Honor Auxiliaries' Sacrifice

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly made clear in two separate appearances last week why the Justice Department erred in denying Federal death benefits to two Auxiliary Police Officers who were shot to death while pursuing a murderer in Greenwich Village 13 months ago.

A Justice Department hearing officer turned down the applications for death benefits - which would include payments of $300,000 to the slain officers' families - on the grounds that because they lacked the authority to make arrests that is vested in peace officers, they did not qualify.

Mr. Kelly rejected that reasoning, saying that in pursuing the crazed killer, Officers Nicholas Pekearo and Yevgeniy Marshalik were serving as law-enforcement officers responding to a crime and trying to prevent further bloodshed.

After calling the denial of the death benefits "wrongheaded" during a March 24 Police Headquarters press conference where he was joined by U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, Commissioner Kelly told a Justice Department hearing officer two days later, "Their selfless acts, which I believe prevented many other deaths, are precisely the type of conduct that the Public Safety Officers' Benefits Act is intended to compensate."

The hearing officer, Inez Haller, apparently had fewer qualms about perpetrating an injustice than she did about the manner in which the two men were murdered: she refused to watch video of their killings when it was offered during the hearing.

Auxiliary Police Officers are not full cops but they assist them, acting in Mr. Kelly's words as "eyes and ears" to alert the NYPD to possible crimes while also offering a uniformed presence that can serve as a deterrent to criminal activity. It was those uniforms that attracted the attention of the killer, David Garvin, as they tried to follow him, prompting him to execute Mr. Pekearo and Mr. Marshalik. Their pursuit of a man who had already killed showed a bravery that exceeds that normally required of duly sworn police officers, since neither one of them was armed.

The Justice Department should acknowledge their valor by hastily reversing a clearly unjust ruling.