Photo Courtesy of Edwin Torres/Mayoral Photography Office
The funeral Mass for Det. McDonald was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
By Michael V. Cusenza
Thousands of New Yorkers—Uniformed Members of the Service and the civilians they swore an oath to protect—convened at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Friday to pay their last respects to the Finest of New York’s Finest: Det. Steven McDonald.
McDonald died on Tuesday, Jan. 10, at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island, four days after suffering a massive heart attack at his home in Malverne. He was 59.
“Today there is a unity in our city, a unity of sorrow at the passing of this great man, but also a unity of celebration of a man who was with us on this Earth who had lived a life so well. Here among us, a living example – everything that we aspire to be as a people and a city embodied in one man: Steven McDonald,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “We feel pain, and we feel joy that we knew him. We learn from him. We learn the right way to live from him. Directly, he touched thousands of lives – tens of thousands – but in a greater way millions were moved by his example because he became the greatest embodiment of what it means to be a member of the NYPD. He was synonymous with all that is great about our Police Department and our city. And he showed that the work of policing was profoundly based on love and compassion for your fellow man and woman, and he lived it every day.”
McDonald was appointed to the NYPD on July 16, 1984. He was shot three times and critically injured while patrolling Central Park in 1986, just four days shy of his second anniversary as a police officer.
In a brief statement written by McDonald and read aloud by his wife in 1987, the cop forgave Shavod Jones, the 15-year-old boy who shot him.
“[I] hope that he can find peace and purpose in his life,” Steven McDonald wrote.
On Friday, Police Commissioner Jim O’Neill said he first met McDonald when he was the commanding officer of the Central Park Precinct. He came to the precinct to address roll call – something McDonald did at commands across every borough over the past 30 years – and O’Neill said that McDonald told rookies and veterans alike to always think about police-officer safety, and to always treat everyone they encountered with the same level of respect and kindness they’d afford their own closest friends.
“That’s what had such an impact on me,” O’Neill recalled.
The commissioner went on to declare McDonald “the strongest person” he knew.
“And what we can learn from Steven’s life is this: The cycle of violence that plagues so many lives today can become overcome only by breaking down the walls that separate people,” O’Neill said. “The best tools for doing this, Steven taught us, are love, respect, and forgiveness.”
O’Neill closed out his remarks last Friday with weighty words about an officer’s shield and what it means to every member of the NYPD.
“If nothing else, Steven wanted people to know that police officers take their job seriously because policing is a profession, it’s also a vocation,” he noted. “And Steven wanted people to know that if duty calls for it, police officers will give you everything.”
