Family Of Slain NYPD Officer Want Killers' Release Denied
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The family of a city police officer gunned down more than two decades ago is calling for the men who carried out the hit to stay in prison.
Edward Byrne's family and Senator Charles Schumer on Monday urged the parole board to deny parole to David McClary and three other men, who shot Byrne to death in his squad car in Queens as he protected a drug witness in 1988.
The men are up for parole for the first time in November.
Schumer says releasing them would be an injustice.
"It would be a slap in the face of every police officer who patrols the streets of New York City and risks their lives every day," Schumer said.
"We have an opportunity to send a very clear, strong message that if you commit a crime with a gun in this city, if you kill a police officer or a citizen, you will be convicted, you will go to jail, and you will spend the rest of your life in jail," said Edward Byrne's brother, Larry Byrne.
After Byrne's death, the NYPD established teams of undercover officers to sweep drug dealers off the streets, and a federal police funding program was named in his memory.