Freeing a killer is unjust

So it looks like Todd Scott, who helped murder NYPD rookie Eddie Byrne in 1988, will be a free man after 35 years behind bars.

But Byrne is doing eternity — so Scott’s release, which could be ordered as early as this week, hardly seems, well, equitable.

Which is ironic, given that his discharge will be the product of 2018 parole “reforms” shepherded by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who explained them as largely the pursuit of fairness.

You know the argument: Certain demographic cohorts go to prison out of proportion to their presence in the population — and this, all by itself, is certain proof of an inequitable criminal-justice system.

This also is the rationale for the criminal-justice “reforms” Cuomo approved in 2019 and now fueling so much of the chaos plaguing New York.

But Eddie Byrne was gunned down at age 22 — and his killers are now in their 50s and 60s. Is this equitable?

The son of a cop, he had been on the force for just seven months. Assigned to guard a witness in a notorious drug case, he was executed by four contract killers on a Queens street as he sat in his patrol car.

The point, quite clear at the time, was to prove just who ruled city streets — not the NYPD — and, indeed, this seemed to be the case.

Still, the murder shocked the nation; the ’80s crack wars had turned its cities into war zones, and Americans then were far less confused about what constitutes justice than they are today.

Byrne’s execution seemed to exhaust America’s patience with drug-fueled street violence. It certainly pointed New York City toward the Giuliani-Bloomberg renaissance — even if that was five years distant.

But while it eventually arrived — and, with it, 20 years of relatively safe streets — it presently was to be crowded out by the progressive ethic now dominant in New York.

First came Cuomo’s parole “reforms,” followed by the release of 37 — 37! — cop-killers since 2017, including another of Byrne’s four murderers.

Then there was 2019’s radical rewrite of New York’s bail and criminal-procedure codes — and a quick but enduring epidemic of violent crime, retail theft and public drug use.

Now the City Council is preparing to override mayoral vetoes of bills likely intended to further hamstring street cops and render Rikers Island ungovernable.

And what goes around comes around.

Last week, 24-year-old Sahara Dula of Brooklyn, driving on the wrong side of Park Avenue, slammed her Lexus into a police officer because, she said later, “I told the cop I wanted to go straight and he wouldn’t move so I hit him.
I did it on purpose.

“F–k these cops. He wouldn’t move!” she yelled.

Dula’s victim survived, not for lack of effort on her part — but the heaviest charge brought against her was attempted assault.

And what’s equitable about that? Nothing, of course, but it certainly honors the progressive zeitgeist.

New York deserves better, and so does Eddie Byrne — dead in the service of the city at age 22 but, it seems, now all but forgotten.

What’s fair about that?

bob@bobmcmanus.nyc