Colón’s Corner: Take A Moment To Remember Matt

Remembering fallen NYPD Officer 24 years later

Most of us spent Sunday watching one heck of a Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs & Philadelphia Eagles. A whale of a ballgame that went down to the wire and ultimately saw the Chiefs emerge victorious; we went to if not hosted our own Super Bowl parties & spent time with our loved ones having fun even if we weren’t necessarily into the game itself.

But there was someone who didn’t get to watch that game Sunday. His name was Matthew Dziergowski. He was a police officer with the NYPD who died in the line of duty on February 14, 1999.

By then a close to 16-year veteran assigned to Staten Island’s 123rd Precinct, that winter Sunday morning in 1999 saw Matt on patrol when a call came over the radio for an overturned tractor trailer on the West Shore Expressway. With the mission of providing traffic control so responding FDNY & NYPD Emergency Service Unit crews could operate safely, Officer Dziergowski and three pther officers he was accompanied by laid out flares along the roadway to alert oncoming drivers.

As they finished doing so, Matt returned to his patrol car for what turned out to be the final time. As he sat in his RMP, an intoxicated driver, his vehicle barreling towards the scene at close to 80 miles an hour was fast approaching. With time running out and absolutely no hesitation, Officer Dziergowski alerted the other three officers on scene as well as ESU & FDNY crews to the imminent threat before selflessly pulling his car in front of the reckless motorist, shielding his fellow first responders from certain death.

His patrol car was struck on the driver’s side and pushed into an adjacent guardrail. He was flown to a nearby hospital where the 38-year-old married father of a 7-year-old boy with another boy on the way, died. In New York City, Matt was the first & only officer to die in the line of duty in 1999.

John Latanzio, a member of NYPD Emergency Service Unit Squad 5 who responded to the original call of the overturned trailer, feels indebted to the fallen officer: “My partner and I talk about it often, Matthew Dziergowski, he’s always thought of and we thank him for doing what he did.”

Defined as “quiet and unassuming”, Matt is indeed thought of often. At NYPD Medal Day, he was posthumously awarded the department’s highest award, the Medal of Honor. In December of 2000, he was recognized by then-Governor George Pataki as ‘Police Officer of the Year’, the first posthumous recipient of the award. Now, his memorial plaque hangs inside the 123rd Precinct, a reminder of the dangers of the job & with it, the reality that no job in police work is ever truly routine.

Remember Matt, remember not just his heroic final act, but all the heroic things he surely did in his near two-decade career. Remember what he embodied: the very best of the NYPD, the very best of society.

Mike Colón is the host of the Mic’d In New Haven Podcast which can be found on all podcast platforms and is simulcast in video form on YouTube