NEW YORK — The rows of police officers stretched 300 yards along Main Street in Islip yesterday, and five officers deep. As they saluted the coffin of Lt. Michael Pigott, a New York City Police Department helicopter flew low overhead in a final tribute to the Sayville resident.
Pigott, a 21-year veteran of the police department, killed himself Thursday on his 46th birthday, just days after ordering another officer to use a Taser on a man who ended up falling to his death from a building ledge 10 feet off the ground.
The shock and sadness from the suicide of a member of the police department's elite Emergency Service Unit hung heavy over the funeral at the United Methodist Church in Islip.
The Rev. Douglas Madlon suggested that the highly respected Pigott may have taken his own life because of his fear of not being able to return to the job he loved.
After the Sept. 24 standoff with the naked, emotionally disturbed man, who struck his head on the pavement, Pigott was reassigned to NYPD Fleet Services in Queens. The NYPD said he failed to follow proper procedure, and stripped him temporarily of his gun and badge.
Madlon informed mourners that Pigott had told him he was "just not sure" he would be allowed to be a police officer again. "His heart was broken," Madlon said, adding that Pigott had told him, "I'm not a desk person."
He said that when Pigott was named to the elite emergency unit, he had come to his pastor to talk about his excitement over the new job – and the dangers he would face. He asked Madlon if they could pray together, which they did.
Police yesterday provided a protective cordon around Pigott's widow, Susan, and the couple's three children. They left the church at the end of the funeral, ducked into a funeral parlor limousine, and followed a hearse as it made its way down Main Street, out to their home in Sayville, and back to the Oakwood Cemetery in Bay Shore.
Many police at the funeral were closemouthed, and some lashed out angrily at the media, saying intense coverage of the case contributed to the pressure Pigott felt and ultimately to his death.
"It's a horrible, horrible thing," one New York Police Department officer, Kerryann Douglass, said of Pigott's death. "He was a great man. He was a cop's cop.
"His whole career was in the police department," Douglass said, "and he wasn't going anywhere."
Police Emerald Society bagpipers led the procession to and from the church, while NYPD emergency unit vehicles lined Main Street. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly visited the Overton Funeral Home over the weekend to pay his respects, said funeral parlor manager Eric Buehler.
