Mourners are coming to pay their respects at a makeshift memorial made out of candles, balloons, and heartfelt notes days after rookie officer Melvin Santiago was gunned down while responding to an armed robbery call. But the memorial—which also includes empty liquor bottles and the message “Thug in Peace” scribbled on a T-shirt—is for his alleged killer, not 23-year-old Santiago, reports AP. City officials are outraged at the Jersey City, NJ, tribute to Lawrence Campbell, who was killed by officers returning fire during the Sunday incident outside a Walgreens. "The people who put up a memorial to a cowardly murderer who shot somebody in the head without giving him a chance are not representative of the people who live" in that neighborhood, the city’s police chief says.
Tensions are running high since Santiago's murder: AP reports that a Jersey City police officer shot a man this morning after he allegedly attacked the officer with a fence post. And the families and friends of Santiago and Campbell are also speaking out about the killing and the memorial. The New York Daily News reports that Campbell’s wife, Angelique, told a local news station, “If they [police] was going to stand over my husband and shoot him like a f---ing dog, he should’ve took all of them the f--- out”—comments the Jersey City mayor called "ignorant" and "disgusting." (Angelique later told the News that she was sorry for her husband’s actions and that he had a substance abuse problem.) Santiago’s stepfather says that he thinks Campbell is a “piece of s---,” that the Walgreens security guard whose gun Campbell reportedly stole to shoot Santiago was an “idiot,” and that the people who erected the memorial are "ignorant." A smaller, temporary memorial has been set up for Santiago outside the Walgreens where he was killed. (More Melvin Santiago stories.)
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