Officer’s funeral recalls rougher New York City
Steven McDonald was paralysed in a brazen shooting but spoke of forgiveness and compassion
It was a muggy Saturday afternoon in July 1986. Officer Steven McDonald, on the police force for less than two years, approached a group of teenagers in Central Park. What happened next jolted New Yorkers and came to symbolise a city that would be largely unrecognisable today — one plagued by a crack epidemic, rampant crime and racially infused deaths that commanded the news and made New York a tabloid city.
McDonald was repeatedly shot at pointblank range, leaving him paralysed from the neck down. For more than three decades he continued serving the department by walking — or rather, rolling, in a wheelchair — an unconventional beat of forgiveness and compassion that saw him carry his message of absolution from high school students and police officers to the pope.
In a sense, his death on Tuesday at 59, several days after a heart attack, was in the line of duty.
On Friday morning, McDonald’s funeral Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral became a moment for the city to pay tribute to him, not just for being willing to risk his life in the service of others, but for the life he led in the years that followed.
The streets around the cathedral in Manhattan were closed to traffic as thousands of police officers in dress uniform gathered to watch a Police Department honour guard escort McDonald’s body along Fifth Avenue and into the enormous sanctuary.
McDonald’s coffin was draped in a green and white shroud and was wheeled up the main aisle followed by McDonald’s wife, Patti Ann, and their son, Conor, who is a Police Department sergeant. They were followed by a long line of friends, family and members of the department, including the commissioner, James O’Neill, as well as Mayor Bill de Blasio and other elected officials.
The funeral was an occasion for many to flash back 31 years ago when the shooting punctuated a grim period in the city’s history.
Even for that tumultuous time, McDonald’s shooting was startling in its brazenness — a teenager callously opening fire on an officer in broad daylight. It perhaps drew more attention because McDonald had the quintessential background of a New York City cop: He was part of an Irish Catholic police family, with a father and grandfather who both served on the city’s police force.
But what allowed the story to endure was McDonald’s extraordinary response: He forgave his attacker and publicly expressed hope of redemption and rehabilitation for the troubled young man whose wanton, reckless act of lawlessness had left him a quadriplegic. With his declaration of forgiveness, one he preached nonstop by travelling all over the city and the world for speaking engagements, McDonald became one of the most revered figures in the history of the New York Police Department, and a touchstone from a time when the city struggled with soaring murder rates.
The Police Department reported 1,582 murders in the city in 1986, compared with 335 in 2016. On the day that changed his life, July 12, 1986, the 29-year-old officer was in his second year on the job. Shavod Jones, a black 15-year-old, had a troubled upbringing in a housing project in East Harlem. In 1986, many New Yorkers considered Central Park a risky place to walk, especially its northern portions.
Today, a mugging in the park makes headlines. At the spot where McDonald was shot is a vegetarian food stand and footpaths favoured by tourists on rented bikes and well-off couples pushing strollers.
Back then, Jones was walking with two friends in the northernmost section of the park when he caught the eye of McDonald, who was on patrol as a member of an anti-crime unit focusing on a rash of bicycle thefts. As the officer began questioning the teenagers, Jones pulled out a handgun and shot McDonald three times, making him the 12th city police officer to be shot in six months — two of the officers were killed.
More broadly, the shooting was sandwiched between some high-profile episodes that convulsed the city. Two years before McDonald was shot, Bernard Goetz shot four unarmed black men on a subway train who he said were trying to rob him. Three years after the McDonald shooting came the Central Park jogger case: Five minority teenagers were coerced into confessing to the brutal rape of a white woman jogging in Central Park, but were later vindicated after serving prison sentences.
Edward Koch was the mayor, and racial tension and anti-police sentiment were in the air. The Rev Al Sharpton regularly led marches protesting racially charged events such as the deaths precipitated by white mobs in Gravesend and Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and Howard Beach, Queens.
“They were wild times in the late ‘80s — crime was zooming and everyone was affected by it,” said Thomas Reppetto, an author and expert on police history. “A lot of people have been shot in the Police Department, but Steven McDonald got the most attention because he didn’t let the shooting get him down.”
After recovering to the point that he could use a motorised wheelchair and breathe with the help of a respirator, he travelled in a specially equipped van, aided by his wife and accompanied by their son, who was born six months after the shooting.
McDonald remained on the Police Department’s payroll as a first-grade detective. His mission became to use his renown from the shooting as an opportunity to preach understanding and speak out against violence and intolerance. He supported wounded officers. He spoke at elementary schools and attended police funerals and other events.
As for Jones, he was convicted of attempted murder and served about a decade in prison, during which McDonald began a correspondence with him. (He also met with Jones’ mother and grandmother.)
McDonald had hoped that he and Jones might speak publicly together, but Jones died in a motorcycle accident, just three days after being released from prison.