Families of slain NYPD cops plead to keep killers locked up

The families of two NYPD cops killed in the line of duty are pleading with the state’s lefty parole board to keep the men who murdered their loved ones behind bars, The Post has learned. 

George Agosto who fatally shot Officer Thomas Ruotolo in the Bronx in 1984, and Eddie Matos who shoved Officer Anthony Dwyer to his death off a roof in Times Square roof in 1989, could be sprung from prison next month.

The 16-member parole board — ripped by critics as a patronage mill of leftist ideologues and political has-beens — has released 43 cop killers since 2017 after they began giving less weight to the severity of a convict’s crimes and more to their age and progress in prison.

Agosto, 65, who was out on parole for manslaughter when he killed Ruotolo, is serving 40 years to life at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, NY.

“Personally, I think it’s really important to emphasize that the sentence was 40 years to life,” Ruotolo’s widow Mary Beth O’Neill told The Post. “I really believe the ‘to life’ part matters because some crimes are too severe. They’re too violent. They’re too intentional to ever risk repeating.”

Ruotolo was responding to a call about a stolen moped in the Bronx that Valentine’s Day when Agosto pulled out a revolver and shot him before the cop even said a word.

The parolee, who already had a murder conviction on his rap sheet, then shot Ruotolo’s partner and an off-duty officer who happened to be on the scene.

“In his own words, he described himself as a ‘non-violent guy,’” the widow said, quoting from what he told the board in his rejected 2023 appeal. “But how can a man who killed two people and attempted to kill two others be called anything but violent?”

She was also “chilled to see” that he referred to the murder of her husband as “a mistake” — wondering what part was the mistake, carrying the gun, using it to steal a moped or shooting her husband.

“None of those sound like mistakes to me,” she said. “They sound like choices, criminal, deliberate, irredeemable choices.”

Matos, 57, is serving a 25-years-to-life at Green Haven Prison in Stormville for killing Dwyer. The officer was responding to an armed robbery at a McDonald’s when he chased Matos to the roof and was pushed, cops have said.

“They killed a cop,” Dwyer’s mom, Marge, said. “They should serve the rest of their lives in prison or get the death penalty. We don’t have it anymore but if we did I’d be down there to turn the switch myself.”

Both killers are scheduled to go to the parole board in September. The dates of their hearings aren’t released to the public.

PBA President Patrick Hendry went to the board’s Midtown office with the families to deliver their victim impact statements Friday.

“Every time they come here, they are forced to reopen their wounds and relive the worst day of their lives,” Hendry said. “Every time they leave here, they’re forced to wait and wonder whether their loved one’s killer will be released.”