Vice President Joe Biden paid tribute Thursday to the three Baton Rouge officers ambushed earlier this month and called for healing, telling friends and relatives at a church vigil, “This is not about black and white, this is about a city. this is about what we’re supposed to be”.
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Lynch hailed the officers as heroes during a memorial vigil Thursday at a Baton Rouge church. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Gov. John Bel Edwards also spoke.
But she said the gathering shows the community is united by “collective heartache” and a “common humanity”.
East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said Garafola “went down fighting”, with surveillance video showing him firing at the gunman as bullets hit the concrete around him.
In a personal speech, Biden spoke of his son Beau’s death from brain cancer a year ago.
But Biden added that with time, the memory of each fallen officer will “bring a smile to your lips, before it brings a tear to your eye”.
Sandifer says once they questioned Anthony Moore, he admitted to making the YouTube videos and was apparently upset. “It matters who they were, and it matters who we are as a country”.
A Baton Rouge police officer is consoled by a mourner before funeral services for slain officer Montrell Jackson.
Authorities say the gunman was targeting police officers. Long, 29, also wounded three other officers before a SWAT officer gunned him down. The killings rattled a city already grappling with protests after the fatal police shooting on July 5 of Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man confronted by officers while selling CDs outside a convenience store.
Biden said he heard that Sterling’s aunt, who raised him, had prayed with a slain officer’s father. “The pain that we feel is shared by everyone, as is our hope in the future that has always been this nation’s guiding star”. He was the father of two, and only past year joined the Baton Rouge Police Department. The Justice Department is investigating Sterling’s death.
Baton Rouge police officers Matthew Gerald and Montrell Jackson and sheriff’s deputy Brad Garafola were killed by the gunman.
He then addressed racial divisions, saying: “We have got to close the distance between the neighbourhood and law enforcement”, calling for more community policing.
Sheriff’s Deputy Nicholas Tullier was critically wounded and remains in a hospital.
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Members of the Baton Rouge Police Department salute as a member of the Louisiana State Police Honor Guard, left, plays “Taps” through driving rain during funeral services for Baton Rouge police Cpl. He was married and had a 4-month-old son.
