Frequent law enforcement critic Rev. Al Sharpton will reportedly be giving the eulogy at the funeral of a New York City police officer gunned down in the line of duty last week— an invitation that has shocked and angered one police union official.
The
New York Daily News reports the activist preacher will call for unity between the police and the community when he speaks Wednesday at services for Officer Randolph Holder.
Holder's family and their minister tell the Daily News the officer's father asked Sharpton to speak at the funeral.
"The city needs to be unified," said the Rev. Les Mullings, pastor of the Far Rockaway Community Church of the Nazarene in Queens. "They didn't want his death to be in vain."
The Queens minister tells the newspaper Holder believed strongly in community policing.
"He’s going to be a catalyst for unification in the city," Mullings said.
Over the weekend, Sharpton paid tribute to the fallen officer, laying a wreath outside the station house where he served, and asserting, "When we find a police officer that's trying to protect us and serve our community and actually puts their lives on the line to do that, we stand up for those police officers."
"We are not anti-police. We are anti-police-brutality," he declared, the Daily News reports.
But Patrolmen's Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch over the weekend blasted Sharpton's criticism of procedures that allowed the suspect in the slaying to remain free despite a violent past — condemning the preacher as "one of the chief extremists fanning the flames of anti-police sentiment for his own gain."
Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, tells the Daily News Sharpton's remarks at the funeral would be "an ironic twist."
"Sharpton is a divider," he said. "Maybe the family doesn't understand his history with the NYPD. The city is divided because of people like Sharpton."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.