29th officer added to Suffolk police memorial wall in Yaphank ceremony for officers who died in line-of-duty

Gone, but not forgotten.

The 29th officer to die in the line of duty during the Suffolk police department's 64-year history — Robert Kirwan, an Emergency Service Section cop whose struggle with 9/11-related cancer ended Sept. 9 — was added to a memorial wall during a somber ceremony under steel-gray skies Friday.

Acting Police Commissioner Robert Waring announced the addition of Kirwan's name during the department's annual memorial service, saying an Emergency Service truck bearing Kirwan’s name and badge number — 2915 — would be added to the department’s fleet in his honor.

Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine, Waring and other officials joined hundreds of uniformed cops on Friday during the service to honor officers who died in the line of duty.

Relatives and friends of the fallen officers also gathered outside Suffolk police headquarters in Yaphank for the hourlong ceremony, and Romaine told them that their loved ones might be gone, but they will always be part of the county’s law-enforcement community.

“To the families, this is a department that remembers, this is a department that holds in high honor those who have served,” Romaine said as pink petals from flowering trees fluttered behind him. “They remember family members, and we are so happy you are here today.”

Kirwan was a member of the Suffolk police Emergency Service for 33 of the 37 years he was employed by the department, Waring said, making him the unit’s longest-serving member.

“He was a guy who loved this job, 33 years with Emergency Services for the Suffolk County Police Department,” said Kirwan’s son, Christopher Kirwan of Richmond, Virginia “He was a police officer first.”

“He always looked to take care of other people,” added Robert Kirwan, also of Richmond, another son of the fallen officer. “He really had no second thoughts about jumping into action and making sure the right thing was being done.”

Speakers at the memorial service, organized by the Suffolk Police Benevolent Association, the Detectives Association and the Superior Officers Association, repeatedly invoked the memories of officers who died in the line of duty in other states, especially the four fatally shot and four injured earlier this week in Charlotte, North Carolina, while executing a search warrant.

“The shooting of these eight officers is just adding to the ever-increasing number of officers being shot in the line of duty,” said Mick McHale, president of the National Association of Police Organizations. “In 2023, 378 officers were shot, 378 in the line of duty, the highest ever recorded in our history. To date this year, we have had over 100 officers that have been shot. This number has to stop.”

Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina ended Friday’s ceremony by reading a list of 29 fallen Suffolk officers, a bell ringing each time a cop was named. A Suffolk police helicopter roared overhead in the officers’ honor, and then the Emerald Society Pipe band played a mournful version of “Amazing Grace.”

“To come and visit these other gentlemen that he was lucky enough to work with for such a long period of time, to hear some of the stories they have to tell about our father, makes us really proud,” Robert Kirwan said of his father after the service concluded. “It’s really an honor that he was able to be in this department for that long.”

“I think this was the job he was meant to do,” added Christopher Kirwan.