SEATTLE - King County Sheriff John Urquhart has ordered Sheriff's Office deputies to wear mourning bands across their badges in support of the two New York police officers who were fatally shotSaturday.
"Normally we don't wear the mourning bands on our badges for line of duty deaths that are outside the King County area, but this one was so egregious, two officers," Urquhart said. "With all that's been going on I thought it was very important, not only to the law enforcement community but to my department as well, to honor those lives."
Urquhart instructed deputies to wear the mourning bands until midnight on the day of the last funeral in New York.
The killings escalated tensions that have simmered for months after grand juries declined to indict white police officers in the deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York.
Urquhart said everybody has a right to protest and he thinks the protesters have some very good points. But, he said, there's been a lot of criticism of the police in the last few weeks and he thinks it should be put into perspective.
"There's been very little support being voiced for the police and 99.5 percent of police officers you never hear about, you never read anything in the paper about them because they just go about their jobs, day in and day out, and never get in trouble and never violate anybody's rights," he said. "They just do their jobs. Let's think about those as well. It's not that we can't improve, it's not that we can't be better, it's not that police officers don't make mistakes, let's put it in context a little bit."
Officers in New York are now patrolling in two-person cars. Urquhart said he can't do that because of staffing restraints.
