Jeffrey Allen Scalf

Detective Jeffrey Scalf died from complications as the result of contracting COVID-19 during a presumed exposure while on duty.

Detective Scalf had served with the New York City Police Department for 14 years and was assigned to the Bronx Gang Squad.

Jeffrey Allen Scalf was born on 11 January 1974 and grew up in Johnson City, Tennessee. He graduated from Science Hill High School in 1992 and that year enlisted in the United States Marine Corps alongside his best friend from high school. Stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, he met Taina, a young New Yorker, and drove north every weekend he could to see her. He deployed to Haiti for Operation Uphold Democracy, earning the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, and also served in California and Japan. He and Taina married in North Carolina on Veterans Day, 11 November 1995, after the Marine Corps Ball. He left the Marines in 1996, eight months after the birth of their first child.

After some years of factory and warehouse work, first in Tennessee and then in New York, he followed the calling he had long felt and was appointed to the New York City Police Department on 31 January 2006. He began in the 44th Precinct in the Bronx, then moved to the Bronx Gang Squad, where on 2 March 2015 he earned his detective's gold shield, number 4677. There he worked the 2015 takedown of a violent narcotics gang, a case that ended in 26 arrests and was honored as a Detectives of the Month case. Colleagues remembered him as meticulous, honest and jovial, a Marine who never cut corners and who lit up a room.

He was a devoted family man who loved fishing, basketball and the Tennessee Titans, and he planned to retire to Johnson City. In April 2020 he contracted COVID-19 during a presumed exposure while on duty. He was treated at NewYork-Presbyterian Hudson Valley Hospital and died of the virus's complications on 13 April 2020, at the age of 46. He was survived by Taina, his wife of 24 years, and their three children, Alex, Maria and Charli.