Let cop killers keep rotting, his bro urges

THE MAN WHO gives legal advice to the NYPD will set aside his job Friday to make his way to a parole board hearing for his brother’s killers.

In a case that garnered national headlines, Police Officer Edward Byrne (photo inset) was ambushed and shot to death by drug dealers while guarding the home of a witness in Queens in February 1988.

NYPD’s deputy commissioner for legal matters, Lawrence Byrne, will once again make the case to the parole board that the four killers should not be released from prison.

Philip Copeland, Todd Scott, Scott Cobb and David McClary are serving sentences of 25 years to life in state prison, and have been incarcerated for 28 years.

They were previously rejected for parole in 2012 and 2014.

“I think about my brother every day, but I don’t think about the vivid details of what happened every day,” Byrne said in his 14th-floor office at Police Headquarters, binders containing supportive letters from mayors, police commissioners, senators and judges sitting next to him on a table.

So Byrne prepared for the somber task on Wednesday night by going through records of the case.

“What I did last night is watch again the videotaped postarrest statements the defendants made and hear them talking about laughing when they see Eddie’s brains coming out of his head,” Byrne said, his voice cracking with emotion.

“That only strengthens my resolve to make sure that these guys never get out of jail.”

Byrne also looked over the killers’ statements to parole officials. He says rather than showing remorse, all four of them insisted they bore little or no responsibility for the crime. “They still, 28 years later, accept no responsibility and show no recognition of what a terrible crime it is,” he said.

Drug dealer Howard (Pappy) Mason ordered the murder of a cop from a pay phone in jail, where he had been sent a few days earlier.

“He called Phillip Copeland, who is one of his chief lieutenants, and said, ‘We have to send a message. They take one of us, we take one of them. You have to ice a cop,’” Byrne said.