New York officers turn their backs on mayor a second time

A lone cop faces Mayor Bill de Blasio at Wenjian Liu's funeral. Photo / AP

Thousands of New York police officers turned their backs on the city's mayor for a second time as they gathered to pay tribute to a colleague who was shot dead in an unprovoked revenge attack last month.

The officers turned away as Bill de Blasio delivered a eulogy for Wenjian Liu, who was shot in Brooklyn before Christmas.

The gunman, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, had been angered by two high-profile cases of black people dying at the hands of white police in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City.

The deliberate show of disrespect came despite a public plea from Bill Bratton, the New York police commissioner, for his officers not use the funeral to make a political point, and declaring "a hero's funeral is about grieving, not grievance".

Officers who turned their backs on De Blasio spun back around when Bratton took the podium to speak after the mayor.

De Blasio, a liberal Democrat who criticised New York police's stop and search tactics during his 2013 election campaign, infuriated police rank and file with speeches after the Ferguson incident, in which he accused police of institutional racism.

Officer Liu, 32, who was killed with his partner Rafael Ramos on December 20, was hailed by De Blasio as an incarnation of the American dream: a man who had immigrated at 12 from China and devoted himself to helping others in his adopted country.

But some police were clearly unwilling to make peace with De Blasio.

"He turned his back on us," one officer told the New York Post. "I can't stand even looking at him," another said. "He has no friends here."