The family of NYPD service martyr Edward R. Byrne is grappling with incalculable pain yet again.
Pain almost as visceral as the suffocating sorrow they experienced on February 26, 1988 — when first informed that their son, a 22-year-old rookie cop, had been assassinated by a gang of drug thugs while pulling security outside the home of a crime witness in South Jamaica, Queens.
In the latest of a string of shockingly indefensible and disgusting decisions by the New York State Board of Parole, Scott Cobb, 60, who served as the getaway car driver for the team of assassins, will be sprung as early as next month, having served 34 years of a 25-to-life sentence.
When this news reached the Byrne family, they were devastated.
I immediately called one of my old FBI partners, Eddie’s older brother, Steve.
He and I had worked organized crime cases in New York and served on an FBI SWAT team together during early 1990s, and are one-time roommates.
I have carried Eddie’s funeral Mass card in my FBI credentials case for decades; a somber reminder of his sacrifice.
I witnessed his parents softly weeping while seated around their dining room table, years ago, as they traded stories of Eddie’s life while growing up.
The NYPD’s Police Benevolent Association issued a press release condemning the decision and describing Byrne’s assassination as “one of the most heinous and noteworthy cop-killings of the 20th century.”
The Byrne family is now forced to grapple with the possibility that Cobb’s three accomplices, Phillip Copeland, David McClary and Todd Scott, will all appear before the same board in September (Copeland), October (McClary) and January (Scott).
With time, memories may fade, but wounds of the heart seldom heal.
The Parole Board’s decision proves that even the most depraved crimes — like the targeted assassination of a police officer — are “forgivable.”
They are not.
Details of the murder, described by the PBA, are appalling:
In the early morning hours of February 26, 1988, Byrne, in uniform in a marked police car, was protecting a valuable witness whose home had recently been firebombed to discourage him from testifying against drug-kingpin Howard (“Pappy”) Mason. Cobb and three other assassins — David McClary, Todd Scott and Phillip Copeland — acted in concert to carry out Mason’s orders to kill a police officer and send “a message to the cops” that his imprisonment would bring retaliation. Copeland directed the nefarious plot, with Mason pulling his strings. Cobb was the wheelman, driving the hit men to and from the scene. Scott’s role was to distract Officer Byrne from his car’s passenger side. McClary shot Officer Byrne five times in the head from point blank range.
For their efforts, the assassins split an $8,000 bounty and bragged about the murder.
In October of 2014, Sen. Chuck Schumer opposed clemency for the convicted cop-killers and publicly urged the Parole Board to deny clemency in order to “continue to send signal that if you commit such a horrendous crime in the State of New York, we will ensure you serve the maximum sentence.”
What changed?
Well, Albany Democrats now enjoy one-party rule.
The Parole Board’s latest disgraceful decision is not a one-off.
According to figures compiled since 2017 by the PBA, the Parole Board has released 36 cop-killers.
The board consists of 17 members who are appointed by the governor, confirmed by the Senate and serve six-year terms.
Since 2008, three Democratic governors have made every appointment to current board.
During his time in office, Gov. Andrew Cuomo was roundly criticized for having oversight of a Parole Board that in 2020 released Anthony Bottom, part of a crew that lured two NYPD cops into a fatal ambush with a fake 911 call in 1971.
The same Parole Board that voted to spring his accomplice, Herman Bell, in 2018.
Another galling decision by Cuomo’s board also occurred in 2020 when Perry Bellamy, who, in 1985, lured Parole Officer Brian Rooney into an ambush — for $5,000 in “blood money” from a drug kingpin — was released.
In 2021, Cuomo’s board struck again, granting another one of the cop-killers involved in the notorious 1981 Brinks armored car heist in Rockland County, David Gilbert, parole.
This, after the 2019 release of Brinks getaway car driver, Judith Clark.
These decisions are emblematic of the board’s sympathies and wholly maddening to those who grieve for victims’ families.
Yet they also speak to the cognitive dissonance exhibited by those who preach diversity and inclusion — so long as it aligns with their political ideologies.
Reading through the board’s brief commissioner biographies, you see mental-health professionals, Legal Aid attorneys, political-science majors, therapists, ordained ministers, counselors, proponents of “restorative justice,” addiction specialists, parole and probation officers, corrections department officials and two former assistant district attorneys.
What you will not find is a commissioner who served as a police officer, state trooper or federal agent.
No former police chiefs or sheriffs.
The closest representation is an appointee who incredibly self-describes as having been “chosen from a civil service list of candidates to join the Erie County Sheriff’s Office as a deputy sheriff but resigned while in the academy to run for political office.”
Former gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin is right when he suggested the Parole Board is in need of serious reform and an overhaul.
Yet one-party rule makes that impossible.
None of this will ever help fully heal the Byrne family.
They appreciate that Eddie’s slaying brought about changes in the passivity that emboldened drug lords during the crack-era in New York City.
It served as a catalyst for change in policing methodologies, ushering in the era of safer streets as New York City transformed into the safest big city in the world.
And in 2019, the upstate New York village where I serve as mayor received a generous grant award from the Edward Byrne Memorial Assistance Grant program.
Eddie’s legacy helped furnish new ballistic vests, helmets and other tactical gear.
Even in death, Eddie is helping keep his fellow cops safe.
Cornwall-on-Hudson Mayor James A. Gagliano serves on the board of directors for the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.
