Vice President Joe Biden will attend the funeral for one of the New York City police officers killed in an assassination-style shooting in Brooklyn, the White House said Tuesday.
“The president has asked Vice President Biden to attend the service for Officer Rafael Ramos and is grateful that the vice president and Dr. Jill Biden will be traveling to New York City to attend the service on Saturday,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz.
On vacation in Hawaii, Obama has yet to make an on-camera statement on the killing of officers Ramos and Wenjian Liu. The president has been criticized for not addressing the murder of police officers in the same way he spoke about the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York City, both black men slain by police.
Obama and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio have been accused of stoking the type of anti-police sentiment that was apparently the motivation for the gunman in Brooklyn.
For his part, de Blasio has requested a moratorium on protests in New York until after the funerals for Ramos and Liu.
