Speaking to the packed church, the city’s police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, was brought to tears as he remembered the officer, Brian Mulkeen, whom he described as a hero who had given his life to taking illegal guns off the street.
“This is the hardest thing I have to do. I’ve done it too many times,” O’Neill said, choking up. He then read the names of officers killed in the line of duty during his tenure.
“Paul Tuozzolo, Steven McDonald, Miosotis Familia, Brian Simonsen and now Brian Mulkeen,” the commissioner said, pausing to stifle his tears. “These are the names I repeat to myself every day. These are the families I wish I’ve never met, certainly under these circumstances, but who are now as close to me as my own family.”
A week ago, 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. But he was shot and killed Sunday night as he tried to arrest an armed man in the Bronx, a tragedy made worse for the Police Department because fellow officers fired the bullets that killed him.
Mulkeen was a former Fordham University track star who had given up a career on Wall Street to patrol one of New York’s roughest neighborhoods. On Friday, he lay in a pearl-colored coffin at the altar of Sacred Heart Church in 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,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said, staring down at the coffin. “He could have taken an easier path. That wasn’t Brian. He wanted to be on the front line. He wanted to protect people.”
Outside the church, thousands of police officers stood at attention in stoic silence in their dress uniforms and white gloves, some of whom had come from as far away as Texas. An American flag at half-staff flapped in a stiff wind.
Mulkeen was the second New York officer this year to be killed by other officers in a police fusillade aimed at a suspect. 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.
Despite those circumstances, the memorial service was not about anger or finger-pointing. The commissioner praised Mulkeen’s character and commitment to ridding the streets of illegal guns before posthumously promoting him to detective, to thunderous applause.
“It takes a tremendous amount of courage and skill to do the work Brian and his team are so adept at doing,” O’Neill said. “He did his job, and he didn’t think twice about it. He didn’t hesitate, because he was a cop.”
The commissioner made no mention of the circumstances of Mulkeen’s death until the end of his remarks, when he placed the blame on the man the officer had tried to arrest: Antonio Lavance Williams, a short-order cook from Binghamton, New York, with a criminal record who was carrying a .32-caliber pistol.
“One person is responsible for Brian’s death,” O’Neill said. “That’s the person carrying a loaded and illegal gun that decided to run from the police. Every cop knows that, and every New Yorker should know that.”
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, celebrated the funeral Mass.
Shortly after midnight Sunday, police said, Mulkeen and his two partners in a Bronx anti-crime unit were patrolling the streets around the Edenwald Houses when they stopped to talk to Williams.
Three days earlier, there had been an exchange of gunfire between two groups in the housing development. Police then flooded the development with extra officers and anti-crime units that specialize in gun arrests.
Williams, 27, who was on probation for a drug conviction, was visiting from upstate to watch a pay-per-view prize fight with a friend in the Bronx, his girlfriend, Tian Montanez, said.
Police have not said why Mulkeen and other officers approached Williams, but when they did, Williams ran off to avoid arrest.
Mulkeen caught up with him and grappled with him, police said. Body camera footage showed that Mulkeen yelled, “He’s reaching for it! He’s reaching for it!” before gunfire erupted.
Mulkeen fired his gun five times, according to police. His two partners and three other officers who rushed up behind him fired 10 shots. When the smoke had cleared, Mulkeen had been struck in the head and torso.
Williams was struck seven times, according to Montanez.
Mulkeen’s partners rushed him to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, but he could not be saved. Williams also died. Investigators recovered the .32-caliber pistol believed to belong to Williams, but it had not been fired.
As the funeral service wound down, a police bagpipe and drum corps struck played “Amazing Grace” outside the church as grim officers looked on.
Then Mulkeen’s coffin, wrapped in the department’s flag, was carried out of the building as trumpets played taps and “God Bless America.” Ten helicopters flew over the assembly.
His parents were presented with an American flag and then embraced by Dolan. Near them stood Mulkeen’s fiancee, Officer Sherry Hodges, who also works in the Bronx.
Pallbearers in uniform loaded the coffin into a hearse, and dozens of police officers on motorcycles escorted the body to Ascension Cemetery in Airmont, New York.
Vladimir Julien, 28, an officer with the 44th Precinct in the Bronx, reflected on the loss of a friend as a truck with a photo banner of Mulkeen drove past him. The banner read “Fidelis Ad Mortem,” the Police Department’s motto, which means “faithful until death.”
“Far too many funerals this year,” Julien said, shaking his head. “We all know each other in the Bronx.”
He added: “He was a bright light. He was always willing to help people. This was his calling.”
This article originally appeared in
.