QUEENS — Rookie Officer Eddie Byrne was only 22 when he was shot execution-style on Feb. 26, 1988.
Byrne, who joined the NYPD 7 months earlier, was sitting in his patrol car on 107th Avenue and Inwood Street in Jamaica, guarding a witness who reported on illegal drug activities in the neighborhood and was set to testify against the drug kingpin Howard "Pappy" Mason.
Around 3:30 a.m., four men hired by Mason approached his car and shot him to death.
On Thursday night, hundreds of officers, including Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, as well as community members gathered to honor Byrne on the 28th anniversary of his murder at the corner where he lost his life. A vintage police car, similar to the one Byrne had been sitting in that night, was parked there during the memorial.
We gather now in Queens while most sleep to remember NYPD Police Officer Edward Byrne, murdered 28 years ago today. pic.twitter.com/EAdKJCfbbP
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) February 26, 2016
“Eddie Byrne was a cop, his life counted, his life mattered,” said Bratton at the ceremony held every year shortly after midnight. “His much too short life was one of incredible significance.”
Byrne's death was considered a critical moment in policing in New York City, leading to the arrests of drug dealers and changing police practices so that officers were paired up on patrols.
"His sacrifice, his murder, it awakened this city, it awakened this country to the reality that we had let the forces of crime and evil go to far," he noted. "We came back because of this young man’s sacrifice and his death."
NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matter Lawrence Byrne, the brother of the fallen officer, also spoke at the ceremony.
“Twenty-eight years ago, we suffered a terrible loss, not just my family, but the 103rd Precinct, this community, the Department and the city,” he said.
“But out of that terrible tragedy has come a lot of good and the fact that you are all here in the middle of the night on a cold night, is so much more powerful than any words I can utter,” Byrne added.
