Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good morning. It is my deep privilege to join you today at One Police Plaza. It is an immense honor to stand alongside the men and women of the NYPD, the loved ones and families of all who were killed in the horrific terror attacks 25 years ago and in the months and years that followed.
I want to acknowledge Police Commissioner Tisch and NYPD leadership for their stewardship of this department and for everything they do to support our officers. I also want to acknowledge the powerful faith leaders who are here with us today: NYPD Co-Chief Chaplains Reverend A.R. Bernard and His Eminence Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Our partners as well in law enforcement from the FBI, DOJ, State Police, as well as the union leaders that are here with us today, as well as our First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan and our Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Officer John William Perry arrived here at One Police Plaza. Unlike his fellow officers who were pouring themselves a cup of coffee and preparing for the day ahead, Officer Perry was here for something else entirely. He was here to resign, to begin a new career as an attorney. He was in the midst of filing the paperwork when the first plane hit the North Tower. Without hesitation, he asked for his shield back and rushed to the scene. 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, 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.
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.
I had the great honor of visiting ESU Truck 2 yesterday, the same one that Second Grade Detective Joseph Vigiano served with. On September 11th, Detective Vigiano acted with extraordinary valor, and it was not the first time. He, like so many others, did only what they had done many times before: placed themselves in unthinkable danger to protect others. His two sons now carry on his legacy of bravery as valued members of this very department.
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 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.
Day after day, night after night, they searched the pile to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades and the thousands of civilians killed. When that work had finished, they stayed until the rubble and debris had been cleared, all the while continuing to fulfill their duty to serve and protect our city. I know many of you who worked on the pile are here today. I also know that far too many are not.
Over the last 25 years, we have lost more than 450 officers to 9/11-related illnesses. They were fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, and they were New Yorkers through and through, in everything they gave to their loved ones, their neighbors, their communities, in the pride they held for this city, and in the sacrifice they made without hesitation.
When we say, "Never forget," it is not an empty platitude. It is an obligation to honor all that was given by the men and women of the NYPD and their fellow first responders by tending to those who are sick and by building a city worthy of their sacrifice.
Last week, Officer Perry was honored with a street named after him in East Harlem. Today, we honor every NYPD officer who died on or after 9/11, those who gave so much to protect and to serve. In the words of ESU Detective Mike Hanson, who before he passed gave his younger officers a rule to work by: "Do what you can for who you can, with whatever it takes."
The men and women of the NYPD did what they could for who they could, with whatever it took 25 years ago, and this department continues to. We will forever be grateful. Thank you.
Captain Jack Conway, Ceremonial Unit, Police Department: And thank you, Mayor Mamdani. It's now my pleasure to introduce the police commissioner of the City of New York, the Honorable Jessica S. Tisch.
Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. To the families of the members that we honor today, to the members of this department who served on September 11th and in the months that followed, and to everyone who helped make this memorial possible: Thank you so much for being here with us.
I also want to recognize our former first deputy commissioner, Joseph Dunne, who is here on the dais with us today. We are honored, Chief, by your presence. Chief Dunne was serving in that role on September 11th, and he helped lead this department through one of the darkest days in New York City's history.
Twenty-five years ago, New York City was attacked by terrorists who sought to inflict unimaginable death and destruction. Twenty-three members of the NYPD were killed at the World Trade Center that morning. Thousands more joined the rescue and recovery effort that followed, working for days, weeks and months amid burning rubble and toxic debris, an extraordinary display of heroism that continued long after the attacks themselves.
For them, September 11th did not end when the fires went out. The toll of that day has continued to unfold across a quarter century. We have now lost more than 469 members to illness connected to their service in the aftermath of the attacks, and we know painfully that those losses are not over. Some of the members gathered with us today have fought their own battles with 9/11-related cancer. They endured treatments, uncertainty and years in which the consequences of their service followed them long after they left Ground Zero.
Their presence here reminds us that the history represented by this wall is still being written. There are families who lost someone on September 11th, and families whose loss came years later. There are others who continue to live with the effects of that service today. All of them are part of the story we are preserving here.
The scale of the loss and the devastation that day was unfathomable, and so, too, was the heroism that we witnessed in response. Preserving that history also means preserving its moral clarity. The men who attacked this city were terrorists. The men and women who ran into the towers to save innocent lives were heroes. Twenty-five years cannot be allowed to blur that distinction, and shame on those who do.
The courage we remember from September 11th was not confined to a single morning. It was there in the members who moved toward the World Trade Center while thousands of people were desperately trying to escape. It remained in those who returned to Ground Zero afterward, even while they were grieving friends and colleagues of their own. They kept working while families waited for answers, and a devastated city depended on them.
That service came at a terrible cost, and today these names ask something of us in return. They ask us to remember these men and women as more than names or numbers from one of the darkest chapters in our city's history; to preserve who they were and the extraordinary standard of service they left to those who followed them.
That responsibility becomes more important with every passing year. Most police officers spend roughly 20 to 25 years on this job. A quarter century after September 11th, the vast majority of the uniformed members who served that day have now retired. Thousands of people serving the NYPD today were children on September 11th, and many had not yet even been born. We are fortunate, however, that members of the generation that led and served this department through September 11th are among us, including a number of senior leaders who continue to guide the NYPD today, some of whom have battled 9/11-related illnesses themselves. We should hear this story directly from them and benefit from the experience they continue to bring to this department. That is why, after I finish, you will hear from our chief of department, Mike LiPetri.
There are things a memorial can teach us, and there are things that can only be passed from one generation to another by the people who were there. Their memories are part of the living history of this department, and preserving them is every bit as important as preserving the names before us.
And I want to recognize the people who understood the importance of creating something worthy of that responsibility. This project was made possible through the generosity of the New York City Police Foundation and the extraordinary personal commitment of Ken Griffin. This wall will ensure that generations who have no memory of September 11th will still understand what that day revealed about this department, the courage of those who responded, the magnitude of what they gave and the responsibility their example places on everyone who follows them. That is an inheritance worthy of protecting. Twenty-five years from now, the faces in this building will be different, but these names will still be here and the example of the men and women behind them will continue to shape the department they gave so much to serve.
To every family represented here today, we will make sure the generations that follow understand who your loved ones were and what they gave to New York City. Their sacrifice is forever a part of this department, and their memory will always have a home here. May their memories be an eternal blessing, and may we always be worthy of the example that they left behind. God bless you all.
Captain Conway: Thank you, Commissioner Tisch. It's now my pleasure to introduce the chief of department, Michael LiPetri.
Chief Michael J. LiPetri: Good morning, everyone. To the families with us today, thank you for being here and for allowing us to honor the people that you loved. There are hundreds of names on this wall, and behind every one of them is a life that was bound with this department, a command, a partner, a group of cops who knew them, worked with them, laughed and still tell stories about them all these years.
Twenty-five years have passed, but this department has never had the luxury of placing that day entirely in the past. We're still losing members to illnesses caused by their service after the attacks. More than 1,700 members of the service have retired from this department on a World Trade Center disability. And 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 September 11th.
For those of us who knew the people we lost, that history is personal. The last time I saw Ronnie Kloepfer, we were playing in a lacrosse tournament on Long Island in August, three weeks before 9/11, as part of the NYPD's lacrosse team, the team that Ronnie founded. Joe Vigiano played lacrosse with us, too. He and Ron were great lacrosse players, great cops and even better people who loved this job. I would not be standing here today as chief of department if it wasn't for Joe and Ronnie teaching me the right way to do the job.
We had this special bond, and the bond was I was a 7-3 cop, Ronnie was a 7-3 cop, Joe was a 7-5 cop, and we used to go back and forth on what tougher foot posts somebody had in Brownsville, East New York. Brownsville won because it was two, me and Ronnie, against Joe. Sorry, Kathy.
Now, their sons James and Casey are on that same lacrosse team. And along with Joseph Jr., they carry on their fathers' legacies in the NYPD, and they are wonderful, wonderful. There is something remarkable about that. Their fathers are gone, but the team that Ron built is still here. Their sons are wearing an NYPD uniform, and a connection that began years before September 11th continues inside the department now.
That is the kind of thing you see throughout the NYPD. This is a job where people leave an imprint. Sometimes it's obvious: a name on a building, a photograph in a command, a story everyone seems to know. Other times, it survives in the way a cop handles a difficult situation because someone once showed them how, or in the expectations of a commander set because of the leaders who once set them for him. Over time, those things become part of the department itself.
And there is no better example of that than Chief Joe Esposito. Chief Esposito was the longest-serving chief of department in the history of the NYPD, almost 13 years. I could never imagine. He was a mentor to me, as he was to generations of cops, and one of the most consequential leaders this department has ever known. But what he meant to the NYPD became especially clear in the aftermath of September 11th. The department had lost 23 of its own. Thousands of our members had worked through devastation unlike anything the city has ever experienced. Cops were exhausted, they were grieving, and the work in front of them was enormous.
Within three and a half months, New York City would have a new mayor, and this department would have a new police commissioner. Chief Esposito remained, and there was tremendous importance to that. He had been there. He understood what the cops had been through because he had gone through it with them. At a moment when so much was changing around the department, they could look at Chief of Department Joe Esposito, know that that person was leading them, understood exactly what they were carrying, as I do. That is leadership, and Joe Esposito gave this department that leadership when it needed it most.
Years later, on the day he retired, there were no speeches, no stories. There was a traditional walkout. After more than 40 years in the NYPD, Chief Esposito walked out of this building for the last time, but he didn't go home. He went to the World Trade Center Memorial. He stood beside the memorial pools and looked across the thousands of names etched there, thinking about the people who had never made it home. And then he took a knee and said a silent prayer. I've always thought that said something extraordinary about that man. After more than four decades of service, after rising to the highest uniformed position in the largest police department in the country, he chose to end his career by going back to the people that we lost. Because Chief Esposito understood something fundamental about this department: None of us gets here alone. 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. Chief Esposito did what for generations of New York City police officers do, and today his name is here, too.
This is one of the painful truths represented by this wall: the losses of September 11th, but it does not end on September 11th. They followed this department through years that came afterward. They took people who survived the attacks, people who spent months serving at Ground Zero and elsewhere, and people who then returned to this job, gave years more to the city that they had already sacrificed so much to protect. And the tolls continue. That is why this wall belongs here at the heart of police headquarters. Thousands of people walk through this lobby. Young officers at the beginning of their careers, they can barely imagine. Detectives and supervisors coming and going from assignments - also coming from CompStat. Members who have spent most of their lives in the department, they must pass these names, and I hope they stop. I hope they learn who those people were, because the men and women on this wall helped shape the department they are serving today. Their courage is part of the institution, their sacrifice, and the responsibility to remember them now belongs to all of us.
To the families, we will continue telling their stories. We'll continue honoring what they gave this city. We will make sure the generations of cops who follow us understand that the NYPD they inherit was built, in part, by the people whose names are here before us today.
May God bless them and their families, and may God forever bless the men and women of the NYPD. Thank you.
