


Under a cascade of rain, with hundreds of law enforcement officers standing in soaked silence, a white hearse carrying the body of Officer Didarul Islam made its way down White Plains Road in the Bronx on Thursday.
“His watch may be over,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at the funeral for the officer, who was killed by a mass shooter in Manhattan three days earlier. “But his impact will never be.”
Commissioner Tisch, who wore a head scarf to the service out of respect for the officer’s Muslim faith, told the mourners that he had been posthumously promoted to detective first grade.
The service for Detective Islam, 36, was held in his neighborhood at the Parkchester Jame Masjid, the mosque where he had been a benefactor and mentor to young Bangladeshi immigrants much like himself.
Mourners included officers from at least 54 of the city’s 77 precincts, who saluted the casket as it passed with the white-gloves of their formal dress, along with uniformed members of the U.S. Air Force, the governor and the mayor — and Detective Islam’s two young sons and wife, who is eight months pregnant.

Inside the masjid was Detective Islam’s casket; it was covered with the green, white and blue standard of the Police Department.
Outside, thousands of police officers, mourners and neighbors stood vigil along Gleason Avenue.
Over the elevated subway tracks, an American flag was lofted between two cranes in his honor.
Detective Islam was the first to be shot when a gunman entered an office tower at 345 Park Avenue, where he was moonlighting as part of the security detail.
The three other victims lived lives filled with accomplishment and connection, as Detective Islam did: Aland Etienne was a security guard known for putting others first and whose family called him “a light in our lives.” Wesley LePatner was a top-ranking executive whom her employer, investment firm Blackstone, described as an “amazing light.” And Julia Hyman was a real estate associate who had recently started working in the building and was said to have had a “heart of gold.”
Outside the mosque, Husne Ara Begum, 67, a relative, said that when she moved to America from Bangladesh, Detective Islam did grocery runs for her, and helped her assimilate. Her voice broke.
“He was a very good man,” she said.