Temple trustees raise over $450,000 for Fitzgerald family, pay for funeral, and promise free tuition for officer’s children

Temple University is paying for Officer Christopher Fitzgerald’s funeral and has promised free tuition for his five children, while the board of trustees has pledged to donate more than $450,000 to a fund for the Fitzgerald family.

And trustee Drew Katz and his company, Interstate Outdoor Advertising, along with five other outdoor advertising firms that he reached out to, are erecting billboards around the region and across the state honoring Fitzgerald’s life. The first billboards with Fitzgerald’s likeness wearing his officer’s hat have already gone up: “Forever a hero in our hearts.”

The outpouring of support comes as the Fitzgerald family prepares for the Friday burial of the 31-year-old Temple police officer, who was shot to death in pursuit of a suspect Saturday evening. Eighteen-year-old Miles Pfeffer of Bucks County has been charged with the killing.

“Officer Fitzgerald and his family are part of the Temple family, and the university is taking care of its family,” the university said in a statement.

The university also has been in contact with the city and state and is working to expand its safety efforts around the campus and pledged an update on that soon. The police department, Temple said, “is completely being reorganized to enhance the staffing and capabilities” and new positions have been posted.

The university did not respond to a question about current staffing levels, but said that eight new officers will be brought on from the police academy in March. Alec Shaffer, president of the Temple University Police Association, the union, said earlier this week that the department had been struggling with staffing and lost a handful of officers in the last month. For more than a year, he had said the union has been sounding the alarm about the exodus of officers and the need for the university to do a better job hiring and retaining them.

At a news conference earlier this week, Jennifer Griffin, vice president of public safety, acknowledged hiring difficulties, which she noted is a nationwide problem.

“We are aggressively recruiting to bring people in, but we will not lower our standards and bring in the wrong people,” she said, adding that officers working at universities need special skills in communication, de-escalation and empathy, as well as police academy training.

Fitzgerald was patrolling alone the night of the shooting, which Griffin said was customary. But since his death, the university has moved to two-officer vehicles, she said Tuesday.

“You have to weigh the pros and cons,” she said. “One of the challenges of moving to a two-officer car is now you reduce the number of vehicles on campus and around the area.”

The police department has been in constant contact with the Fitzgerald family to make sure their needs are being met, the university said.

“A TUPD officer is also stationed and assigned to the residence 24 hours a day if they have any needs,” the university said.

The financial support from the board of trustees grew out of a Zoom call earlier this week.

Mitchell Morgan, board chair and founder and chairman of Morgan Properties, said Monday that he had pledged $100,000 for the family and that other trustees quickly chimed in, raising the amount to more than $300,000.

Katz and his sister, Melissa Silver, also had contributed $100,000 of that first $300,000. Now the amount is more than $450,000 with many, if not all of the trustees, contributing to what the school is calling Temple University’s Fallen Heroes Fund, university sources said.

Ira Lubert, former chair of Pennsylvania State University’s board of trustees, said Morgan, a longtime friend, called him and asked if he also would contribute. He gave $100,000 and hopes that others in the business community also will donate to help the Fitzgerald family.

Katz recalled how much it meant to him when billboards were put up, honoring the legacy of his father, Lewis Katz, a former Temple trustee and former owner of The Inquirer, after he was killed in a plane crash in 2014. Temple renamed its medical school in his memory.

He said he hoped to give the Fitzgerald family that same support. He estimates 50 to 100 billboards could be erected in honor of Fitzgerald.

“If there was any way to give them even the smallest amount of relief and honor the hero that was their husband, father and son, I was going to do that,” Katz said.