The spate of NYPD cops wounded in the line of duty this year has brought back horrible memories of the city’s bad old days to the founder of the nonprofit group COP SHOT.
“All the shootings this year brought me back to 1984, a year where so many cops were shot, wounded and murdered,” Edward Arrigoni said of the year he started the charity, when 22 cops were shot.
This year, there have been 10 cops wounded while on-duty.
Arrigoni, who ran the Bronx-based New York Bus Service for decades, initially started his work by loaning his buses to the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association for police funerals.
When cops were shot at or wounded, he and friends in the business community would put out rewards for the shooters.
Arrigoni decided to start the organization, whose acronym stands for Citizens Outraged At Police Being Shot, to create a standing $10,000 reward for informants when someone either shoots a cop or shoots at them — a powerful deterrent on the street.
“It’s so important, more than ever,” said Arrigoni. “It’s a breakdown in society that so many officers are being shot at or shot.”
The tragic slaying of 22-year-old rookie cop Edward Byrne in 1988 — whose four killers will have their first parole hearing this fall – was one of the first cases that solidified Arrigoni’s work.
After Byrne was murdered, the organization put out the $10,000 reward — and the city rallied, with citizens and other organizations raising the bounty to $130,000.
“Everybody sent in money earmarked just for the case. We posted the first reward– and everyone started chiming in, giving money because it was so heinous,” said the group’s operations director John Provetto.
Four informants called the COP SHOT hotline and gave information that led to the arrest of the fiends who killed Byrne.
“They were the first to offer a reward in 1988 when my brother was killed,” said Larry Byrne, the slain cop’s brother.
“A bunch of people came forward, and they were arrested pretty quickly. They were really important and helpful in a critical time.”
Since the organization started, Arrigoni’s organization has paid 23 informants who helped lock up thugs who have wounded or fired at cops — and the bounty they offered has also led some cop shooters to surrender.
When housing cop Paul Heidelberger was killed in 1992 after trying to break up a fight at a Queens bar, Provetto remembered COP SHOT canvassing the area for weeks in their iconic bus.
“We were pounding the street for a few weeks,” he said.
“The guy Patrick Bannon actually turned himself in. When the DA asked him what made you come in, he said all the money on the head. ‘It was only a matter of time before you got me.’”
Most recently, Cop Shot has hit the streets to find the still-on-the-loose gunman who wounded Officer Brian Groves on the Lower East Side in July.
“These guys put their lives on the line for us,” said Provetto. “We’ll be there for them even more than we were in 1984.”