NEW YORK — His childhood friends called him Pote, which loosely translates to “can of goodness” in New York’s Puerto Rican street slang.
Thousands of police officers from across the country and from Canada and residents from every corner of New York City arrived early Saturday to attend the funeral of “the can of goodness,” Rafael “Ralph” Ramos, the police officer and 40-year-old father of two who was shot dead with his partner as they sat in their squad car on a meal break in Brooklyn last week. Police in their blue uniforms arrived by bus, car, train and plane from a distance and from the precinct around the corner. By 7 a.m. Saturday, the line of mourners stretched more than six blocks.
With threats to police continuing online, security was high with police on rooftops watching the crowd through binoculars. Canine units moved through the mourners and helped to check cars parked along adjacent streets. Emergency Services Units officers patrolled with assault rifles.
Ramos’s captain, Sergio Centa, said it was “a scary time for the police department right now. You just tell them to be safe, go out there in pairs and be extra cautious.”
“It really is a brotherhood,” said New Orleans Police Capt. Michael Glasser, standing outside Christ Tabernacle, a megachurch in the working-class neighborhood Glendale of Queens, on Friday evening, after an eight-hour wake. Ramos had served there as an usher.
“Dad, I’m forever grateful of the sacrifices you made to provide for me and Jaden,” Ramos’s son, Justin, said during the wake, referring to his younger brother, as officers gathered on the sidewalk and watched on television screens.
Vice President Biden is expected to attend Saturday’s service. Other dignitaries expected were Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, former mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former New York police commissioner Ray Kelly.
The funeral comes amid a national conversation and protest movement around the treatment of African Americans by law enforcement following the August shooting death of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and a New York grand jury’s decision not to indict an officer for the death of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who was killed by a chokehold in July.
The man who shot Ramos and Officer Wenjian Liu, 32, had vowed on social media to “put wings on pigs.”
Their deaths have put a chill on protests that in recent weeks have turned the city into the heart of a police reform movement. The city’s progressive council members and Mayor Bill de Blasio had been pressuring the police department to retrain officers and talk openly about the use of force on African Americans.
But now, New York is a city in anguish and anger — but for different reasons for neighbors and even family members who fall on different sides of a divisive debate.
On Friday, mourners arrived for a daytime wake and for a closed memorial service for Ramos’s wife, Maritza, and their two sons. Police came from the 84th Precinct, at the end of the Brooklyn Bridge, where Ramos and Liu left last week to police a public housing project that had seen a particular spike in crime. More than a dozen giant flower arrangements were set up inside Christ Tabernacle, including one of his shield with the number spelled out in roses and lilies.
Liu’s funeral is still being planned since his family is waiting for relatives from China to arrive. He arrived in the United States at age 12, almost exactly 20 years ago on Christmas Eve.
Ramos was a regular on Queens streets of garden apartments and modest homes, in a largely immigrant neighborhood. His church of 14 years served as the comforting and encouraging heart of the community, with members who hail from Spanish-speaking countries.
Ramos, a New Yorker of Puerto Rican origin, had planned to come to Christ Tabernacle the night he was killed. He was becoming a lay chaplain and graduating from a community-crisis program.
Some neighbors held white roses for “a humble man,” who had an “infectious smile” and worked as a church usher, “willing to help at any capacity, helping people to their seats, moms with their baby carriages or the elderly in and out of our elevator,” according to a church statement.
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