There, to the corner of 107th Avenue and Inwood Street in the 103 Pct., every February 26th in the early morning since 1989. That’s where and when, in 1988, New York City police officer Edward Byrne was executed in a contractkilling ordered by drug lords as he sat in the driver’s seat of a parked RMP guarding the home of a high-profile witness in a narcotics case.

Byrne was barely 22 years old, a casualty of the mean and drug-infested New York City streets of that era, and a hero — not exploits but because, as the son of a retired police officer-turned lawyer, he recognized and accepted the dangers he faced in this job he had chosen to do.

Mayor Edward Koch called his assassination “an attack on society.”

The men who shot him in the head, as well as their accomplices, have been brought to justice. The drug lords — with names like “Pappy” and “Fat Cat” — remain locked up, too. And, because of Eddie Byrne’s fellow cops and their successors, the city’s crime picture has brightened considerably.

For the 20th anniversary, nearly 200 people — most but not all of them active or retired cops, many in dress uniform and white gloves — convened at that somber crossroads to keep the young cop’s memory alive. Most of those who gathered there — playing saying prayers — never knew Eddie Byrne

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The bagpipes played “Amazing Grace” and “God Bless America," a lowflying Aviation Unit helicopter lit the street with its searchlight, red-white- and-blue candles and a replica of Edward Byrne’s shield (see below) , in a wreath of carnations and roses, was raised on the corner.

A few of those in attendance did have first-hand experience of the event being commemorated. George Reynolds, recently retired from the PBA executive board, was a delegate in the 103 back then. Current PBA Queens South Financial Secretary Tony Keller was one of the first cops on the scene after the shooting. And it was clear that Edward Byrne’s legacy was secure. As PBA President Pat Lynch said at the anniversary event, “What happened on this corner 20 years ago today is what started this city’s renaissance.”