They haven’t been forgotten.
Twenty-five years after 23 NYPD officers perished in the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, city officials on Wednesday honored hundreds of additional cops who have since died from illnesses related to recovery efforts at the site.
A special memorial unveiling at police headquarters in lower Manhattan revealed the names of 469 officers who contracted illnesses while working the Ground Zero pile in the months after the attack, and later died.
“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,” Mayor Mamdani told the One Police Plaza crowd.
“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.”
Mamdani was joined Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and top police brass who recognized the hero cops department’s memorial wall, including Officer John William Perry, who arrived at police headquarters on the morning of Sept. 11 to turn in his badge, his first step toward pursing a career in law.
Perry was in the middle of filing his retirement paperwork when the first plane struck the Trade Center’s North Tower. Mamdani said Perry asked for his badge back ran into the fire.
Perry, one of the 23 NYPD cops who died that day, was last seen helping a woman out of the South Tower before rushing back in.
“The history represented by this wall is still being written.” Tisch said. “There are families who lost someone on Sept. 11, and families whose loss came years later. There are others who continue to live with the effects of that service today.”
Last week, the city honored Perry by naming a street after him on the Upper East Side.
