3RD COP SUICIDE
Spate of NYPD tragedies started 9 days ago
A police officer shot himself to death on Staten Island Friday, the third cop to do so in the past nine days, the NYPD said.
Officer Michael Caddy, 29, died about 3:45 pm on Wilcox St., near the 121st Precinct stationhouse. The officer used a gun to shoot himself inside a car, said police. An off-duty officer discovered him.
Caddy was going through a divorce. He leaves behind a wife and a young child. Brian Perskin, who was Caddy’s lawyer, described the divorce as “noneventful.”
“They wanted to do the right thing by each other,” Perskin said.
“He was getting divorced, so he wasn’t happy,” the lawyer added. “He was pretty stressed out. But this is totally unexpected. I feel bad for the wife, and especially his father, who he was very close to.”
A neighbor at Caddy’s Staten Island apartment building said he seemed “calm” and “normal” as he headed to work on Friday. “I can’t believe this happened,” the neighbor said.
Sources said Caddy was assigned to work on domestic violence cases.
The triple dose of grief has stunned the nation’s largest police department, with Police Commissioner James O’Neill and other police officials urging any despondent cop to ask for help — and imploring all cops to help any officer who appears to need it.
“Our city is mourning the loss of another officer gone too soon,” said Mayor de Blasio. “Three brave members of our police force have taken their lives in recent days. All of them led lives that made their communities better. All of their lives had meaning.”
An NYPD Twitter page urged cops struggling with a personal crisis to “reach out” for help, assuring them: “It’s not hopeless or helpless; you’re not alone. You matter. Help is available — you have options.”
The string of suicide tragedies began June 5, when Deputy Chief Steven Silks, 62, fatally shot himself not longer after filing his retireshortly ment papers. He was found before dawn near Forest Hills Stadium in Queens.
The next morning, the NYPD frantically searched for a missing detective, Joseph Calabrese, 58, after his car was found near Plum Beach, alongside the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. Calabrese’s body was found that afternoon.