Protect police is plea at NYC burial

NEW YORK — The public needs to step up to protect police at a time when they’re under attack, New York’s mayor and police commissioner said Tuesday as they paid respects to an officer ambushed and killed in a parked police vehicle.

“We’ve watched with horror these attacks on our police here in New York City and all around our country. It sickens us, and we know they cannot be tolerated, and we know they must end,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at officer Miosotis Familia’s funeral at a 4,000-seat theater-turned-church in the Bronx.

“We must end it,” he said. “We must help our police in every way, just as we ask them to help us in our moment of need. … They need us to be their eyes and ears. They need our solidarity and support.”

Police Commissioner James O’Neill said Familia’s death “should remind everybody that the civility of our city rests on a knife’s edge.”

Familia, 48, was posthumously promoted Tuesday to detective. She was shot July 5 while working in an mobile command post in a Bronx precinct. Alexander Bonds walked up and fired once through the passenger window, striking Familia in the head. Officers killed Bonds after he turned the gun on them, police said.