NORTH MASSAPEQUA, LONG ISLAND, NY, U.S.A.
POLICE OFFICER, NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT
05/04/2015, QUEENS, NY, U.S.A.
Officer Brian Moore followed his father into the New York Police Department, rose to the ranks of an elite plainclothes unit tasked with confronting the city’s most dangerous street crime and died two days after a gunman opened fire on him in Queens.
At the time that Officer Moore, 25, was shot, he was still young enough to be living in the Long Island home of his father, Raymond. Yet he was seasoned enough in the job he had been drawn to since childhood to have earned accolades from superiors and departmental medals for “meritorious” police work. He had made over 150 arrests since joining the department in July 2010.
“In his very brief career, he already proved himself to be an exceptional young officer,” the police commissioner, William J. Bratton, said in announcing Officer Moore’s death, outside Jamaica Hospital Medical Center on Monday. In an emotional press conference , Commissioner Bratton called Moore “an extraordinary young man” whose death is “a great loss to his family, a great loss to this department, and great loss to this profession and to this city.”
“I did not know this officer in person in life,” Mr. Bratton added. “I’ve only come to know him in death.”
For city officers, the story of the Moores was the story of many police families. Not only Officer Moore’s father but also his uncle and his cousin were New York City officers. Officer Moore grew up on Long Island, in a middle-class neighborhood filled with city workers. He attended a public high school, Plainedge, whose athletic field was named for Edward R. Byrne, another alumnus who followed his father into the city’s Police Department and was fatally shot on duty in Queens as a 22-year-old rookie in 1988.
“Officer Moore was very proud of his father and uncle, and they were very proud of him,” said Lawrence Byrne, the deputy commissioner of legal matters and the brother of Edward Byrne.
“He was a young man who wanted to make a difference in the world as a loving son and here in the New York City Police Department,” said NYPD Superintendent Edward Salina.
Brian’s mother urged officers to re-focus their grief. “When he walked into the room he lit up the room every time he walked in. Everybody wanted to be near him, everybody couldn’t wait for him to show up,” said Irene Moore. “So let’s all take a moment and remember one of those good memories that we have of him, and that way we will keep him alive in our hearts,” said Irene Moore.
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