Police killer was a nomad who had been arrested more then 14 times

 Ismaaiyl Brinsley , the gunman who killed two NYPD officers sitting in their patrol car Saturday before running into a Brooklyn subway station and killing himself had made "very anti-police" statements on social media before the shootings, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said. Ismaaiyl Brinsley wrote in the caption of an Instagram post containing a photo of a handgun: "I'm putting wings on pigs today. They take 1 of ours, let's take 2 of theirs," officials said. He used the hashtags "Shootthepolice," "RIPErivGardner (sic)," and "RIPMikeBrown." Police said he approached the passenger window of a marked police car and opened fire, striking Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in the head. The NYPD officers were on special patrol doing crime reduction in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Authorities said there is surveillance video of Brinsley walking up the street toward the squad car, but the shooting was off-camera. "They were, quite simply, assassinated — targeted for their uniform," said Bratton. Brinsley took off running as other officers pursued him down to a nearby subway station, where he shot himself in the head. A silver handgun was recovered at the scene, Bratton said. "This may be my final post," he wrote in the Instagram post, put online a few hours before the shooting. Bratton said they were trying to figure out why he killed the officers. Two city officials with direct knowledge of the case confirmed the posts to The Associated Press. Police say Brinsley had at least 15 prior arrests in the last 10 years in Georgia and Ohio.

The gun he used to kill the officers was bought in 1996 at a pawn shop in Georgia, but it's not clear who purchased it. Authorities are investigating how it came to be in Brinsley's possession. Brinsley is described as a nomad, given history in Georgia, Ohio and Baltimore. Law enforcement sources say his 11-month-old child lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant with the child's mother. Brinsley's mother is also thought to live in Crown Heights. Sources say that Brinsley's mother and sister both told investigators they were afraid of the man.