US Edition Two New York police officers have been shot dead in a cold blooded ambush in Brooklyn, New York.
The officers, Rafael Ramos, 40, and Wenjian Liu, 32, were sitting in their marked patrol car when the gunman walked up behind them and opened fire through the front passenger window. According to one eye witness, the gunman was “pumping bullets” into them.
"They were simply assassinated," said Bill Bratton, New York's police commissioner. Choking back tears he added: "They were targeted for their uniforms and the responsibility they embraced to keep the people of this city safe."
Neither officer had the chance to draw their weapons to defend themselves. They may never have even seen their murderer.
Mr Bratton named the gunman as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28. Police said that after the killing, he ran into a local subway station and shot himself in the head as armed officers closed in.
Earlier in the day, Brinsley shot and wounded his former girlfriend at Owings Mill, about 15 miles from Baltimore, before making his way to New York.
At the same time police in Baltimore issued an alert to forces about Brinsley, which was received by NYPD as he was killing the two officers in Brooklyn.
Police were studying social media after discovering Brinsley had boasted of his plans to murder officers on his former girlfriend's Instagram account in revenge for the killing of two black men, Eric Garner and Michael Brown, by police earlier this year.
The post, which was put on the Internet three hours before the shooting, showed a picture of an automatic handgun and a pair of camouflage trousers matching those which were worn by the gunman.
According to the New York Daily News he wrote: "I’m Putting Wings On Pigs Today. They Take 1 Of Ours ... Let’s Take 2 of Theirs.”
The deaths of Mr Garner, after being held in an outlawed choke hold in New York, and Mr Brown, who was unarmed when he was shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri, triggered a wave of protests in cities across the USA.
Anger was intensified when grand juries decided not to indict the officers in the killings.
Tension has been rising in New York over the past week following the grand jury decision in the Garner case.
Bedford–Stuyvesant, where the officers were shot, has always been known as Brooklyn's unofficial African-American capital.
In recent years it has become more fashionable and is gradually gentrifying as young artists and media workers arrive from more expensive neighbourhoods.
The attack comes less than two months after Zale Thompson, 32, wounded two officers in a hatchet attack in nearby Queens, New York. The Navy veteran who had converted to Islam was shot dead.
“I have been waiting for something like this to happen,” Harry Houck, a former New York police detective said.
“It only takes one lunatic to get something like this into his head and to go out and commit the crime.”
New York Police Department has nearly 35,000 officers and the last to be shot in the line of duty was Peter Figoski in 2011.
The shootings will step up pressure on Bill de Blasio, the Democrat mayor of New York, who has been accused of backing the anti police protests.
But last night, standing alongside Mr Bratton, Mr de Blasio paid tribute to the two officers. "They were two good men, they devoted their lives to protecting all of us. They died, protecting the city they loved."
The murders were condemned by President Barack Obama. "Two brave men won't be going home to their loved ones tonight, and for that, there is no justification.
"The officers who serve and protect our communities risk their own safety for ours every single day - and they deserve our respect and gratitude every single day."
The Rev. Al Sharpton, the radical civil rights leader who had been withering in his condemnation of police over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, said he and Mr Garner's family were outraged by the shooting of the two officers.
"Any use of the names of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in connection with any violence or killing of police is reprehensible and against the pursuit of justice in both cases."
In New York police officers made little attempt to hide their anger at the murders and the criticism they had faced from protesters.
“There is blood on many hands tonight, those who incited violence on the street under the guise of protest,” said Patrick Lynch, the head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.