By Michael V. Cusenza

In the early morning hours of Feb. 26, 1988, Eddie Byrne gave up everything for this borough, this city, this country. That Friday, Eddie Byrne made the kind of once-every-millennium sacrifice that you might only have read about in comic books.

That sacrifice certainly changed Gotham City.

Byrne, a rookie City cop just seven months out of the academy and assigned to the 103rd Precinct, was summarily executed on Feb. 26, 1988, 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. At approximately 3:30 a.m., one of the men knocked on the passenger-side window of Byrne’s car to distract him as a second man opened fire just outside the driver’s side window. Byrne was shot five times in the head.

Byrne, a rookie just seven months out of the Police Academy and assigned to the 103rd Precinct, was killed guarding a critical witness in a major Jamaica drug case. Photo Courtesy of NYPD

He was 22 years old.

Copeland, Scott, Cobb, and McClary were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Each has been denied parole at their hearings.

On Monday, Feb. 26, 2018, a grateful city gathered at that infamous Jamaica intersection to mark the 30th anniversary of Eddie Byrne’s sacrifice.

“That was the beginning. That was a wakeup call for this whole city that it was time. It was time to no longer accept the violence that was so prevalent in New York City back in the ’70s and the ’80s,” recalled City Police Commissioner Jim O’Neill. “That wasn’t the high water mark though. In 1990 there were 2,245 homicides, but that was the beginning and we continued each and every year after that to make sure that the people who take this job understand why they take it. They take it to make a difference and to do good, and to make life better for the 8.5 million people in this great city. And they continue to do it each and every day.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio characterized Byrne’s death as not just simply a tipping point, but the spark of a revolution.

“In every tragedy we look for something we can cling onto and the case of the loss of Eddie is something very, very meaningful. He did not die in vain by any stretch of the imagination. There was anger, there was revulsion at the death of this good, young man,” he said. “It was not something this city ignored. It galvanized people, created one of those moments where people said enough is enough. The city came together and with the NYPD, the people of this city said we will not accept a situation where a young man like this is taken from us and we will not accept lawlessness. The NYPD, working with partners in every community block by block over years proceeded to take back this city. Many believe it began that day. I think a way to think about it is this: Eddie Byrne’s life may have ended but his tour of duty never did.”

By Michael V. Cusenza

Of the 1,257 newly minted Members of the Service who graduated last week from the Police Academy, 100 have been assigned to the various commands within Patrol Borough Queens South.

“You are coming along at an ideal time – a force that is succeeding more and more, innovating more and more, is proving its abilities more every day,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said to the probationary officers during the commencement ceremony at Madison Square Garden. “And you’re going to be change agents. You’re going to be the next generation that makes us better, that bonds police and community in a way we’ve never seen before. You are going to be part of that generation that will look back on in years and say, we’re the generation who brought policing to the next level.”

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton added, “We have sought to do everything in our power to improve your training.”

The rookies now find themselves part of that successful, innovative police force to which de Blasio referred in his remarks. And for Bratton, the cornerstone of that force is Neighborhood Policing.

Rolled out in December 2015, the Neighborhood Policing Plan, now in 31 commands, is designed to greatly increase the cop/community connectivity without in any way diminishing the NYPD’s crime-fighting capabilities.

“We want to police with the community, not at the community,” said Assistant Chief Terrence Monahan, one of the architects of the NPP.

The plan divides precincts into four or five fully staffed sectors that correspond, as much as possible, to the boundaries of actual existing neighborhoods. Sector officers assigned to these sectors work the same neighborhoods on the same shifts, increasing their familiarity with the local residents and local problems. The radio dispatchers, supervisors, and sector officers work together to maintain “sector integrity,” meaning that the sector officers and sector cars do not leave the boundaries of their assigned sectors, except in genuine emergencies. The plan seeks to foster a sense of ownership among sector officers for the people, the problems, and even the perpetrators in a particular sector; a sense of geographic responsibility and accountability.

“It operationalizes community policing in a way that eluded previous models and reestablishes the primacy of patrol as the backbone of preventive policing,” Bratton said.

Eight precincts comprise PBQS, and its headquarters is the 107^th Precinct in Fresh Meadows. Assistant Chief David Barrere is the commanding officer.

michael@theforumnewsgroup.com

By Michael V. Cusenza

Two borough maintenance shops helped the Long Island Rail Road in 2015 earn the best mechanical performance record in its history, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Last year, LIRR rail cars traveled an average of 208,383 miles between breaking down and causing a delay. The number bests 2014’s by more than 2,000 miles; and it was 18 percent above LIRR’s goal of 176,000 miles.

The achievement marked the railroad’s 16th consecutive year of improvement for rail car reliability, the agency reported.

The railroad’s heaviest maintenance work is performed at Sheridan Shop in Richmond Hill, which focuses attention on diesel trains; and Hillside Facility in Hollis, which covers the electric fleet.

“There are many factors that can cause a train delay, from track conditions to problems at grade crossings to congestion from other trains,” said LIRR President Patrick Nowakowski. “I am pleased to report that the LIRR is doing a better job than ever before in neutralizing the category of potential train delays that we have the most control over: problems with the trains themselves. Our all-time high performance in terms of rail car mechanical reliability is a testament to the hard work that our employees perform every day to keep our rail cars inspected and maintained in top condition, even as the fleet ages.”

Today’s mean distance between failures has risen from 50,000 in 2005, and from 150,000 in 2010. The LIRR said it credits the improvements to its successful adherence to its Reliability Centered Maintenance strategy. The strategy, which was put into place in 2009, has led to dramatic improvements in train car reliability in recent years, according to the MTA.

Under this maintenance approach, all rail cars are slated for specific types of inspections and maintenance based on the intervals of time that have elapsed since each car’s last maintenance procedures. The strategy uses manufacturer data and real-world observations to govern schedules for replacement of rail car components, ensuring that all components are replaced before they are likely to fail.

“We’re constantly monitoring failures and conducting trend analyses on components and subcomponents and adjusting replacement intervals,” said Craig Daly, LIRR’s acting chief mechanical officer. “Our replacement intervals are continuously evolving in a dynamic way in response to our updated observations.”

The 2,100 employees in the Maintenance of Equipment Department care for the railroad’s fleet of 1,185 passenger rail cars and locomotives, submitting them to daily safety inspections, tests, and cleaning, the MTA said.

“Our goal each day is to make sure that the railroad has the number of cars available for service to meet that day’s train schedule requirements,” Daly added. “Just in terms of the electric fleet alone, we need 862 cars in service for each morning rush hour, and 866 for each evening rush hour. I’m glad to say that we met or exceeded that requirement each calendar day in 2015.”

The LIRR carried 87.6 million customers in 2015, the most since 1949.

michael@theforumnewsgroup.com