'It's an absolutely horrifying event,' slain cop's brother says
Convict David McClary, a gangbanger who assassinated Police Officer Edward Byrne in 1988, argued for his freedom before the state's liberal parole board on July 22 but was sent back to Wende Prison in Erie County, state records show.
The 16-member state parole board, which is packed with members appointed by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has sprung 43 cop killers since 2017, according to the Police Benevolent Association.
8 Every year, members of the NYPD return to the corner were Officer Eddie Byrne was killed.
Seth Gottfried
8 David McClary
Byrne, a 22-year-old rookie, was sitting in his patrol car in Queens protecting a local witness in a drug case when he was shot five times in the head. Afterward, McClary and his three accomplices boasted about the killing.
'He should stay in prison because he's not fit or capable nor does he deserve the right to go back on the street,' the slain cop's younger brother, Kenneth Byrne, told The Post.
The cop was sitting in his patrol car around 3:30 a.m. on 107th Ave. and Inwood St. in South Jamaica watching the home of a local Guyanese immigrant, who had reported drug dealing. The witness's home home had been firebombed twice.
8 Byrned assassination shocked the city.
Mary McLoughlin/NY Post
The assassins pulled up alongside Byrne and one of them got out and knocked on his passenger side window while a second man crept up on the driver's side and shot him with a .38 caliber pistol.
The cop's younger brother remembers an NYPD chaplain coming to his home.
'It's an absolutely horrifying event watching my parents collapse onto the floor,' Byrne recalled. 'My parents aged and suffered because of this.'
8 Police Officer Eddie Byrne
President Ronald Reagan called the Byrne family to offer condolences. Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush carried his shield during his 1988 presidential campaign.
'This was front and center for many years because it was such a shocking crime,' the brother recalled.
Three other men, Philip Copeland, Todd Scott and Scott Cobb were also arrested and eventually convicted in the killing.
8 The Byrne family has staunchly opposed the release of their loved one's killers.
Brigitte Stelzer
'Every two years, we have to go back and do this again,' Byrne said, noting that his brother, NYPD legal boss Larry Byrne, took the lead on the parole hearings until he died in 2020.
Byrne's mother, Ann Byne, who is 88 and living on Long Island, was devastated when the parole board released Cobb in 2023.
'It's just a lot for her to deal with after decades and decades,' her son said.
8 NYPD Deputy Commissioner Larry Byrne speaks at a memorial for his brother, a police officer who was killed in the line of duty in 1988.
Daniel William McKnight
8 Hundreds turned out for Byrne's February 1988 funeral.
Don Halasy/ NY Post
McClary will return to argue to be released again next year.
Todd Scott, 56, is serving 25 years to life at Shawangunk prison upstate and is due to appear before the board this month.
Drug dealer Howard 'Pappy' Mason is serving life in prison for drug racketeering and ordering the murder from jail.
8 McClary in court in 1989.
Jerry Engel/ NY Post
The convicts often tell the board how they'll try to benefit society if they are released, Byrne said.
'Eddie was doing work that benefitted the public,' he said. 'They cut it short.'
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