Sudetenland Tales by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Sudetenland Tales

Page 514

enforcement or other government officials. Long regularly spoke of perceived police brutality on his social media accounts and chose to retaliate against the police, a symbolic target, as a result of his extremist views.

The recent rise of violent Black Nationalism may well have begun months before the Dallas and Baton Rouge attacks with the 2014 ambush shooting deaths of two New York Police Department officers in Brooklyn, New York. The NYPD officers were sitting in their marked patrol car when the shooter, Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, came up to the passenger side window and opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol. Both officers died instantly after being shot multiple times in their heads and upper bodies. At the time, politicians and the media characterized the NYPD officers' deaths as "assassinations." And they were. Brinsley boasted on social media hours earlier that he wanted to murder cops in revenge for the 2014 deaths of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner who died during a struggle with police in New York City. In fact, Brinsley's violent action came just weeks after a jury acquitted the NYPD officer charged in Garner's death. "I'm putting wings on pigs today," Brinsley wrote on Instagram. "They take one of ours; let's take two of theirs," he said. Brinsley later killed himself. Despite having no known ties to Black Nationalist groups, Brinsley's violent