Mike Bosak is a man with a mission. A retired sergeant from the 50 Pct. with an encyclopedic command of NYPD history, he is naturally a great admirer of the memorial walls established to pay tribute to the New York City police officers who have sacrificed their lives in the line of duty. He admires their design, their solemnity and their noble purpose. One thing he does not admire, however, is their accuracy.

Which brings us to his mission.

Bosak believes — and can demonstrate — that more than 77 worthy names have been omitted from the lists of the honored dead, on the memorial wall in the lobby at One Police Plaza, the one in Battery Park and elsewhere. And, he says, he is having an incredibly difficult time getting the powers that be at One P.P. to correct the injustice.

“We’re not talking about police officers who may have died under less than honorable circumstances or in questionable situations,” Bosak says. “We’re talking about police officers who have died true heroes and have been forgotten — all thoroughly documented heroes who are now being snubbed by the department.”

Bosak’s crusade began in 1996 — a year after his retirement after 26 years on the job — when the department erected the Battery Park Memorial bearing names corresponding exactly to those on the tablets in the “Hall or Heroes” at One P.P. It was then that he checked his sources and spotted the missing names.

“I also noticed a number of other mistakes — misspelled names, wrong ranks, wrong dates of death, things like that,” he said. “So I called the chief of personnel’s office, where I was told — and this is the God’s honest truth — that the official list was confidential. I asked how it could be confidential if it’s up on the wall and all I got was silence on the other end.”

For the next eight years, Bosak, with help from retired detective John Reilly, waged a campaign of documentation and correspondence to get the department to act. Letters and phone calls went to the mayor, police commissioner, chief of personnel and his staff, the Police Foundation, Survivors of the Shield, all the line organizations and various politicians.

“Our problem here was Chief (of personnel Michael) Markman. All communications ended up in his office, where the responsibility for the memorial lies, and he deep-sixed all of them. No matter how many letters I wrote to the department, there was never a written answer. I called to ask for the communication’s number and couldn’t get an answer. No communications number was assigned. The department wasn’t documenting my letters.”

Bosak turned next to the people at the National Law Enforcement Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C., providing them with the necessary documentation and asking them to intervene. “We didn’t think the department could ignore letters from this foundation, and some action would have to be taken,” Bosak said. “We couldn’t have been more wrong.”

The tide appeared to have turned after St. Patrick’s Day 2000 when Bosak met then-First Deputy Commissioner Pat Kelleher at the Emerald Society party. Bosak and Kelleher had been friends for years, having been cops together in O.C.C.B. Kelleher was sympathetic to Bosak’s cause and generated some action.

After their encounter, Bosak heard from the department and had a number of conversations about some of the inaccuracies, and it looked like they were getting somewhere. But then he was told he would have to provide death certificates for each of the 77-plus names, items he had neither the time nor money to produce.

“I perceived this as a delaying tactic by the department to kill the project,” he said.

Just about this time, Pat Lynch was about six months into his new administration at the PBA and Bosak decided to approach the police officers’ union, which considered the issue a worthwhile cause. The PBA cut him a $300 check to cover the death certificates and other expenses, while City Commissioner of Public Records Brian Andersson, an acquaintance of Bosak’s who had a brother on the job, became interested in the issue and offered to help with the research. The crusade picked up steam again.

Word of the problem reached the Giuliani administration and eventually found its way to Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who reportedly favored correcting the omissions, if the line-of-duty deaths proved legitimate.

The next development came in May 2000 at Law Enforcement Week in the nation’s capital, where Bosak serves yearly as an usher for the ceremonies honoring fallen officers. “Just before the thing started, Patty Lynch gets off an NYPD helicopter with Bernie Kerik, introduces me to the commissioner (we had met before), and I’m told the names are going on the list. Ten minutes later, I get a call on my cell phone from Brian Andersson who tells me he just came from First Deputy Commissioner Joe Dunn’s office and that Dunn told him the same thing: The list of those forgotten heroes had been approved for inclusion on the memorial walls. The following September, I get a letter from Chief of Personnel James Lawrence inviting me to an installation ceremony scheduled for September 26, 2001, at 1030 hours at One P.P.

“Of course, everyone knows what happened between the beginning of September and the 26th in the Year of Our Lord, 2001.”

So when will these heroes’ names find their rightful place on the memorial walls?

“Ask First Deputy Commissioner George Grasso, where the project has been stalled since the new administration took over in January 2002,” Bosak replies.