The last time multiple NYPD officers were killed by a shooter was in 2007 when two auxiliary NYPD officers were shot by a heavily-armed gunman in Greenwich Village. 
 
 
 
 Nicholas Pekearo, 28, and Eugene Marshalik, 19, made the ultimate sacrifice when they chased down David Garvin, a mentally unstable man who had just killed bartender Alfredo Romero. 
 
 
 
 Officials believe the pair saved countless lives by going after the deranged gunman. 

 In an instant this weekend, it seemed as though 43 years had not passed, and that it was 1971 again. 
 
 The head of the principal police union said that the mayor, Bill de Blasio, had blood on his hands; police officers turned and showed him their backs when he arrived at the hospital. A former mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and a former governor, George E. Pataki, blamed Mr. de Blasio for fostering a climate of violence against police officers. They say he indulged protesters who have been demonstrating over the lack of charges after the death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who died in July while being arrested. 
 
 New York City in the early 1970s was riven and dangerous, its ordinary criminal activity outdone by political violence. The attacks on the police officers had been carried out by elements of a radical group called the Black Liberation Army. “It’s open season on the cops in this city,” Ed Kiernan, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said after the shootings of Officers Jones and Piagentini, and he urged all officers to carry shotguns, bringing them from home if necessary. 
 
 On Saturday, a gunman shot his ex-girlfriend near Baltimore, then came to Brooklyn and opened fire into a police car parked on Tompkins Avenue. 
 
 Inside were Officers Wenjian Liu, 32, and Rafael Ramos, 40, one a Chinese-American, the other a New Yorker of Puerto Rican origin.
– The murders of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu may have just happened over the weekend, but for Jim Dwyer, the killings were eerily reminiscent of the early 1970s. Writing for the New York Times, Dwyer describes the Macombs Dam Bridge he used to walk across as a boy, and how it was the site of a May 1971 ambush shooting of NYPD officers Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones. He recalls four other NYC police officers viciously attacked (two of them, Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie, died) over the next year, noting that "in an instant this weekend, it seemed as though 43 years had not passed, and that it was 1971 again." Ramos' and Liu's deaths shocked New York, which hadn't seen an officer fatally shot on duty since 2011, or partners die together since two auxiliary officers were gunned down in 2007, per the New York Daily News and the Officer Down Memorial Page. Dwyer touches upon the differences between the NYPD of his day and the current NYPD—specifically, the more diverse makeup of today's officers, men and women from 50 countries who "speak scores of languages" to create a "Police Department [that] looks more like the city than ever." And yet, he sadly notes, that diversity isn't bulletproof: "To the person who killed Officers Liu and Ramos, just as to the people who killed Officers Jones and Piagentini, Foster and Laurie, the only color that mattered was blue. All of them, with skin tones that ran from black to white, got bullets to the head." But while Dwyer laments how the vitriol on social media is a "river of rage" that shows "contempt for racial [and] political others," he ends with the words of Ramos' aunt, who told reporters Sunday she hopes "we can move forward and find an amicable path to a peaceful coexistence." Click for the full piece.