NEW YORK -- The feds have reversed a contentious decision that denied more than $300,000 each in death benefits to the families of two auxiliary cops gunned down in Greenwich Village last year, authorities said yesterday.
US Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Sen. Charles Schumer that the original Department of Justice ruling - claiming the officers didn't quality for death benefits because they didn't have arrest powers - had been overturned.
"Every auxiliary police officer and their families now know when they go out and risk their lives that they will be treated the same should they make the ultimate sacrifice," Schumer said.
Officers Nicholas Pekearo, 28, and Yevgeniy Marshalik, 19 - both in uniform but not authorized to carry guns - were chased and killed by a gunman who'd already fatally shot a bartender at a Village pizza restaurant on March 14, 2007.
Although their families had collected death benefits from the city and Workers' Compensation, cash from the federal Public Safety Officers' Benefits program was originally denied.
The money should be coming in the next couple of weeks, a Schumer spokesman said.
Last month, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had testified at a Justice hearing in Manhattan, while Schumer asked Mukasey to intervene. At the hearing, a surveillance tape of the frantic chase and the officers' subsequent murders was shown.
Kelly, who had argued that the auxiliaries were acting as police officers, said the treatment of the two officers "was wrong from the start, but it's a happy ending."
Mayor Bloomberg praised the reversal saying, "I applaud the Department of Justice for rewarding the courageous, selfless acts performed by these two men to the full extent that Congress intended."
The names of the two young heroes next month will be added to cop memorials in both New York and Washington - in the lobby of NYPD Headquarters at One Police Plaza and at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in the nation's capital.
The federal rejection of death benefits had been devastating to the young men's families.
"For them to say that what they did was nothing, it really hurts," Boris Marshalik had said of his son. "I think it's very, very wrong."
Pekearo's mother, Iola Latman, said she "was relieved to have the answer and thrilled that they are now recognized as heroes."
Why are they unarmed??????? Like Westwood Auxillary police
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