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NYPD Officials Re-Dedicate Plaque to Honor Officer Killed in Far Rockaway

By Katie Honan | June 29, 2016 2:42pm
 Police Officer Scott Gadell, 22, was shot and killed in an alley off Seagirt Boulevard in 1986. 
NYPD Officials Re-Dedicate Plaque to Honor Officer Killed in Far Rockaway
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FAR ROCKAWAY — Police Officer Scott Gadell switched from a night tour to a day shift 30 years ago so he could attend his brother's high school graduation.

"I said to him, 'you're not coming to my graduation? It's a miracle I'm graduating. You have to be there,'" his brother Jeff, now 47, recalled Wednesday inside the 101st Precinct on Mott Avenue. 

Gadell, who was 22, was working on the humid day of June 28, 1986, when he encountered Robert Roulston, a convicted drug dealer and killer who fatally shot him in an alley on Seagirt Boulevard as Gadell was loading his gun. 

"My brother was 22 when he was killed," Jeff Gadell said. "You can't even fathom it until you start to think about it."

NYPD officials held a plaque rededication ceremony Wednesday to honor the 30th anniversary of Gadell's death, which prompted the NYPD to change from .38mm guns to weapons that could be loaded faster.

Chief of Department James O'Neill remembered Gadell as an "exceptional human being" who was also a reservist in the U.S. Army. 

"Scott was a hero for the way he lived, and for what he helped accomplish. He believed good should prevail over evil, and he worked to make it so," O'Neill said. 

The Mott Avenue corner that houses the 101st Precinct was renamed for Gadell in the 1980s, and the plaque inside the precinct sits alongside two others that honor other officers who died in the line of duty.

Both serve as a reminder to his death, and honor the changes made because of it, the NYPD and his family said. 

"It's a shame and I wish that my brother was here to see my children, meet my wife," Jeff Gadell, who lives in the Wantagh home they grew up in, said. His son, Ryan Scott, is named for his brother.

"He's my guardian angel, and he's been on my shoulder for 30 years and I hope that he'll be there for another 30 years. And I'm sure he's the guardian angel on a lot of police officers' shoulders."