A city in pain: NY prepares to honor fallen rookie officer
NEW YORK — A city reeling from a recent spate of violence prepared to lay to rest a rookie police officer being hailed as an inspiration to his immigrant community, as investigators sought to make sense of a domestic dispute that left another officer “fighting for his life.”
Funeral services for New York City police Officer Jason Rivera were being finalized, as his comrades mourned the loss of the 22-year-old who joined the force to make a difference in what he had described as a “chaotic city.”
A solemn scene unfolded Sunday with a column of uniformed police officers, as well as a line of firefighters, flanking the streets as a hearse carrying the fallen officer left the medical examiner’s office.
Burial is scheduled for Friday, city officials said, while services were to be held Thursday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Rivera and Officer Wilbert Mora were shot Friday night while answering a call about an argument between a woman and her adult son. Mora, 27, suffered a serious head wound, police said.
Appearing Sunday on CNN, Mayor Eric Adams stressed the urgency “to deal with the underlying issues that are impacting crime in our city and has become a stain on the inner cities across our country.”
He said his police force would revamp a plainclothes anti-crime unit aimed at getting guns off the streets. The unit had been disbanded in 2020 over concerns it accounted for a disproportionate number of shootings and complaints.
“The symbol of that soiled coat with red blood is really what we’re talking about here in not only New York City, but across America,”
Adams said.
The medical examiner ruled Rivera’s death a homicide after an autopsy found he died from gunshot wounds to the head and torso.
Mora, who has been with the NYPD for four years, remained in life-threatening condition, Adams said Sunday.
The shooting is the latest in a string of crimes that have unnerved the nation’s most populous city and the country’s largest police force, with 36,000 officers.
In three weeks since Adams took office, a 19-year-old cashier was shot to death as she worked a late-night shift at a Burger King, a woman was pushed to her death in a subway station, and an 11-month old baby was critically injured when she was hit by a stray bullet as she sat in a parked car with her mother. With the Harlem shooting Friday night, four police officers had been shot in as many days.
The man police say shot them, Lashawn J. McNeil, 47, also was critically wounded and hospitalized, authorities said.
Details about what led to the deadly confrontation were still emerging.Officials said a woman who made an emergency call Friday said she was ill and that her son
who had come to take care of her had become “problematic.” Adams said the woman did not specify the problem.
Police said the gun used in the shooting, a .45-caliber Glock with a high-capacity magazine capable of holding up to 40 extra rounds, had been stolen in Baltimore in 2017.
Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul both said federal authorities need to do more to round up stolen guns like the one used in the Harlem shooting. Hochul, at an appearance Saturday in Buffalo, called it a “scourge of illegal guns on our streets.”
Rivera joined the force in November 2020.
Growing up in Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood, he noticed tensions with police, according to a brief essay titled “Why I Became a Police Officer,” a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.
In that essay, Rivera wrote about how he was bothered by witnessing his brother being stopped and frisked. But his attitudes changed when he also saw how the department was trying to improve relationships with communities.
“I realized how impactful my role as a police officer would go in this chaotic city,” he wrote.