NYC mourns young Latino police officer killed alongside his partner

Thousands of people gathered in New York City on Wednesday to mourn a young Latino police officer who was killed along with his partner as they responded to a 911 call of a family argument.

Officer Wilbert Mora, 27, was remembered as a young man who was full of aspirations and could light up any room with his smile, his siblings said at his memorial service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

“Everyone says you were a big teddy bear of a man, but you were like that even when you were little,” Wilson Mora, Wilbert's brother, said in his eulogy.

Last Friday, people gathered at the cathedral to mourn the death of Mora's partner, Jason Rivera, 22.

Both officers were gunned down on Jan. 21 responding to a 911 call about a woman having a dispute with her son in a Harlem apartment. The two officers were fired upon without warning when they went down a narrow hallway to a rear bedroom where the suspect was, according to police. A third officer shot and killed the suspect.

Rivera died on the night of Jan. 22, and Mora on Jan. 25.

Karina Mora, Wilbert's sister, described the officers as “two young men who wanted to make a difference in society” in her eulogy Wednesday, in Spanish, adding that her brother's death feels like “a nightmare that never ends.”

Mora and Rivera were both Dominican Americans who grew up in the city when stop-and-frisk police tactics were disproportionately targeting Black and Latino men. As teenagers, they saw how a federal court later deemed such practices a violation of civil rights.

Mora joined the New York Police Department in 2018 after graduating from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. While in college, he showed an interest in improving relations between police and the neighborhoods they patrolled, particularly those that are predominantly Black or Hispanic, a former professor told WNBC-TV in New York.

Rivera was on the job 14 months. Before joining the police force, he worked in a pharmacy with his brother.

Rivera married Dominique Luzuriaga, who he met in elementary school, in October.

In a powerful message Friday, the grieving widow decried how “the system continues to fail us."

"We are not safe anymore, not even the members of the service," Luzuriaga said.

Of nearly 36,000 New York City police officers, a third are Latino. Mora and Rivera were part of a growing number of people of Dominican ancestry who have been joining the force.

Both officers were posthumously promoted to detective first grade by NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell.

“Detectives Wilbert Mora and Jason Rivera were gifts we never got to keep,” Sewell said. “That piercing sound you heard on a cold night last week was the wail of a mother whose faith in everything good and fair in this world had been shaken to her soul. I hope the whole city heard her.”

Mora and Rivera were the latest New York City police officers to be killed in the line of duty. In 2017, an officer was shot and killed in an ambush in the Bronx. One officer died last year after being struck by a suspected drunken driver, and two officers died from friendly fire in 2019.

On Wednesday, Mayor Eric Adams pledged to reduce gun violence in New York City. Adams, who is the city’s second Black mayor, is a former police officer.

“Those of us who have put on the uniform know what happened to Officer Mora could happen to us any day,” Adams said.

“We reflect on his bravery. We remember his sacrifice,” Adams said. “We will protect our city.”

Mora’s sister, Karina, recalled in her eulogy how proud she was of her brother when he graduated from the police academy.

"How many more Wilberts? How many more Jasons? How many more police officers have to lose their lives so that the system changes?” she said.

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