Inside a three-story Bronx mosque, dozens of Police Department officers sat cross-legged on the floor. They were silent during a somber occasion: the funeral of one of their colleagues, who had been killed in his uniform, just days before.
The slain officer, Didarul Islam, was shot on Monday night after a gunman entered a Park Avenue office building and sprayed bullets across the lobby and then a floor upstairs, killing four people, a special report by the New York Times-NYT says..
The killing of Detective Islam, who was awarded a posthumous promotion, has ripped through the Police Department with ferocity. But the death had a particular resonance for the department’s fast-growing community of Bangladeshi American officers. Detective Islam immigrated from Bangladesh about 16 years ago.
In the past decade, the number of Bangladeshi Americans who have flocked to the Police Department’s ranks has exploded, marking the latest chapter in the long story of immigrant groups who have found a home — and a foothold in America — in the nation’s largest police department.
“Being police officers, it’s a way to help the New Yorkers, to help the community,” Sergeant Ershadur Siddique, president of the Bangladeshi American Police Association, said in an interview.
“It’s to show that we are part of America, we are part of New York City, and being a police officer in New York City — it’s known in the world that we’re the best in the world — so it brings pride,” he said.
The association, one of many fraternal organizations within the department, now includes nearly 1,000 of the roughly 34,000 uniformed members of the force. Among them are an inspector and four captains, as well as 1,500 civilians who work for the department, making it the second fastest-growing fraternal organization, according to a spokesman for the organization.
Many Bangladeshi Americans have also found work as traffic enforcement agents, a job that Detective Islam himself often encouraged residents in his Bronx neighborhood to consider, according to a neighbor.
The Police Department has long served as a harbor for immigrants in New York who are seeking good pay, security and benefits. Irish Americans for years made up such a large portion of the department’s total personnel, including numerous police commissioners, that they came to stand for the face of the force.
But the department, once known for being overwhelmingly white, has steadily diversified over the decades.
Nearly 12 percent of uniformed officers are Asian, a figure closely mirroring the percentage of the city’s total population, according to the U.S. census and Police Department data. Thirty-three percent of uniformed officers are Hispanic and 17 percent are Black. Among civilian Police Department employees, 17 percent are Asian and 45 percent are Black.
The force’s immigrant and minority fraternal groups have also grown in number. Today they include the New York Dominican Officers Organization, the fastest-growing group, and the Pakistani American Law Enforcement Society, among numerous others.
The Bangladeshi American Police Association was founded in 2015 with a mission of fostering upward mobility within the department, recruiting new officers and building connections with the city’s wider Bangladeshi American community, which itself has nearly tripled to more than 100,000 New Yorkers in the past decade.
In recent decades, New York City has seen an influx in immigrants from the region, a densely populated and predominantly Muslim country to the east of India. The country was formerly known as East Pakistan and came into being when the two parts of Pakistan split after a bitter war.
Their community has expanded into new neighborhoods, establishing businesses and houses of worship and bringing with them a cuisine of milky teas and fuchka, a fried Bengali snack containing chickpeas and potatoes. In 2022, a corner in Brooklyn’s Kensington neighborhood was designated “Little Bangladesh.”
In recent years, in addition to those who turned to police work, some young Bangladeshi Americans have made inroads into politics, and others have swapped construction work, once a primary trade, for other employment, like food delivery or Uber driving.
Those who are employed by the Police Department founded their fraternal association in part to combat Islamophobia that ran rampant in the United States in the wake of 9/11, according to one of its founders, Shamsul Haque. It was started to “dispel the misconception that you are Muslim and there is somehow a connection to terrorism,” Mr. Haque said on Wednesday during a news conference with Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor.
That mission remained especially resonant on Monday. In the hours following the Midtown shooting, there was a torrent of misinformation online declaring the massacre an act of Islamic terrorism and blaming Mr. Mamdani, who, like Detective Islam, is Muslim.
The association’s membership, which numbered around 120 at the time of its formation a decade ago, has grown exponentially thanks to two main factors, Sergeant Siddique said: recruitment drives and word of mouth. Members invite residents to see the benefits of joining the department.
“It’s a career, it’s a lifestyle,” Sergeant Siddique said. “So instead of outside, you go inside to help your own community. It’s a noble, noble cause.”
Such community-level outreach has become especially important in recent years, with the Police Department grappling with a staffing shortage, as officers retire or resign and fewer applicants sign up to take the police exam.
For many of the association’s members, the killing of Detective Islam has been felt deeply and doubly — the loss of a fellow service member joined with the loss of a compatriot.
“I speak as someone who feels like a family member grieving,” Mr. Haque, the association’s founder, said on Wednesday during the news conference. “More than a fellow officer, he was one of us, and losing him feels like losing a brother.”
For many in the Bangladeshi American community, his death has also elicited warring emotions, with officers and civilians saying they feel suspended between pride for his heroism and overwhelming pain at his loss.
“He died in the line of defense. That’s a very honorable death,” said Hossain Mohd, an engineer who is Bangladeshi and came to watch the transfer of Detective Islam’s body from the medical examiner’s office to the Parkchester Jame Masjid on Tuesday. “He did something for the country, that’s something to be proud of.”
Officer Mohammad Salam, who grew up with Detective Islam in the same neighborhood in Bangladesh and worked with him years later at the 47th Precinct, was also at the mosque.
After the transfer of Detective Islam’s body, he stood outside its doors in a sea of loved ones and fellow officers and recalled his fallen friend with emotion.
“I’m really proud of him. He was a great kid,” Officer Salam said.
Detective Islam, he said, had embodied the best of the Bangladeshi community in the force.
“They try to help the community, they try to improve their lifestyle,” he said, adding: “They also make their family proud.”
According to NYPD data, New York City saw a spike in shootings and felony assaults in July 2025, with overall crime rising 7.8 per cent compared to the same month last year. The city recorded 32 shooting incidents and 53 gun-related arrests in the final week of July alone. Midtown Manhattan, where detective Islam was killed, remains one of the areas under heightened surveillance amid concerns about public safety and illegal firearms.