Carlo Allegri/Reuters
Two NYPD officers were shot dead in the Bedford-Stuvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon, the New York Daily News reported. The two cops were sitting in their patrol car when a man the paper identified as 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley—who had may have been the owner of an Instagram account that showed pictures of a pistol with the caption, "I’m Putting Wings On Pigs Today. They Take 1 Of Ours...Let’s Take 2 of Theirs”—shot them both in the head.
Both officers were rushed to a nearby hospital, where they later died. Deputy Chief Kim Royster said Brinsley ran into into the Myrtle/Willoughby G line station, where he shot himself fatally in the head.
On a Facebook account possibly belonging to Brinsley, this post appeared a few house before the murders: "I Always Wanted To Be Known For Doing Something Right....... But My Past Is Stalking Me And My Present Is Haunting Me.”The two officers killed were the first to die from gunfire in the line of duty since Peter Figoski in 2011.
Relations between the police department and the black community have been strained since a grand jury's failure to indict a white police officer who killed the unarmed Eric Garner in July. Parts of the city have been paralyzed at times by protests, and cops have had debris thrown at them and one was assaulted. There is as yet no confirmation the social media presence is Brinsley's or that the killing of two police officers was related to Garner's death.