Jersey City Mayor: Alleged Killer’s Memorial ‘Disgusting’

The mayor of Jersey City spoke out after friends of the man who allegedly shot and killed a police officer set up a memorial for the suspect, featuring candles, balloons and empty liquor bottles. The suspect's widow also said she wished her husband had "killed more" officers.  

"It's ignorance, it's disgusting, it's sad, but I don't view it as representing, by and large, the community here in Jersey City," Mayor Steve Fulop said.

He described the situation as beyond sad for the police department and the entire community in Jersey City, and said he felt sorry for the killer's widow.

"I feel sorry for her that she thinks that way, that she feels that way where she's coming from on that perspective. I just really feel sorry for her," Fulop said.

Fulop added Jersey City is growing and has a tremendously diverse population, and "with a diverse population comes some great assets and unfortunately some morons and what you have here is somebody who doesn't understand the impact of what happened."

He also said "the incident sadly happened in Jersey City but it could have happened in any urban area across the country, where you have an individual who looked to do harm to a police officer and who is nothing short of a lunatic."

Fulop said there are a lot of reasons why these sort of things happen.

"Some of it has to do with drug use, some of it has to do with jobs, some of it has to do with socio-economic issues for decades," he said. "And any mayor in any city in the country would tell you sometimes the challenges feel like you're swimming upstream, but you continue to do it and change and progress will eventually happen."

He added "we're going to have a funeral with honors on Friday and we'll move on from there- I'd like to thank the community by and large for being so supportive."