NYC Gives Final Salute to Slain NYPD Officer

Thousands of police officers lined the pews Friday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral to honor fallen Officer Jason Rivera, who was gunned down with his partner last week in an ambush that left the New York Police Department in mourning and the city on edge.

Mayor Eric Adams, himself a retired police captain, told those gathered that he saw an echo of himself in the slain officer who had joined a department he had seen as flawed in hopes of improving it.

“He did it for the right reasons — he wanted to make a difference,” said Adams, sounding a message of support for a force that, like other police departments, has come under criticism during the last two years amid a national reckoning with policing, race and what public safety should mean.

“There were days when I felt the public did not understand and appreciate the job we were doing, and I want to tell you officers: They do. They do,” he said. “These two fine men watered the tree of safety that allows us to sit under the shade from the hot sun of violence.”

Rivera and a partner, Officer Wilbert Mora, were fatally wounded Jan. 21 by a gunman who ambushed them in a hallway as they responded to a family dispute. Mora’s funeral is set for next week, also at St. Patrick’s.

“The system continues to fail us. We are not safe anymore. Not even the members of the service,” Rivera’s wife, Dominique Luzuriaga, said in her eulogy.

Speaking directly to her deceased husband, Luzuriaga referenced new Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has come under criticism for seeking to reduce incarceration and instructing prosecutors not to pursue certain cases, including some allegations of resisting arrest.

“I know you were tired of these laws, especially the ones from the new DA. I hope he’s watching you speak through me right now,” Luzuriaga said tearfully, to a long applause. “I’m sure all of our blue family is tired too. But I promise, we promise, that your death won’t be in vain.”

Bragg, who had no involvement with the officers’ killer, responded in a statement that he was grieving and praying for the slain officers and will “vigorously prosecute cases of violence against police.”

Luzuriaga recalled her horror at seeing a cellphone alert about two officers being shot in Harlem and then worriedly texting and calling Rivera, whom she had married just this past October.

Her messages went unanswered, until she got a call summoning her to a hospital where Rivera was pronounced dead. “I’m still in this nightmare that I wish I never had, full of rage and anger, hurt and sad, torn,” she said.

“The horror that took their lives is an affront to every decent, caring human being in this city and beyond,” Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said, telling any criminals in the city to “see the presence in this cathedral — the NYPD will never give up this city.”

Both Mora and Rivera — who was posthumously promoted to detective on Friday — grew up in the city’s ethnic enclaves and had hoped to help the department build bridges with the community. Friends and fellow police officers describe them as caring and dedicated.

“Jason saw the need and had the desire to foster a positive relationship between police and his community,” said Inspector Amir Yakatally, the commanding officer of Rivera’s and Mora’s precinct. “He was what we all want in a cop.”

He noted that Rivera began as a police career at a difficult time — amid the coronavirus pandemic and protests over policing and other issues — and was so excited to get to work that he double-parked in front of the stationhouse his first day and showed up early every workday after.

Jeffrey Rivera recalled that as a youngster, his brother — “Tata” to his family — listened to police radio transmissions and became “obsessed” with a law enforcement career.

Jason Rivera would eventually say, in an essay, that he had initially been angered by policing — particularly being pulled over in a taxi and seeing officers frisk his brother — but came to feel that the NYPD was trying to do better at community relations.

Roman Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan presided over Rivera’s service, held in Spanish and English in recognition of the first-generation New Yorker’s Dominican heritage.

Officers came from near and far to honor Rivera, 22, who was barely into his second year of service on the force.

“It doesn’t really matter what uniform we wear,” said Master Police Officer Tammy Russel, from Fairfax County, Virginia. “These are all our brothers and sisters. … Sadness all around.”

The gunman, Lashawn McNeil, who was shot by a third officer, died earlier in the week. Authorities are still investigating why he fired at the officers.

Rivera and Mora were the third and fourth officers shot in the city within 72 hours, and during a two-week stretch that also saw a woman pushed to her death in front of a subway train and an 11-month-old baby critically injured by a stray bullet. Crime has risen in the last few years from record lows, though it remains well below its early 1990s peak in the nation’s most populous city.

After Mora and Rivera were shot, Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced plans to crack down on illegal guns and combat crime. President Joe Biden is due to meet with Adams on Thursday to discuss combating gun violence. Adams, Hochul and Biden are all Democrats.

Hochul said flags at state buildings would fly at half-staff from sunrise the day of Rivera’s funeral until sunset the day of Mora’s funeral on Wednesday.

Before Friday, the last NYPD officer killed in the line of duty was Anastasios Tsakos, who was struck by a suspected drunken driver in May 2021 while assisting officers at the scene of an earlier crash on a Queens highway.

The last NYPD officer fatally shot in the line of duty, Brian Mulkeen, was hit by friendly fire while struggling with an armed man after chasing and shooting at him in the Bronx in September 2019.