Joseph Vigiano has spent his entire NYPD career wearing shield number 4511, the badge his father carried before he was killed in the World Trade Center attacks. Now 33, Vigiano has been promoted to sergeant, a step he says he was not expecting to make so soon.
Vigiano was assigned to Emergency Service Unit Truck 7, the elite tactical squad that lost 14 of its members among the 23 NYPD officers killed on September 11, 2001, according to Gothamist. He said he was sad to leave Truck 7 behind, but he'll now attend sergeant school at the Police Academy for about five weeks before being assigned to a patrol command. His father, Detective Joseph Vigiano, was one of the department's most decorated officers, having survived three separate shootings while working out of Brooklyn's 75th Precinct and earning the NYPD Combat Cross and the American Legion Medal for Valor, according to the Detectives' Endowment Association.
A Family Built Around Shield 4511
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch singled out Vigiano at his promotion ceremony, saying that after an unthinkable loss, the Vigiano family chose service again and again, per the same Gothamist account. Vigiano's mother is a retired police officer who also worked at the 75th Precinct, and he has said the officers there became a second family to him after his father's death in Brooklyn.
Detective Joseph Vigiano died in the 2001 World Trade Center attacks alongside his older brother, John Vigiano, an FDNY firefighter. The elder Vigiano finished his ESU class as the top-ranked candidate out of 450 people competing for just 40 slots when he graduated in March 2023, according to FOX 5 NY. That unit, the report notes, was the single hardest-hit command in the department during the World Trade Center rescue efforts.
Three Generations Of Public Service
Joseph Vigiano Jr. joined the NYPD in July 2016, following in the footsteps of a family whose ties to the department run through three generations, according to DVIDS. His brother James Vigiano now works as a police officer on North Brooklyn's community response team, and the two jointly responded to an active shooting incident while on patrol in Brooklyn in October 2024, according to a video shared by Hope For The Warriors on Facebook.
The brothers' late uncle, firefighter John T. Vigiano II, was a third-generation FDNY member assigned to Ladder 132 in Brooklyn who also died when the towers collapsed, according to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. Their grandfather, FDNY Captain John Vigiano Sr., spent months searching Ground Zero for his sons after losing both of them on the same day. He later became an advocate for Gold Star families before dying from 9/11-related cancer in July 2018 at age 79, according to the 9/11 Memorial.
Marking The Anniversary With ESU Family
The family's story reached wider audiences through the 2003 Oscar-winning short documentary Twin Towers, which chronicled Detective Vigiano and his firefighter brother, and was followed in September 2025 by the feature documentary Twin Towers: Legacy, focused on the sons' service in the Marines and NYPD, according to Entertainment Mayhem. Following the 2001 attacks, an NYPD lieutenant presented an official replica of Detective Vigiano's shield to Queen Elizabeth II to recognize allied international support in the war on terrorism, per the Detectives' Endowment Association.
Vigiano plans to travel to Lower Manhattan with his mother on the September 11 anniversary, where he intends to have breakfast at an ESU truck with current and retired members, per Gothamist's reporting. He has said he wanted to be part of that camaraderie, and that he remembers his father as both a detective and a volunteer firefighter. Vigiano's 4-year-old son, Joey, already dreams of becoming a police helicopter pilot.
The promotion arrives as the NYPD continues to formally honor its 9/11 losses; the department added 103 fallen officers and staff to its Hall of Heroes at One Police Plaza, a move Hoodline previously reported as the federal World Trade Center Health Program continues monitoring more than 130,000 responders and survivors as of this past April.
