Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Thousands of police officers lined the pews Friday at St. Patrick's Cathedral to honour fallen Officer Jason Rivera, who was gunned down with his partner last week in an ambush that left the New York Police Department in mourning and the city on edge.
Mayor Eric Adams, himself a retired police captain, told those gathered that he saw an echo of himself in the slain officer who had joined a department he had seen as flawed in hopes of improving it.
"He did it for the right reasons -- he wanted to make a difference," said Adams, a Democrat who also sounded a message of support for a force that, like other police departments, has come under criticism during the last two years amid a national reckoning with policing, race and what public safety should mean.
"There were days when I felt the public did not understand and appreciate the job we were telling, and I want to tell you officers: They do. They do," he said. "These two fine men watered the tree of safety that allows us to sit under the shade from the hot sun of violence."
Rivera and a partner, Officer Wilbert Mora, were fatally wounded Jan. 21 by a gunman who ambushed them in a hallway as they responded to a family dispute. Mora's funeral is set for next week, also at St. Patrick's.
"The system continues to fail us. We are not safe anymore. Not even the members of the service," Rivera's wife, Dominique Luzuriaga, said through tears as she recalled her horror at seeing a cellphone alert about two officers being shot in Harlem and then worriedly texting and calling the former elementary school classmate she married just this past October.
Her messages went unanswered, until she got a call summoning her to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.
"I'm still in this nightmare that I wish I never had, full of rage and anger, hurt and sad, torn," she said.
Both Mora and Rivera -- who was posthumously promoted to detective on Friday -- grew up in the city's ethnic enclaves and had hoped to help the department build bridges with the community. Friends and fellow police officers describe them as caring and dedicated.
"Jason saw the need and had the desire to foster a positive relationship between police and his community," said Inspector Amir Yakatally, the commanding officer of Rivera's and Mora's precinct. "He was what we all want in a cop."
He noted that Rivera began a police career at a difficult time -- amid the coronavirus pandemic and protests over policing and other issues -- and was so excited to get to work that he double-parked in front of the stationhouse his first day and showed up early every workday after.
Jeffrey Rivera recalled that as a youngster, his brother -- "Tata" to his family -- listened to police radio transmissions, watched police dramas on TV and became "obsessed" with a law enforcement career.
Jason Rivera would eventually say, in an essay, that he had initially been angered by policing -- particularly being pulled over in a taxi and seeing officers frisk his brother -- but came to feel that the NYPD was trying to do better at community relations.
Roman Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan presided over Rivera's service, held in Spanish and English in recognition of the first-generation New Yorker's Dominican heritage.
Officers came from near and far to honour Rivera, 22, who was recently married to his childhood sweetheart and barely into his second year of service on the force.
"It doesn't really matter what uniform we wear," said Master Police Officer Tammy Russel, from Fairfax County, Virginia. "These are all our brothers and sisters. ... Sadness all around."
The gunman, who was shot by a third officer, died earlier in the week. Authorities are still investigating why he fired at the officers.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said flags at state buildings would fly at half-staff from sunrise the day of Rivera's funeral until sunset the day of Mora's funeral on Wednesday.
Before Friday, the last NYPD officer killed in the line of duty was Anastasios Tsakos, who was struck by a suspected drunken driver in May 2021 while assisting officers at the scene of an earlier crash on a Queens highway.
The last NYPD officer fatally shot in the line of duty, Brian Mulkeen, was hit by friendly fire while struggling with an armed man after chasing and shooting at him in the Bronx in September 2019.
Two officers, Randolph Holder and Brian Moore, were killed in separate shootings in 2015. The year before, Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were fatally shot by a man who ambushed them as they sat in their patrol car in Brooklyn.
----
Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.