A week after two New York City police officers were shot and killed while responding to a domestic disturbance in Harlem, thousands of fellow officers from across the region gathered for a funeral service in Manhattan on Friday morning, a solemn tradition of saying goodbye to one of their own.
The death on Jan. 21 of the officer, Jason Rivera, was the first time since April 2021 that a city police officer had been killed in the line of duty. Officer Rivera’s family, the police commissioner and Mayor Eric Adams were among those expected to travel to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the landmark church on Fifth Avenue where the ceremony was set to be held at 9 a.m.
Officer Rivera’s partner, Wilbert Mora, 27, also died of his wounds four days after the shooting. It has been more than seven years since two city police officers were killed together on the job.
Officer Rivera was a 22-year-old rookie who had been assigned to the 32nd Precinct in Harlem last year. In many ways he was representative of the new generation of Latino officers rising in a police department that was once overwhelmingly white.
His family immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic, and he had joined the force fueled by an aspiration to strengthen relationships between the police and the people they serve, after seeing firsthand as he grew up how easily tensions could arise.
He left behind a wife, whom he had just recently wed.
Other officers in the precinct shared their pain over Officer Rivera’s untimely death at vigils and memorials over the last the week.
They were among the many across the city who were shaken in the days after the shooting, as the gunfire ushered in the collective sense of pain felt in New York when an officer is lost on the job. In the first 20 days of the year, three other officers were shot, but all survived without debilitating injuries.
A private ceremony for Officer Rivera was scheduled for later on Friday at a cemetery in Hartsdale, N.Y. The details of Officer Mora’s funeral had not yet been made public on Thursday night.
They were part of a team of three officers who responded on Friday evening last week to a 911 call at a Harlem apartment: a mother had asked the police to speak with her adult son, Lashawn McNeil, 47, after he verbally threatened her. She made no mention of weapons in the apartment.
When the officers arrived, they met the mother at the door, who told them that her son was in a back bedroom, the police said. She asked him to come out from the room, which was at the end of a long, narrow hallway. But he did not join them.
Officers Rivera and Mora made their way down the hall toward the door, one of them calling out for Mr. McNeil. The third officer, a trainee, stayed back to speak with his mother and a brother who was also there.
But as the two officers neared the bedroom, Mr. McNeil opened fire with a pistol, gravely wounding them both. The third officer shot Mr. McNeil twice, in the head and arm. He died on Monday.
