Hundreds of police officers gathered on a street corner in Queens early Wednesday morning to remember a rookie cop who was killed there exactly 32 years earlier while doing his job.
“We stand here tonight really as a testament to proving that Eddie did not die in vain,” Commissioner Dermot Shea said at the South Jamaica intersection where Police Officer Edward Byrne was killed in the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 28, 1988.
Shea addressed Byrne’s two brothers, who were in attendance, former NYPD Deputy Director of Legal Matters Larry Byrne, and Steve.
“If you look at where New York City is 32 years later, I hope that you can take some measure of some solace Larry, Steve, in that terrible night — that tragedy set into events something that literally was the first shot in changing New York City,” said Shea.
Added Shea: “And all the good, and all the lives that have been saved, is a small piece of Eddie’s legacy.”
Byrne was shot and killed five days after his 22nd birthday in his cruiser at about 3:30 a.m. at 107th Avenue and Inwood Street, while guarding the home of a witness in a drug case.
The memorial is held every year.
“This is an especially important anniversary for my family as the four murderers convicted in state court in Eddie’s case come up again for parole hearings again in November and I will go before the parole board again for the fifth time,” said Larry Byrne, who attends the event every year.
“So I’m trying to get the parole board to remember now what a terrible crime this was,” he said.
Paid assassins David McClary, Scott Cobb, Todd Scott and Phillip Copeland killed Byrne on the orders of a drug kingpin as the uniformed cop was guarding the witness. The four are serving sentences of 25 years to life.
Byrne said he’s anxious about the upcoming hearings in the wake of the board’s release of cop killer Herman Bell. The onetime Black Revolutionary Army soldier was convicted of killing Officers Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones in 1971. He served more than 40 years in jail but was sprung by the board in April 2018.
Convicted cop killer Robert Hayes, who killed a transit cop in a subway platform shootout in 1973, was also released by the board in 2018.
He was convicted of killing transit patrolman and father of two Sidney Thompson, 37, who was trying to arrest the then-23-year-old for jumping a turnstile.
