New Haven Independent

Although deeply appreciated in New Haven, Officer Picagli, who died of injuries sustained while directing traffic on Chapel Street last week, may not have been well known to many of the dozens of honor guards and police societies from across the state and region who came to pay him final respects. Still, as retired Bridgeport police captain, and honor guard member, Robert Robinson (pictured to the right, with Lieutenant Douglas Stolze) said, “Being a police officer is a brotherhood. Police work is family. You feel deeply for a fallen officer, so when the word goes out, you come. I’ve been to too many of these.”

In an atmosphere of deep silence, as a chill wind blew, and the flag-draped casket was brought into Our Lady of Pompeii Church in East Haven, police brass and other notables followed. These included Mayor John DeStefano, Superintendent of Public Schools Reginald Mayo, state public safety chief Leonard Boyle, and U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, among many others. They entered not at a normal gait, but slowly and ceremonially. Positioned at the nearby door, Officer Carleton Giles, a 27-year veteran of the Norwalk Police Department echoed sentiments many were feeling. “It’s all about recognition. We come here out of that recognition and in respect. A police officer is always on duty, even when he is doing an extra job as Picagli was that night. We realize that any one of us could have died in the same way. He is one of us.”

Media, at the request of the family, were not allowed inside the church for the Roman Catholic rite. (The service was broadcast on speakers set up on the lawn.)

Click here to read Mayor DeStefano’s eulogy delivered inside the church.

Dan Picagli was also being remembered and celebrated outside, especially for his courageous work with young people in New Haven. There were dozens of conversations, both by the those whose lives he touched, as well as by his extended family, which, this day, seemed to embrace the entire community.

“He always put on the very best Fourth of July fireworks,” said Amanda Fusco, a neighbor of the Picaglis on Hellstrom Road in East Haven, who took the morning off from being a junior at East Haven High to pay her respects. “And at the end he would light this huge bonfire, and his kids are so nice. It’s so sad.”

Officer Mark O’Connor (pictured at left, with Officer Patrick Leary, both now with the Guilford Police Department and in attendance this day with the New Haven Police Department Emerald Society) is a 21-year veteran with the New Haven department. He knew Dan Picagli well. “You know, every police officer, over time, develops a specialty. Dan’s was working with kids, at-risk kids who had been exposed to violence. Dozens of kids that he had helped through his work with the CDCP [Child Development Community Policing project] came and stood in a long line at his wake the other night. He deserves all these accolades.

“And, get this, yesterday in Guilford we watched a training video made by Yale and the CDCP to help work with kids who have been traumatized, and guess which cop is most prominently featured in the training video? Dan. After he was gone. It’s heartbreaking. What a good cop he was.”

On the other hand, does he not live on, precisely in this way, and in others, that were now being broadcast in the eulogy: “We celebrate Dan as a man who demonstrated his faith in his service to all God’s children. As Jesus’s disciples imitated him, let us give witness to Dan’s life by imitating in ours what he tried to do.”

As the service came to a close, officers folded their flags, mounted the dozens of waiting buses and returned to their duties. A reporter found Sen. Lieberman, who had come to pay his respects in part because he had met Dan Picagli several times. “What a wonderful man he was,” Lieberman said. “I’ve come also to show my regards for all of these officers who risk so much for us.” And, then, taking a deep breath which appeared to be almost a sigh, the senator added, “Ah, life is so terribly fragile.”

Officer Picagli leaves his wife Dee and four children — Daniel, Matthew, Jennifer, and Christina. Click here to visit the memorial page set up for Picagli by his colleagues in the NHPD.