In an appearance on Monday’s “The ED Show” on MSNBC, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) discussed the decision by officers of the New York Police Department to turn the backs on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at the funerals of the two slain officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, in recent weeks.
Rangel related it to his time in the U.S. Army as a staff sergeant during the Korean War and what it took for him to be moved by the war’s dead.
Remarks as follows (emphasis added):
“It’s awkward, because no one wants to be in the position that you’re not with your colleagues, right or wrong,” Rangel said. “But when the moral issue raises it beyond just being right, and you have so much love and respect for the job that you have assumed you’re not going to allow a handful of people who are blinded by hate to spoil the reputation. There’s a hell of a lot that has to do with – I was in combat, and I’m telling you, I saw more dead people, but I never was moved until I saw dead people that looked like me in my uniform. And it does make a difference. And so, yes, the blue wall of silence that is kept communities and minority communities apart for so long, so that even minority policemen don’t want to break that silence.”
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