Homemade street signs on a section of Tompkins Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant where two officers were assassinated will stay up while the city works to officially co-name streets for the duo elsewhere in the city.
Declaring the street “Fallen Officers Way” and emblazoned with a Police Department shield and a symbolic blue line, the official-looking street signs appeared at the intersection where gunman Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, ambushed and murdered officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos before running off and killing himself in a nearby subway station.
The sign refers Liu and Ramos as detectives, acknowledging the posthumous promotions the fallen cops received from the Police Department.
The city says it has no plans to take down the signs right now despite the fact that it is illegal for anyone but the Department of Transportation to install traffic signs on city streets.
“The signs remain in place as we attempt to advise the person who installed them on the process to seek a co-naming and make sure they’re aware the city is designating two streets in honor of our fallen officers in their respective communities,” a spokesman said in an e-mail.
Mayor DeBlasio announced in December that the Council will introduce legislation designating Ridgewood Avenue between Shepherd Avenue and Highland Place in Cypress Hills “Detective Rafael Ramos Way.” The bill also proposes co-naming W. Sixth Street, between Avenue S and Avenue T in Gravesend, “Detective Wenjian Liu Way.”
“Our fallen heroes will never be forgotten. Their memory lives on in their families, and in the NYPD family,” DeBlasio said in a Dec. 31 press release. “And now it will live on in the streets of the communities these brave men lived in and protected. This is an expression of our pride in each of these men, and our sadness at their loss.”
