If the families of Nicholas Pekearo and Eugene Marshalik – the auxiliary police officers cut down last March while pursuing a crazed gunman – ever receive justice from Washington, it may happen only because Attorney General Michael Mukasey is a New Yorker.
Sen. Chuck Schumer says the AG told him that, as a Manhattan resident at the time of the killings, “he was aware of the bravery of the two police officers.”
And, Schumer added, Mukasey promised to take “a good, hard look” at the decision of underlings to deny the families death benefits under the 2003 Hometown Heroes Act – because they weren’t empowered to make arrests.
Here’s hoping a little hometown favoritism does the trick.
Pekearo and Marshalik died in a hail of bullets outside a Greenwich Village pizzeria, where their killer had already murdered another man. The shootings themselves were captured on a security video, with the horrific images splashed across the front pages and aired on local TV.
Mukasey, then a retired federal judge working at a major law firm, surely saw those images – repeatedly.
The officers’ selflessness in the face of mortal danger – auxiliary cops were not then even given bulletproof vests – ended up saving lives, at the cost of their own.
Which is why the two young men were buried with honors by a grateful city.
Everyone recognized Pekearo and Marshalik for what they were: heroes.
Except the Justice Department.
In an outrageous display of bureaucratic obstructionism, the department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance rebuffed the families’ claims for benefits, ruling that, as auxiliary cops, the two weren’t eligible.
The killer who cut them down, of course, didn’t care – all he saw were their NYPD-issued uniforms, radios, handcuffs and nightsticks as they pursued him. He saw cops – and started shooting.
That’s precisely the point a justifiably outraged Police Commissioner Ray Kelly tried to make Wednesday at an appeals hearing before a DOJ administrative judge – who declined to view the videotape as part of the proceeding, saying she preferred to do so privately.
Michael Mukasey was not yet attorney general when his agency made its misguided ruling – but he can reverse it.
As he must.