ONE POLICE PLAZA — The names of three NYPD detectives who died last year in the line of duty — Randolph Holder, Joseph Lemm and Brian Moore — were added to the memorial for fallen officers at NYPD headquarters Thursday.
"They did what most people would not have the strength to do," said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “They made this city safer and better.”
The annual ceremony at the department's Hall of Heroes at One Police Plaza added the names of two police officers who died while on duty in New York City, one police officer who died while serving in Afghanistan, and 16 who died from 9/11-related illnesses.
The three officers killed on the job in 2015 were Detective Randolph Holder, who was gunned down in East Harlem last October; Detective Brian Moore, who was fatally shot in the head in Queens Village last May; and Detective Joseph Lemm, who died last December in a Taliban suicide bombing in Afghanistan.
The event also paid tribute to 16 officers killed by medical complications from their work in the toxic dust clouds at Ground Zero after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.
"They went toward the danger," said NYPD commissioner William Bratton. "No day shall ever erase their memory.”
The lobby at One Police Plaza was bedecked with purple and black banners to honor both the fallen officers and their families who came to see the memorial unveiled.
The names of 881 police officers are memorialized on plaques that date back to 1849.
Bratton said of the nineteen officers whose names now appear on the walls of the Hall of Heroes, “They’re always gone, but they’re always here.”
