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FAREWELL TO A TRUE-BLUE COP

Omar Edwards wanted to be a cop since he was 5 years old.

PHOTOS: OMAR EDWARDS NYPD FUNERAL

At 10, he hung around the 73rd Precinct station house in Brooklyn, asking what the codes on the police radio meant.

When he graduated from the Police Academy in July 2007, he was so proud he wore his badge around his apartment.

“On duty or off duty — even at home — he was a police officer,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday.

Kelly, Mayor Bloomberg and hundreds of cops, friends and relatives packed Our Lady of Victory Church on Throop Avenue in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn for the slain cop’s funeral yesterday.

Outside the church was a sea of blue. Thousands of cops, some from as far away as Boston, lined Throop Avenue for as far as six blocks away to say goodbye to the officer.

Edwards, 25, a housing cop, was in street clothes last Thursday when he chased a man who broke into his car in East Harlem.

Police say plainclothes cops ordered them both to halt. When Edwards turned toward them with his gun out, one of the officers, Andrew Dunton, shot him.

Dunton, 30, did not attend Edwards’ funeral because he thought his presence would create controversy and detract from the somber event, sources said.

Instead, he attended the 9 a.m. Mass at St. Marks Church in Ridge, LI, where he lives, to say a prayer for the slain officer, sources said.

He was joined by family and members of the 25th Precinct anti-crime team, to which he is assigned.

At Our Lady of Victory, Edwards’ widow, Danielle, wept quietly in a pew. Her two sons with Edwards — Xavier, 18 months, and Keanu, 7 months — dozed through much of the ceremony.

Delivering one of several eulogies, Bloomberg said Edwards had wanted to become a police officer from age 5.

“About 18 months ago, many of us here today were at Madison Square Garden,” the mayor recalled. “Along with thousands of others, we were cheering the newest graduates of the NYPD Police Academy.”

“It was only two days after Christmas. And for one proud young officer in particular, it probably felt as if he’d just received what he’d wanted all his life.

“Because . . . his fondest dream had been to become one of New York’s Finest,” he said.

“Today, we gather again, this time to praise the gallant spirit of that dynamic, young police officer, and also to pray for him as he makes life’s final journey,” the mayor added.

“So to the family, friends, neighbors and fellow officers of Omar Edwards, let me express the deepest condolences of 8.4 million New Yorkers.”

Bloomberg announced that Edwards was being promoted posthumously to detective first grade so his family would receive better benefits.

Kelly said Edwards was “everything we could wish for in an officer: conscientious, hardworking, driven to learn about policing from the time he was a child.”

At 10, the commissioner said, Edwards was a member of the Youth Council of the 73rd Precinct.

“When he heard the sounds of an officer’s radio, he would listen and ask what all the codes meant,” he said.

“By all accounts, life as a police officer was everything Omar hoped it would be,” Kelly added. “Between work and fatherhood, he was living out a lifelong dream.”

Monsignor Robert Romano, a church pastor, said Edwards, a member of the NYPD football squad, was “the ultimate team player. Now he’s on God’s team.”

To the rat-tat-tat of a drum, Edwards’ casket, draped in a green and white NYPD flag, was borne into the church.

When the ceremony ended, Edwards’ mother, Natalia Harding, was overcome with grief and had to be supported by two officers. His widow, Danielle, stood nearby, holding Xavier.

A bugler played taps. A piper played “Amazing Grace.” Three NYPD helicopters soared overhead.

Edwards was buried at St. Charles Cemetery in East Farmingdale, LI. Some 600 mourners, forming a circle, threw roses at the coffin before it was lowered into the ground.

Sixty players from the NYPD football team attended the funeral.

“Omar was a very good player and a better person,” said Inspector Stephen McAlister, the president of the football team. “He was loved by all the team.”

Additional reporting by Ikimulisa Sockwell

perry.chiaramonte@nypost.com