By Roni Jacobson, Leonard Greene
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Years before slain NYPD cop Rafael Ramos joined the Police Department, he was a safety officer at a Staten Island middle school trying to keep young kids out of trouble.
One of those students was Mohammed Ghafari, who developed a friendship with Ramos and was inspired by his dreams of becoming a city cop.
Ramos’ dream became Ghafari’s, and nearly 10 years after Ramos was killed in the line of duty, Ghafari followed in his footsteps. Ramos’ widow was there to pin Ghafari’s shiny new badge to his chest.
“I always wanted to be a cop,” Ghafari said Tuesday at the NYPD Police Academy graduation ceremony in Queens.
“When I was in middle school in Staten Island, my mother would always be in school, so I had to stay late after school. School Safety Agent Ramos would stay with me and wait outside with me.
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“We just would hang out and talk for hours,” Ghafari continued. “He told me a lot about how he wanted to join the NYPD . A lot of things kept going wrong, but he finally got in. That’s when I told myself no matter what happens, I’m going to be here.”
Ghafari thought he could get through the day without becoming overwhelmed. Then, Ramos’ widow, Maritza Ramos, showed up, and Ghafari got a little emotional.
“I have no idea what to feel, how to feel,” Ghafari said. “The fact that she was here to pin my shield, that was a blessing and I’ll never forget that.”
Ghafari will also never forget that the school where he and Ramos met, Police Officer Rocco Laurie Intermediate School, was named after a cop who was also killed in the line of duty.
The school honors a Staten Island officer who was killed with his partner, Officer Gregory Foster, while on foot patrol on the Lower East Side in February 1972.
Authorities said Laurie, a 23-year-old rookie, and his partner were killed by members of the Black Liberation Army, an underground faction of the Black Panthers that allegedly targeted police officers.
In similar fashion, Ramos and his partner Wenjian Liu were in a police car near Myrtle and Tompkins Aves. in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood when a gunman walked up to the passenger-side window and shot them both to death on Dec. 20, 2014.
Police said the murders were motivated by hatred for police after the police-involved deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
Maritza Ramos, who met Ghafari for the first time at the ceremony, said she was glad to see that her husband was still inspiring people years after his death.
“Even though he’s not here, he touched someone’s life like that,” she said. “He would have been honored to know. What a beautiful thing.”
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