Thousands of people converged on Jersey City this morning, into the early afternoon, to pay their respects at the funeral for fallen Police Det. Joseph Seals.
Despite conditions that included ice rain and sleet, officers from every police department in New Jersey, along with some from other states such Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, weren’t going to let inclement weather stop them from remembers one of their fallen brothers in blue.
St. Aedan’s Church on Bergen was practically overflowing with a sea of men and women in uniform, which included black stripes over their badges.
Seals, who was killed in the gun violence in Jersey City that claimed the lives of four innocent people one week ago, had his casket covered by the American flag as eight of his colleagues from the Jersey City Police Department carried the casket.
Two of his best friends from the department, Officers Robert Dunn and Edward Redmond, served as pallbearers.
According to his obituary, Seals joined the Jersey City Police Department in November 2005 after serving as a Hudson County corrections officer for about four years.
In November 2017, he was promoted to detective and joined the department’s cease fire unit.
In lieu of flowers, his family has asked for donations in his memory to Saint Joseph’s School for the Blind, located at 761 Summit Avenue in Jersey City.
New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said last week that a 911 call received at 12:38 p.m. indicated that an a passerby had seen his lifeless body at the Bayview Cemetery.
After of hundreds of rounds were fired, six, including the two shooters, were dead. Their motives were unclear, though Grewal has also noted that they had anti-Semitic and anti-law enforcement feelings and that the incident is being investigated as a domestic terrorism/bias crime.
Media reports have indicated that Seals, a member of the PD’s cease fire unit, was meeting with a confidential informant before he was shot.
As of 1:48 p.m., a GoFundMe page for Seals’ family, which includes a widow and five children, has raised an astonishing $575,411, while a charity has stepped in to pay off his mortgage.
We live streamed a second video of Seals casket leaving the church before he was laid to rest, which can be viewed below:
News correspondent Marc Bussanich contributed to this report.
