A hero police officer who died saving his family from the ravages of Hurricane Sandy was remembered by Mayor Bloomberg at his funeral yesterday as “a young man who made a difference.”
Officer Artur Kasprzak, 28, shepherded seven relatives — including a 15-month-old boy — into the attic of their Staten Island home the night Sandy struck.
When he checked the basement of the house in South Beach to make sure he had saved everyone, Kasprzak got caught in 10 feet of fast-rushing water.
“Officers like him are the reason why this is the safest big city in the nation,” Bloomberg said. “He would do anything to protect his family, and he did.”
More than 75 family and friends joined 200 police officers in full dress uniform at a Mass at St. Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church in New Brighton.
Kasprzak’s coffin was draped with US and Polish flags.
He was a cop for six years and beloved by his colleagues.
“In the words of his platoon supervisor, ‘If I had 200 Arties, I wouldn’t have a problem in the world,’ ” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said in his eulogy.
Kasprzak spent most of his career in the 1st Precinct in lower Manhattan. “As for his fellow police officers, they recall Artie’s tremendous sense of humor, a smile that never left his face, and a reputation for speaking his mind,” Kelly said.
Kelly recounted how in September, Kasprzak made a daring arrest of an armed man, and of how he and his partner once helped rescue a man clinging to a buoy in the East River near South Street Seaport.