to his social media accounts described by New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton as “very anti-police.”

Images of an Instagram account believed to belong to the suspect, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, said he planned to undertake the killing as revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two unarmed black men who were killed in confrontations with white police officers. In both cases, grand juries declined to bring charges, sparking protests across the country.

Those revelations led some to charge that Democratic politicians who had been critical of police tactics and supportive of the protests were responsible for the killing.

“There’s blood on many hands tonight. That blood on the hands starts at City Hall in the office of the mayor,” Pat Lynch, the president of the largest police union in New York City — the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association — said at a press conference.

In a tweet, Pataki said the deaths were the “predictable outcome of divisive anti-cop rhetoric” from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

While Brooks argued the shootings should not be attributed to those pushing for change following the deaths of Brown and Garner, he acknowledged they were “certainly not a step forward” toward that goal.

“We have a violence problem, and the policies we’re pushing forward protect not only the public, but police officers, and the families they hope to go home to at the end of the day,” Brooks said.