Lawrence Byrne recently completed what has to be a gut-wrenching task—albeit one that he feels duty-bound to perform every few years.
A retired City Police Department deputy commissioner, Byrne also is the older brother of one of Gotham’s greatest heroes: Police Officer Edward Byrne.
In the early morning hours of Feb. 26, 1988, Eddie Byrne gave up everything for this borough and this city. A rookie cop just seven months out of the academy, and five days after marking his 22nd birthday, Byrne was summarily executed as he sat in his marked radio motor patrol car at 107th Avenue and Inwood Street in Jamaica, guarding the home of a critical witness in a major drug case.
The four killers that were convicted of the assassination—Philip Copeland, Todd Scott, Scott Cobb, and David McClary—were members of a drug gang that had been instructed to kill a police officer.
“Ice a cop,” drug kingpin Howard “Pappy” Mason bellowed.
At approximately 3:30 a.m., Scott knocked on the passenger-side window of Byrne’s car to distract him as McClary—who literally drew the short straw when the four were trying to decide who would actually pull the trigger—opened fire just outside the driver’s side window. Byrne was shot five times in the head.
McClary, Cobb, Scott and Copeland, who shared $8,000 for the savage act, bragged to others about their crime which led to their arrest a few days later. Each was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
And so, last week, just as he has done every few years for the past decade-plus, Lawrence Byrne compiled letters from cops, retired gumshoes, judges, elected officials, and family members of officers who also made the ultimate sacrifice, imploring New York’s Parole Board to keep the four fiends locked up. He also pens his own deeply personal victim impact statement for the board. It’s a grim tradition of sorts, but he knows that he has to be his family’s representative before the panel, before whichever animal is up for parole—if only to make sure they stay put.
“What I did last night is watch again the videotaped post arrest statements the defendants made and hear them talking about laughing when they see Eddie’s brains coming out of his head,” Byrne told the New York Daily News in October 2016. “That only strengthens my resolve to make sure that these guys never get out of jail.”
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again—as many times as we must: You can’t kill cops. Period. If you do, you should be stripped of your freedom for the rest of your natural days on earth.
On Feb. 26, 1988, Philip Copeland, Todd Scott, Scott Cobb, and David McClary consciously gave up their right to freedom. No panel should be permitted to even think about setting any one of them free.
Lock them up. Throw away the key.
Some animals don’t deserve to be let out of their cages. Ever.
