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…