NYPD Officer Didarul Islam's killing grieved by relatives in Bronx, colleagues in precinct house
This image shows NYPD Officer Didarul Islam, who was shot and killed at a Manhattan office building on Monday. Credit: AP
A day after a gunman’s midtown Manhattan rampage killed four people, including off-duty NYPD Officer Didarul Islam, grief rippled through the officer's home borough of the Bronx: the neighborhood where he lived, the police station where he worked, the mosque where his body was delivered.
Early Tuesday morning, on the quiet Parkchester street of modest duplexes and a public school where Islam lived, a cousin, Muhammad Mustafa, 15, said that Islam had been proud to be an officer but his eight-year-old son had been prouder.
"Last summer, he came up with his patrol car, his son was so happy," Muhammad recalled. "He was jumping with joy that his dad was a police officer."
Family mourns
Muhammad said he’d watched as police officers in two vehicles pulled up to the fallen officer's house after the shooting.
The officers rang the doorbell and Islam's wife, sister and his brother-in-law came outside, Muhammad added.
Later, Muhammad said, he saw the young boy who’d once jumped with happiness and pride: "He was just walking around, like in shock."
Another cousin, Muhammad Mainul Islam, said that Didarul Islam’s father had suffered a stroke after learning his son had been shot. He said Islam had another son, 4. His wife is pregnant with their third child, due in August.
"He was too young," Islam said of his cousin.
The family has made funeral arrangements, he said.
The Islams, originally from Bangladesh, bought their duplex in 2014, according to property records, moving into a neighborhood with many residents from Bangladesh’s Sylhet region.
"He was a key member of the family," said Rukon Hakim, acting general secretary of the Jalalabad Association of America, a social welfare organization founded by immigrants from Sylhet, of Didarul Islam. "He was a regular in the mosque."
A source of pride
Hakim, in a phone interview, said that Islam’s job had been a source of pride for his neighbors.
"There’s always pride when you have a child or immigrant family join the federal government or get a city job." he said.
Islam, Hakim added, had been a "role model to his family and his children. ... Now those kids are going to be growing up without a parent. This should not be."
A few miles away, outside the NYPD's 47th precinct in the northern Bronx, Community Affairs Officer Seville Legrand said Islam had patrolled the area on foot and in a car, doing midnight and day tours for about three and a half years.
"We just pass by, say ‘Hi, how you doin’, how’s everything," Legrand said.
Legrand added that a fellow officer had told him Sunday night about the shooting: "Go somewhere where you can sit down," the friend told him. Word spread in the precinct and the mood was "like a dark cloud," Legrand said.
"It’s one of those things, it’s like you’re losing a brother," he said. The precinct will hold a memorial service for Islam Thursday evening, he said.
Islam joined the department in 2021, and the 47th Precinct in 2022, recording 45 misdemeanor and 26 felony arrests, according to NYPD statistics.
By Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of officers had gathered outside Parkchester Jame Masjid, a mosque on Virginia Avenue, waiting for Islam’s body after its release by the medical examiner.
Like a brother
NYPD Officer Mohammad Salam, a member of the Bangladeshi American Police Association, said he had come to pay his respects to a man he considered a brother.
"He came here for a better life and he worked hard all the way," Salam said.
The NYPD has close to 3,000 Bangladeshi-American officers but the two had worked together and grew up in the same region of Bangladesh. They’d talked on Saturday, he said: "Regular things, how it’s going, the family, normal chitchat. He had a lot to look forward to."
Islam’s body arrived in a procession Tuesday. First the motorcycles, then a helicopter and gleaming black SUVs. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch stepped out of one, grim-faced. At a shouted command, the officers came to rigid attention, five-and six-deep on the street, a long line of blue and white.
Finally came the body of Islam, covered in a department flag and taken on a stretcher from a plain emergency service vehicle through the mosque’s green metal gate.
Another shout, and the long blue and white line broke.
Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.
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