Good morning, it’s Wednesday, which means we have reached the middle of the week, and the way things are going, I am looking forward to this one being over.
The shooting in Midtown Manhattan hit me hard. Being married to a former cop gives me some unique insight into the burden that the families of first responders carry. Your life for the duration of their service is an equal mixture of pride and dread.
Of course, you know what you signed up for – or, more specifically, what THEY signed up for – which is to run toward danger when others are running away and show up every day for an unpredictable job that seres a higher purpose (keeping the public safe) but could end up killing them.
For the family, every knock on the door and every phone call that comes in while a first responder is at work could be terrible news. Living with this is incredibly stressful.
It is not, of course, as hard as doing the job itself. But, I would argue, it’s at least as difficult in a very different way. You have zero control over the situation, and can only hope that your loved one is taking the necessary precautions to make it home in one piece after every shift.
The job comes with a unique set of pressures and challenges, and it’s something civilians – including spouses – can’t fully understand, no matter how hard they try. Sometimes the family ends up as collateral damage due to the negative impacts of the job, which has a higher suicide rate, higher substance abuse rate, and higher domestic violence rate than the general public.
And yet, despite all that, coupled with increased criticism and scrutiny that has only grown in recent years, people keep signing up to be police officers. Fewer and fewer are stepping up to do the job, creating recruitment and retention challenges for departments across the state and the nation, but some people are still interested.
Officer Didarul Islam, 36, was the epitome of the American Dream. An immigrant from Bangladesh, he had three-and-a-half years on the job with the New York City Police Department, which enabled him to purchase a home in the Bronx, support his growing family of a pregnant wife and two small kids, and serve as a mentor to young men in his neighborhood.
Islam was in uniform but off-duty at the time of the shooting, working security at 345 Park Ave., a 44-story building owned by Rudin Management, a real estate firm, and is home to a number of high-profile and powerful organizations, including the National Football League, the accounting and financial advisory firm KPMG, and the investment giant Blackstone.
All of his promise and hard work and ambition was gone in an instant, reminding us that nothing is promised and everything can change in a split second.
Law enforcement, while a controversial profession, has long provided upward mobility for all manner of individuals who are willing to swear to put their own lives on the line to protect others. There are certainly bad cops, but the vast majority of those who wear the uniform, in my experience, are just trying to do something good while providing for themselves and the people they care about.
What I experienced as the wife of a police officer who was sworn, but held an office job (he was the spokesman for the Albany Police Department for more than a decade), arguably was not the norm.
But anyone who knows my spouse is well aware that he regularly put himself in situations he didn’t have to be in, and, quite frankly, the grim reality is that anyone who is wearing a uniform is arguably at risk of drawing the ire of someone who has a beef with law enforcement.
I know this post probably won’t be popular with everyone, and I’m not here to make excuses or wade into any hot button policy debates. I’m just thinking about how lucky I am, and mourning for those who are quite suddenly without a father, a husband, a friend, because he tried to be a part of something larger than he was.
More heat and humidity is on tap today, with temperatures again soaring into the 90s. There will be intervals of sun and clouds throughout the day, with the possibility of a stray thunderstorm.
In the headlines…
Tsunami waves reached Hawaii and the West Coast after one of the strongest earthquakes in recorded history, a magnitude 8.8 temblor, struck off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, triggering alerts across the Pacific, Alaska and the entire U.S. West Coast.
Hawaii was braced for the most severe impact but the alert level there was downgraded to a tsunami advisory just before 5 a.m. ET, allowing residents to return to their homes.
“So far, we have not seen a wave of consequence, which is a great relief,” Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii said as the anticipated surge spent itself on the island’s scenic beaches and residents heeded early warnings to move to higher ground.
Waves also hit Japan, where nearly 2 million were asked to evacuate, and Russia’s Kuril Islands in the Pacific. No deaths were immediately reported.
The first waves hit the Washington state communities of La Push and Westport early this morning, the National Weather Service Seattle said in a post on X, citing tide gauges.
The colossal magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia’s coast is set to be one of the largest ever recorded if its magnitude is not revised down by scientists studying the data.
President Donald Trump doubled down on allegations that Jeffrey Epstein “stole” young women who worked for his Mar-a-Lago spa, claiming that one of those employees was sex abuse accuser Virginia Giuffre, a teenager at the time.
“I think she worked at the spa. I think so,” Trump said. “I think that was one of the people. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever.”
Trump wrapped up a working trip to Scotland with the opening of a new golf course in Aberdeen. He’s heading back to Washington, where he’s expected to continue to face questions over his administration’s handling of the Epstein files.
Trump said on Air Force One that he will give Russia’s Vladimir Putin “10 days from today” to reach a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine.
Trump said that more food was urgently needed in Gaza, but added that he trusted Israeli officials to handle the distribution of aid despite the intense criticism they have faced over the humanitarian crisis unfolding there.
A dry policy debate over bipartisan policing legislation exploded yesterday afternoon into a heated and personal clash among three Democratic senators, offering a rare glimpse of the internal fight in their party over how to take on President Trump.
The Senate confirmed Emil Bove III, a Trump loyalist whose short tenure in the top ranks of the Justice Department prompted whistle-blower complaints and a storm of criticism from agency veterans, to a powerful federal appeals court judgeship.
Senate Republicans confirmed Susan Monarez, the acting director of the CDC and a supporter of Covid vaccines, as the permanent leader of the agency, cementing Trump’s second pick for the job after he abruptly withdrew his first nominee last year.
The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine and gene therapy official resigned yesterday after a public campaign against him led by the right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, according to people familiar with the matter.
More than 100 New Yorkers moved by the horrific Park Ave. mass shooting gathered at a multi-faith prayer vigil at Bryant Park last night.
Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul joined multi-faith leaders at Bryant Park. “We need our faith community at this moment to do something that is more powerful than any legislative agenda. And that is prayer,” the mayor said.
Despite New York’s stringent gun laws and the office building’s tight security, law enforcement officials and legal experts said, the shooting — the deadliest in New York City in 25 years — may have been all but unstoppable.
Authorities are looking into whether the gunman in Monday’s mass shooting in Midtown Manhattan was targeting National Football League offices in the building where police say he shot and killed four people and critically injured another.
“We have reason to believe he was focused on the NFL agency that was located in the building, and we’re going to continue to investigate with our federal partners to ensure that we can find a reason,” Adams said.
In an interview on “Good Day New York,” Adams said the shooter intended to go to the NFL offices but “appeared to have gone to the wrong floor.”
The police said that a three-page note was found in the wallet of the gunman, Shane Tamura, a former high school football player, referred to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a brain disease that has afflicted people who play contact sports.
A former high-school football teammate of the shooter said he had become a “completely different” person since his star-athlete glory days.
“One of our employees was seriously injured in this attack,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement to NFL staff. “He is currently in the hospital and in stable condition. NFL staff are at the hospital and we are supporting his family.”
“He was on his way home when he got shot,” wounded victim Craig Clementi’s father-in-law Robert Hunter said yesterday morning. “He was able to call my daughter and he called upstairs too to the NFL offices.”
Wesley LePatner, an executive at global investment firm Blackstone, was one of the four people shot and killed at a Midtown office building, the company said as authorities worked to piece together what happened.
Julia Hyman, who worked for Rudin Management — the company that owns the Midtown skyscraper where the shooting occurred — was one of the four people killed in the horror.
Manny Pastreich, president of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, said in a statement that 46-year-old Aland Etienne was among those killed in the mass shooting. He was shot inside the building’s lobby, where he’d been working at the time.
Officer Didarul Islam donated thousands of dollars to help establish a local mosque in his largely Bangladeshi neighborhood in the Bronx, according to a friend of his. His flag-draped body was transferred in an NYPD ritual to that mosque yesterday.
The killing of a New York City cop is quickly becoming a problem for Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, who was out of the country at the time of the shooting and has in the past vocally supported the defund the police movement.
Hochul declined to endorse Mamdani during a CNN interview yesterday, during which she defended her record on crime.
Once it became clear that the only Muslim involved in the attack was one of the victims, right-wing commentators sought to shift the focus to Mamdani.
A month after Mamdani’s primary victory stunned New York’s business elite, its leaders have begun cranking open a powerful gusher of outside spending to try to stop the man whose socialist policies they fear could sour the city’s business climate.
Andrew Cuomo believes the mass shooting will bring public safety to the forefront of this year’s mayoral race — and is already citing the tragedy in painting Mamdani as someone who would be ill-equipped to oversee the NYPD.
In a fundraising letter sent to a registered Republican voter from outside of her congressional district, Rep. Elise Stefanik theorized that Hochul is “potentially teeing up a 2028 Presidential run.”
Hochul clapped back when confronted with Stefanik’s comments connecting Hochul and Mamdani to the Midtown Manhattan shooting, calling the congresswoman’s words “about as pathetic as it gets.”
A judge indicated he will likely rule New York is breaking its climate law. Ulster County Supreme Court Justice Julian Schreibman on Friday skewered a DEC lawyer who argued the state could not issue required regulations to cut greenhouse gases any time soon.
A new Data for Progress poll shows that primary voters for Mamdani were mostly excited by the democratic socialist’s plans to lower costs and tax the rich and his support for Palestinian rights.
Cuomo claimed credit this week for the creation of New York City’s universal pre-K program, an initiative that’s widely viewed as the brainchild of his longtime political nemesis, ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The Board of Elections certified the results of a Republican primary for a Brooklyn-based City Council seat even as allegations of voter fraud continued to loom over the contest — infuriating the Democratic candidate in the race.
The New York Times found several questionable absentee ballots that were tallied in the Republican City Council primary, including one from a dead woman.
Calling it an “illegal targeting of Planned Parenthood,” AG Letitia James has joined a coalition of more than 20 other state attorneys general and Pennsylvania in filing a lawsuit aimed at blocking a provision in the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
New York is now a plaintiff in 30 lawsuits that coalitions of Democratic-led states have brought to challenge a blur of executive orders and other actions in the six months since Trump returned to office.
The North Country’s lone Democrat in Albany, Assemblyman D. Billy Jones, will step down from his position by the end of August.
After months of debate in the community, a controversial Good Cause Eviction Law was defeated 4-3 during this week’s regular Schenectady City Council meeting.
Federal prosecutors are seeking a 10-year sentence for Mufid Fawaz Alkhader, the Schenectady man who fired two rounds from a shotgun outside Temple Israel a synagogue on New Scotland Avenue in Albany.
Jim Zullo, the since-dismissed Northville High School girls’ basketball coach accused of pulling on the ponytail of a senior player following the team’s state championship game loss this past March, pleaded guilty yesterday to a harassment charge.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation is warning of an invasive species infestation with the capacity to do serious harm to the state’s forests.
In the midst of the debate over how the city is addressing homelessness, the city’s commissioner of finance said that Saratoga County is not doing enough.
The City of Albany wants to fill 10 open police officer positions with retired police officers in an attempt to address a consistent manpower shortage.
Albany Medical Center announced plans for a $25 million expansion of its adult emergency department. The project, which is pending state approval, will increase the emergency department’s footprint by 20 to 25 percent.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
