NYPD Officer Miosotis Familia. AP
A true New York heroine died early Wednesday — gunned down in cold blood by a cop-hating assassinas she sat in a mobile command anti-crime vehicle, protecting a Bronx neighborhood long plagued by gang violence.
Officer Miosotis Familia, 48, earned that label long before she became the third female NYPD officer to suffer a combat-related death.
The single mother of three and caretaker of her aging mother joined the force at 36 after years as a nurse and medical assistant. Her entire life was devoted to serving her family, her community and her city.
As one colleague recalled, “She was always overextending herself to people.”
But she was shot without warning by a serial convict who’d threatened cops in a menacing social media rant, warning he wouldn’t back down in any street confrontation.
“I’m not hesitating,” vowed gunman Alexander Bonds. “It ain’t happening. I wasn’t a bitch in jail and I’m not going to be a bitch in these streets.” He was shot dead himself just after killing Officer Familia.
Yet this was no confrontation, but an unprovoked ambush, plain and simple, like the 2014 attack that claimed the lives of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.
And by all accounts, Bonds’ only “reason” was that Familia, who never saw the bullet coming, was a cop.Being a police officer is always fraught with daily peril, a fact that takes a toll on every cop family, though the public is only reminded of it by horrors like this one.
And the perils are growing worse. An FBI report recently confirmed a nationwide “War on Cops,” waged by assailants now more willing to use deadly force because they don’t believe they’ll pay a heavy price.
And more eager to strike, thanks to widespread vilification of cops as racist killers. Whatever demons drove Alexander Bonds to kill surely were spurred by such rhetoric.
And so the city must bury another hero killed in the line of duty long before her time. All New Yorkers salute Officer Miosotis Familia and mourn her loss.
