“A cop in your precinct just got shot.”
Saturday, July 12, 1986, approximately 1800 hrs.
After spending the first week at my new command working midnight tours, I awoke from more than ten hours of blissful unconsciousness to those words from my brother.
Upon learning of my assignment to the Central Park Precinct, my family had been relieved at the thought of my cruising around in the relative peace and calm of the park, after having spent my field training in Brooklyn — much of that time patrolling the high-crime areas of Flatbush and Coney Island.
Addressing a crime pattern in the northernmost sector of the park, Police Officer Steven McDonald and his partner were patrolling in plain clothes as part of the precinct’s anti-crime team. The pattern consisted of teens hiding in rock outcroppings overhanging the crest of a large hill while awaiting exhausted riders who had just pedaled their way up on often expensive bicycles. The teens would then knock victims off their bikes, escaping into the densely populated neighborhoods surrounding the park.
At approximately 1600 hrs., after spotting a group of three teenage boys loitering in the area, Officer McDonald approached and began to question them when fifteen-year-old Shavod Jones opened fire, hitting McDonald three times, one bullet shattering his spine, leaving him a quadriplegic and dependent on a ventilator for the remainder of his life.
* * *
For the nine months that McDonald was treated in Bellevue Hospital, the Central Park Precinct assigned two officers each tour to stand guard at his door.
One afternoon that August, as I arrived for work, I stopped to check my assignment on the printed roll call sheet laid out on the desk: “BADALAMENTE — BELLEVUE.”
I had only met Officer McDonald once before — one week prior to the shooting, on my orientation day at the precinct. As a veteran cop was walking us new guys around the building, he pointed into an office and said, “Those are the anti-crime guys; don’t shoot them.”
Although I had visited many hospital rooms in my twenty-one years, my mind recoiled at the sight of this twenty-nine-year-old man in his prime laid out before me, tubes jutting from numerous parts of his body.
At his bedside, I tentatively placed my right hand over his and said, “I’m Joe.” Flashing a grin and a wink, he said, “I’m Steve.”
* * *
On January 29, 1987, Steve’s wife, Patti Ann McDonald, gave birth to future NYPD Captain Conor McDonald in a Long Island hospital, Steve watching via closed-circuit television from his hospital room in Manhattan.
Just over a month later, at Conor’s baptism at the Bellevue Hospital chapel, Patti Ann delivered her husband’s now-famous forgiveness statement; Steve himself was unable to speak because of a recent tracheotomy: “I’m sometimes angry at the teenage boy who shot me. But more often I feel sorry for him. I only hope that he can turn his life into helping and not hurting people. I forgive him and hope that he can find peace and purpose in his life.”
On September 10, 1995, just four days after being released on parole after serving nine years of a ten-year sentence, Shavod Jones was killed in a motorcycle accident.
Steve reiterated his forgiveness of Jones by releasing the following statement: “Much of his life was spent suffering. Now he is at peace and in heaven.”
* * *
February 2026. On a group chat of former Central Park colleagues, I received the following text: “FYI: the commissioner’s office just announced that this summer the academy is to be renamed in memory of Steven McDonald!”
My mind went immediately to Steve’s funeral, as it was the last time I had seen many of the people on the chat in person.
Steve died on January 10, 2017, of cardiac arrest and long-term health complications directly resulting from the gunshot wounds he sustained more than thirty years earlier. His funeral at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral drew more than 15,000 mourners, many of whom were fellow law enforcement officers from around the United States and the world. They, as well as an untold number of civilians, politicians, nurses, doctors and celebrities who were inspired by Steve’s story, came to pay their respects, closing streets for many blocks in all directions around the famed church.
Over the years, Steve and I encountered each other often — at parades, promotion ceremonies and precinct parties. He always gave me that same smile and wink, asking, “How’s it going, Joe?”
One particular afternoon at a memorial walk/run for a fallen first responder, we were discussing faith, and my chronic lack thereof, as I walked alongside his wheelchair. Steve interrupted me with a smile and said, “We all struggle with our doubt.”
To me, a lapsed Catholic and former altar boy who on my best days could be described as “a highly skeptical agnostic,” Steve’s decades-long mission of bringing a message of nonviolent conflict resolution to places such as Northern Ireland, the Middle East and Bosnia, as well as hundreds of public high schools, churches and community halls across the United States, always served as a gentle reminder of what true faith actually looks like.
* * *
On July 16, 2026, forty-two years to the day on which he was sworn in as a New York City police officer — following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather — the NYPD Academy in Queens was officially renamed the Detective Steven D. McDonald Police Academy.
As I sat in the academy’s vast auditorium listening to the words of Patti Ann and Conor, I looked around at my former colleagues, Steve’s family and friends, a few hundred recruits, politicians and members of the media, my eyes beginning to sting.
After the conclusion of the ceremony, I gathered with a group of a dozen or so former Central Park Precinct personnel. While exchanging hugs, handshakes and war stories, Patti Ann and Conor approached us with a photographer in tow, asking us all to form up for a group shot.
While the lady with the camera snapped away, images from the past flooded my brain; as we stood there in the building christened in his honor, I struggled to reconcile the fact that it had been almost forty years since our first encounter.
After the pictures were taken and we broke off into smaller groups, I approached Captain McDonald, whom I had somehow never met.
“I’m Joe,” I said. “I worked with your dad.”
“I’m Conor,” he replied with a wink and a smile.
Editors note: On Friday July 31, 2026, Conor McDonald was promoted to deputy inspector.
