Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill eulogized the six-year veteran of the New York Police Department as a dedicated officer who gave his life to take illegal guns off the street.
“We know we are laying to rest a hero,” de Blasio said, speaking to a church packed with elected leaders and police.
The officer, Brian Mulkeen, had been a rising star in the nation’s largest police department. At 33, he had racked up 270 arrests as part of a plainclothes anti-crime unit, mostly for gun possession, a figure praised by the department’s leaders.
But Friday, Mulkeen, a former Fordham University track star who had given up a career on Wall Street to patrol one of New York’s grittiest neighborhoods, lay in a coffin at the altar of Sacred Heart Church in the upstate town of Monroe, where he had grown up.
“It was clear to Brian that his mission was to protect and serve others, to do something brave, something courageous,” the mayor said. “He could have taken an easier path. That wasn’t Brian. He wanted to be on the front line. He wanted to protect people.”
Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill praised Mulkeen’s dedication in battling “the flood of illegal guns” coming into the city. He noted that anti-crime units like the one Mulkeen belonged to were tasked with confronting some of the most violent and dangerous people in the city.
“It takes a tremendous amount of courage and skill to do the work Brian and his team are so adept at doing, the type of courage you really don’t expect people to possess, much less display every single day and night,” O’Neill said. “He did his job, and he didn’t think twice about it. He didn’t hesitate, because he was a cop. Cops are special people.”
Outside, ranks of uniformed police officers in dress uniforms and white gloves, some of whom had come from as far away as Texas, stood at attention in stoic silence as Mulkeen’s coffin, wrapped in the department’s flag, was carried out of the church as bugles played taps and flags flapped in the wind.
Mulkeen was the second New York police officer this year to be killed with bullets fired by other officers In February, Detective Brian Simonsen was killed when fellow officers fired 42 shots in 11 seconds during a confrontation with a robber at a Queens cellphone store. The robber turned out to be holding a fake gun.
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York, led the service.
The circumstances surrounding Mulkeen’s death made the farewell especially heartbreaking. What began as a routine stop in the Edenwald Houses in the Bronx, where three days earlier there had been a gang shooting, ended in the deaths of both Mulkeen and a man he had tried to question.
The men were killed when officers fired a barrage of bullets during a chaotic 10-second encounter.
Shortly after midnight Sunday, Mulkeen and two partners of a Bronx anti-crime unit were patrolling the houses’ dark streets when they spotted the man, Antonio Lavance Williams, and stopped to talk to him, police said.
Williams, who was on upstate probation for a drug conviction, had visited the Bronx to watch a pay-per-view prize fight with a friend in the housing development, a girlfriend said.
Police have not said why Mulkeen and other officers approached Williams, but when he did, Williams took off running to avoid arrest.
Mulkeen, a former college track athlete, caught up with him and grappled with him, according to the police version of events. The two men wrestled. It is unclear if Mulkeen believed Williams was armed, but he can be heard yelling, “He’s reaching for it!” three times when Williams made a play for his waistband, according to body camera footage described by police.
Police said Mulkeen fired his gun five times. His two partners and three other officers rushed to his aid and fired 10 shots. Some of the officers might have believed they were being attacked. An officer is later heard screaming into a police radio: “Shots fired! Ambush!”
By the time the gun smoke had cleared, Mulkeen had been struck in the head and torso. Williams was struck seven times, according to the girlfriend.
Mulkeen’s partners rushed him to Jacobi Medical Center, but he could not be saved. Williams also died. Investigators recovered a pistol near Williams, but it had not been fired.
Mulkeen had graduated from Fordham with a degree in business administration. It was at Fordham that as a physically imposing young man — 6 feet 3 inches, muscular and a standout shot putter — he emerged as a role model for younger track-and-field teammates, those who knew him said.
After graduation, Mulkeen became a financial adviser, working for Merrill Lynch on Park Avenue.
But the lucrative world of finance was unsatisfying for Mulkeen. He confided in family and friends that he longed to become a police officer. He had two uncles who worked in law enforcement and a grandfather who had worked in forensics.
“He could’ve made millions, let me tell you that,” said Andrew McGann, 78, a friend and neighbor. “He was an intelligent man. He left that business because he wanted to be a cop. It’s all he talked about.”
In 2009, he quit his high-paying career for a part-time job as a police dispatcher for the town of Tuxedo in his native Orange County. “For him it was a way to get his foot in the door, to learn about police work,” said Girard Shiloh, 39, a Tuxedo police officer. “He was a goal-driven individual.”
Mulkeen joined the New York Police Department in 2013, starting as a patrolman in the Bronx. His commitment to street police work and his strong record of making arrests earned him a promotion to the borough’s plainclothes anti-crime unit, which is often seen as a steppingstone to a detective assignment.
Mulkeen was also planning a future beyond police work. Less than a year ago he moved in with a girlfriend, a fellow Bronx police officer. The couple bought a fixer-upper house in Yorktown, New York.
Capt. Jeffrey Heilig, Mulkeen’s commanding officer of the Bronx anti-crime unit, said at a wake Thursday night that it was an “honor” to be the young officer’s boss.
“He was the best of the best,” Heilig said. “He was a gentle giant, and I mean that.”
“When it was time to be on the street to be the police, he was,” Heilig continued. “When it was time to be compassionate and have a heart, he did.”
This article originally appeared in
.