By Bobby Caina Calvan and Michael R. Sisak -
The Associated Press
The 22-year-old New York police officer who was shot and killed while answering a call in a Harlem apartment came from an immigrant family and grew up in a community of strained relations with the police, but joined the force to make a difference in that "chaotic city", as he himself once described.
“I know that something as small as helping a tourist with an address, or a couple solve a problem, will put a smile on someone's face,” Jason Rivera wrote to his superior in 2020, when he was still on probation.
Rivera and Officer Wilbert Mora were shot Friday night while responding to a domestic violence call between a woman and her adult son.
Mora, 27, was seriously injured and "was fighting for his life" on Saturday, Mayor Eric Adams said.
Jason Rivera, 22, went to a home in Harlem due to a domestic incident and was shot to death.AP / AP
The man who shot them, Lashawn J. McNeil, 47, was also seriously injured and is hospitalized.
[In 2021 there was a record number of indictments against police officers involved in deadly shootings]
The shooting is the latest in a series of crimes that have baffled the nation's largest city.
In the three weeks since Adams took office,
a 19-year-old cashier was shot to death while working a night shift at a Burger King
, a woman was pushed to her death in a subway station, and a baby was critically injured when he was hit by a stray bullet while he was in a parked car with his mother.
Four police officers have been shot in as many days, counting the Harlem shooting on Friday night.
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Meanwhile, the city is reeling from its deadliest fire in three decades, which ripped through a Bronx apartment and killed 17 people.
"It's hard to believe, but it's only been three weeks and there has been no rest since," Adams told residents Saturday, during a conference on gun violence.
“But I want you to know in a very clear way that I have more energy.
I'm not tired.
I'm not stressed."
Less than two years as a police officer
Rivera joined the force in November 2020.
Growing up in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan, he noted tensions between his Hispanic community and the police, according to a short essay of his titled “Why I Became a Police Officer,” a copy of which was obtained by
The Associated Press
.
“I remember one day when I witnessed my brother being stopped and searched.
I wondered, why do they stop us if we are in a taxi?
"My perspective on the police and the way they worked really bothered me."
But eventually he noticed that the department was working to improve relations and wanted to be a part of it.
"I realized how impactful my role as a police officer would be in this chaotic city," he wrote.
Domestic violence advocate Stephanie McGraw, who knew Rivera through her work with the precinct, said he was energetic and enthusiastic.
“I was so eager to make a difference in this community,” said McGraw, founder of We All Really Matter.
Mora is equally dedicated to the community, he said.
A Republican congressman and his family pose with guns at the Christmas tree.
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Police said the gun used in Friday night's shooting, a .45-caliber Glock with a high-capacity magazine capable of holding up to 40 additional rounds, had been stolen in Baltimore in 2017.
Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul said federal authorities must do more to collect stolen weapons like the one used in the Harlem shooting.
Hochul, in an appearance in Buffalo on Saturday, said there was a "scourge of illegal guns on our streets."
“We are removing thousands of guns from the street,” Adams told reporters on Saturday.
“But there is an endless stream that continues to pour in across the borders of our city.”
[Brian Laundrie admitted he was responsible for Gabby Petito's death in his diary, according to the FBI]
The shooting occurred after a woman called 911, saying she was sick and that her son, who had come to care for her, had become "troublesome."
Adams said the woman did not specify the problem.
Authorities said the three officers went to the apartment after receiving the call.
Officers spoke to the woman and another son, but there was no mention of anyone being armed.
Rivera and Mora walked from the front of the apartment down a hallway, and McNeil opened a bedroom door and opened fire, Detective Chief James Essig said.
As McNeil tried to flee, a third officer who had stayed with McNeil's mother in the front of the apartment shot him, striking him in the head and arm, Essig said.
"This was not just an attack on these brave officers," Adams said Friday night.
"This was an attack on New York City."
Mora has worked with the NYPD for four years.
McNeil was on parole for a 2003 drug conviction in New York City.
He also had several out-of-state arrests.
In 1998, he was arrested in South Carolina on suspicion of illegally carrying a handgun, but records show the matter was later dismissed.
In 2002, he was arrested in Pennsylvania on suspicion of assaulting a police officer.
