The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Biden tries to comfort relatives of officers slain in Louisiana
BATON ROUGE, LA. — The gunman’s bullets that killed three law enforcement officers in Baton Rouge also targeted the country and “touched the soul of an entire nation,” Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday at a memorial service for the fallen officers.
“We need to heal,” said Biden, who was joined at a Baton Rouge church by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, the officers’ widows and hundreds of others.
Biden spoke directly to three officers’ relatives from the stage. He promised them that a day will come when the memory of their loved ones will “bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye.”
“They were defined by their courage,” he said. “It matters who they were, and it matters who we are as a country.”
Baton Rouge police officers Matthew Gerald, 41, and Montrell Jackson, 32, and sheriff ’s deputy Brad Garafola, 45, were shot and killed by Gavin Long, an Army veteran from Kansas City, Mo,, outside a convenience store on July 17.
Authorities say the gunman was targeting police officers.
“When that assassin’s bullet targeted our heroes — and he was an assassin — he not only targeted them, he targeted the city. He targeted his country, and it touched the soul of the entire nation,” Biden said.
Long, 29, also wounded three other officers before a SWAT officer shot and killed him. Long killed the officers less than two weeks after protests erupted in Baton Rouge over the death of Alton Sterling, a 29-year-old black man who was shot and killed during a scuffle with two white police officers. Sterling’s killing was captured on cellphone video and circulated widely on the internet.
Biden said he heard that Sterling’s aunt embraced the father of one of the slain officers during a chance encounter after the shooting. He said they prayed together because “loss is loss is loss.”
Lynch said it can feel as if the world is “broken beyond repair” after tragedies like the deadly shootout in Baton Rouge. But she said the gathering shows the community is united by “collective heartache” and a “common humanity.”
Lynch is scheduled to remain in Baton Rouge through this afternoon to meet with local police officials and other first responders. The Justice Department is investigating Sterling’s death. The two officers involved in that July 5 shooting were placed on administrative leave.
Jackson, a corporal, was a 10-year veteran of the Baton Rouge Police Department. He was married and had a 4-month-old son. Days before he was shot to death, Jackson posted a message on Facebook about the difficulties of being both a black man and a police officer in the tumultuous aftermath of Sterling’s shooting.
“Please don’t let hate infect your heart. This city MUST and WILL get better,” wrote Jackson, whose funeral was Monday.