The NYPD Police Academy will soon be touchingly renamed after one of the department’s most storied fallen heroes — Detective Steven McDonald.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the sprawling 30-acre Queens campus, which is responsible for the training of New York’s Finest, will be named after McDonald because he is “truly the embodiment of who we want our officers to be.
“Steven McDonald didn’t just exceed the standards — his life reshaped how the public understands the NYPD’s work and how the department understands itself,” Tisch said of the hero cop — famous for his advocacy after being shot by a teen in 1986 and paralyzed from the waist down, then publicly forgiving his attacker.
“We remember not only the courage that he showed after his life was changed unimaginably, but the character Detective McDonald demonstrated through his refusal to be defined by bitterness, and his commitment to dignity and forgiveness.
“My hope is that every officer who walks through the doors of the Steven D. McDonald Police Academy begins their career with a clear understanding of the kind of officer this department hopes they strive to be,” she said.
The academy’s renaming is expected to be completed by July 16 – 42 years to the day that McDonald himself joined the academy – which his wife described as “one of the most important days of his life.”
McDonald had only two years on the job in July 1986 when a 15-year-old robbery suspect shot him three times in Central Park – with one of the bullets shattering the 29-year-old cop’s spine, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
McDonald, though wheelchair-bound and hooked up to a breathing device, lived for over three more decades, spreading a message of forgiveness, even to the teen who nearly took his life, Shavod Jones.
Tisch told the late hero officer’s family last week of her decision to have McDonald’s name grace the building that marks the beginning of a police officer’s journey. The fallen officer died in 2017 at age 59.
“She knew Steven throughout the years,” said the hero detective’s wife, Patti Ann McDonald, to The Post. “[To] hear her say how important it is for the future police officers to know Steven’s story … you could have just knocked me over when she told us.”
“[Commissioner Tisch] was so gracious – and it wasn’t about her doing this,” Patti Ann said of the honor. “It was really about, you know, Steven, and how much she felt that this was something very important to do for the future.
“I’m speechless.
“[This is] the last thing I would ever have thought was going to happen. Steve would be just very humbled by this, very, very humbled. Very humbled as we are.”
McDonald entered the original academy – which was then located in Gramercy Park in Manhattan – on July 16, 1984. The modern-day campus in College Point was completed in 2014.
After McDonald finished his field training, he was assigned to the Central Park Precinct.
After he was shot, McDonald made it his mission to become a fervent advocate for nonviolent conflict resolution – from youth violence at home to Northern Island, Bosnia and Israel.
“I think my dad lived the example of what a New York City police officer is all about,” said his son, NYPD Capt. Conor McDonald, now an executive officer for the department’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information.
“Not only of honor, integrity — but also of bridging the gap between the police department, and the community, and he did that as a living example of sacrifice,” Conor said.
McDonald “bled for the NYPD,” his son said, and he was also a US Navy veteran and a devout Catholic.
“When my dad woke up every day, he prayed to God that he’s still alive,” the younger McDonald said. “He lived in honor of his family. … And he always lived in honor of the men and women that died before him and died after him.”
The elder McDonald passed away from his injuries in 2017 after a heart attack.
“I just pray to God that his name and legacy will live on forever, and by the police commissioner just giving us this gracious honor of naming the academy after my dad, I think it will,” his son said.
“I think, you know, 20, 30 years from now… men and women will enter the police academy, and they might think, who is this guy, Steve McDonald,” Conor said.
“And they’ll see what happened to my dad, and the way he lived his life after being shot, and … [be] inspired to live a life of service, just like my father to make New York City a safe place to live, and the greatest city to live.”
Shavod Jones was sentenced to nine years in prison and died in a motorcycle accident shortly after his release in 1995.
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