A newly minted NYPD recruit scored his badge Thursday – and a bride-to-be.
Rookie cop Michael Raffaele proposed to his girlfriend of three years at Madison Square Garden immediately after graduating from the NYPD Police Academy as confetti from the ceremony rained down on the couple.
“She’s so very dedicated, I put her through misery [for the last six months],” a beaming Raffaele said of his new fiancée Stephanie Strelnick, 25.
Raffaele got down on one knee before his cheering family and fellow grads.
“I couldn’t have done it without her or my mother, but especially her,” said Raffaele, adding that he’d been planning the engagement since he took the Academy oath in January.
His bride-to-be was stunned by the proposal.
“I’m shaking!” Strelnick said. “I said ‘yes,’ one hundred times over!”
Raffaele was one of 408 new officers to graduate from the Police Academy on Thursday.
“We started this academy as hundreds of individuals but to end it today as one family,” valedictorian Jonathan Sorocki said in a speech to the graduating class.
“After six months of arduous training, coupled with the best academic instruction, we sit here ready to embark on one of the most rewarding occupations — New York City police officers,” said Sorocki.
Police Commissioner James O’Neill commented on the “incredible diversity” of the class – some of whom are from “the most far, foreign corners of the world” like Ghana, Chile and Uzbekistan, he said.
“Real public safety is a shared responsibility and that’s true now more than ever. It’s not something the NYPD does alone,” O’Neill said.
“People of this great city want what you want: They want to live in peace, they want to be happy and they want to take care of their families.”
Additional reporting by Natalie Musumeci