Cop lives mattered outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral Friday.
Perhaps not since America welcomed its victorious legions home from Europe in 1945 have New York’s streets seen a uniformed presence quite like the blue wall that stood tall in Fifth Avenue Friday. They had come to honor the sacrifice of NYPD Officer Jason Rivera — murdered at 22 in service to a too-often-ungrateful city.
On Wednesday, Officer Wilbert Mora — mortally wounded alongside Rivera in a Harlem apartment last week — will himself be laid to rest from the cathedral. His sacrifice was no less profound, but it will be hard to replicate Friday’s extraordinary scene.
Officers in the thousands packed the boulevard, from curb to curb for blocks — respectfully silent, or as silent as such numbers can be, but eloquently making it clear that for this one day, on this one occasion, they had had enough of being scapegoats for a society lately lacking the self-respect to resist both its criminals and those politicians who protect them.
But first, Rivera — whose proud guileless grin, radiating from an otherwise pedestrian departmental ID photo, seems to have captivated the city.
So young, so hopeful, so dedicated to his calling and now gone — he and his partner both, ambushed by a career-criminal-parolee carrying enough illegal firepower to kill a dozen cops.
And then consider the heartbreak, and the stoic heroism, of Dominique Luzuriaga, Rivera’s bride of a scant three-plus months. She told the St. Pat’s assembly Friday that she had learned of a police shooting on social media — and then, speaking to her husband, continued: “I immediately texted you and asked you ‘are you okay. Please tell me you are okay.’ ”And, of course, he was not okay.
It was then that the young widow, tears brimming, spoke to the matter hanging in the air Friday — and not just at St. Patrick’s.
“The system continues to fail us,” Luzuriaga said. “We are not safe anymore, not even members of the service. I know you were tired of these new laws, especially the ones from the new DA. I hope he’s watching . . .”
He was. Manhattan’s new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, was among Friday’s mourners — and give him credit for that much, because it couldn’t have been easy.
For Bragg has been a lightning rod since taking office Jan. 1, and understandably so. His soft-on-crime philosophy needn’t be repeated here — but consider this: If the ex-con who murdered Rivera and Mora hadn’t shot them, but rather surrendered his semi-automatic pistol and assault-style rifle to cops, he would have been eligible for no-bail release from Harlem’s 32nd Precinct as soon as the arrest forms were completed.
That is, serious law enforcement for Bragg begins only after the gunsmoke drifts away and the ambulances have cleared the scene. And maybe not even then.
It’s not just Bragg, and it’s not just Manhattan. Rivera and Mora were the fourth and fifth cops shot in the city since New Year’s Day. And a Bronx judge just this week sprung an alleged cop-shooter on bail.
Responded PBA president Pat Lynch: “If anybody wants to know why we have a crisis of violence in this city, or why we’re about to bury two hero police officers, look no further than this disgraceful bail release.”
Or look no further than Gov. Hochul — who was at St. Pat’s, and who presumably will return on Wednesday, but who has been shamefully unresponsive to Mayor Adams’ pleas for revisions to the bail and criminal-justice-procedure “reforms” signed into law by ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo two years ago.
Now New Yorkers, except maybe the crime coddlers, see a once-safe city slipping into chaos and quite reasonably wonder what’s next.
But for sea of blue crowding Fifth Avenue Friday, it was much more fundamental. For them, it was the NYPD ethic: Fidelis Ad Mortem — Faithful Unto Death.
God bless them all.