The NYPD dedicated a new memorial wall at One Police Plaza this week honoring the officers who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the members lost in the years since to illnesses tied to their service at Ground Zero.
Chief of Department Michael LiPetri told those gathered that the sacrifices of officers who responded that day still guide the department nearly 25 years later.
“None of us gets here alone,” LiPetri said. “Whatever rank we reach, whatever command we lead, we are standing on the foundations other people built.”
“We inherit their lessons, their example, and eventually it becomes our responsibility to pass those things forward,” he added.
The human cost of the attacks has continued to mount for decades. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the department has lost more than 469 members to illnesses connected to their work in the aftermath of 9/11. LiPetri said more than 1,700 members have retired from the NYPD with World Trade Center-related disabilities.
“We are still losing members to illnesses caused by their service after the attacks,” LiPetri said. “All these years later, we are still standing with families as they bury loved ones whose lives were forever changed by the work they did after Sept. 11.”
The new wall lists the 23 NYPD officers killed at the World Trade Center on the morning of the attacks, as well as members who later died from illnesses linked to rescue and recovery work at the site.
NYPD Chief Chaplain Reverend R. Bernard, delivering the invocation, said the toll of that day extended far beyond it. “Sept. 11 did not end on Sept. 11,” he said. “For many, the costs continued for years, illness endured, families impacted and lives ultimately lost.”
The story of Officer John William Perry
Mayor Zohran Mamdani recounted the story of Officer John William Perry, who was at One Police Plaza preparing to resign from the department to begin a career as an attorney when the first plane struck the North Tower. Perry asked for his shield back and rushed to the World Trade Center.
“There he was confronted with unimaginable suffering, but he did not stop with the same immense bravery and courage that was commonplace among so many that day, the kind that has long defined this department,” Mamdani said.
“Officer Perry ran into the fire. The last time he was seen he was helping a woman out of the South Tower before rushing back in to save as many others as he could,” Mamdani said. “Officer Perry and 22 of his fellow officers, each with their own stories, were killed that morning. That includes 14 members of the emergency service unit, who were among the first to enter the towers.”
Mamdani also noted that the sons of officers Ronnie Klopfer and Joseph Viviano now serve in the department themselves, carrying forward what he called their fathers’ legacy of bravery.
“Every officer present that day embodied the NYPD’s creed that the duty to protect is not a job that one clocks out of, but a calling,” Mamdani said. “One answers until the very end. In the days and months that followed September 11th, thousands of NYPD officers and staff from across every precinct and every borough heeded that same call. They took on that same heavy and incalculable risk.”
One small, personal thread runs through the department today: the sons of Klopfer and Viviano now play on the same lacrosse team Klopfer founded before the attacks.
“Their fathers are gone, but the team that Ron built is still here,” LiPetri said. “Their sons are wearing an NYPD uniform, and a connection that began years before Sept. 11 continues inside the department.”
Commissioner Tisch noted that thousands of current NYPD officers were children when the towers fell, and many others had not yet been born. As the generation that responded to the attacks retires, she said, preserving their memory becomes more important.
“The faces in this building will be different, but these names will still be here,” Tisch said. “The example of the men and women behind them will continue to shape the department.”
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