NYPD Officers Restoring the Chevy Caprice an Officer Was Shot in 37 Years Ago

Retired officers from the New York City Police Department are pooling their talent to restore a 1987 Chevrolet Caprice patrol car that one of their colleagues was fatally shot in nearly 40 years ago. It’s a major restoration project, the car has survived flooding and a fire, but the team is confident it can restore it in less than a year. One part of the car won’t be touched: The bullet hole through the passenger-side front door.

Eddie Byrne died at 22 years old on February 26, 1988, after getting ambushed and shot five times in his Caprice patrol car. He was guarding the home of a witness against a drug gang in Queens at the time of the incident. The big sedan wasn’t repaired or scrapped. Instead, it spent the next couple of decades moving from storage facility to storage facility, and it’s been through a lot. It looks like it’s pretty rusty, it flooded in Hurricane Sandy, and it survived the three-alarm Erie Basin warehouse fire that destroyed about 30 years’ worth of evidence in 2022.

The retired NYPD officers who want to put the Caprice back on the road to honor Byrne spent four years trying to get permission to fix it up. Their light finally turned green earlier in 2025, and the car has since been moved from the Brooklyn Auto Pound to a facility on Long Island.

Restoring the Caprice will be easier said than done, however, even for a group of enthusiasts that has restored classic patrol cars before. As an interesting side bar, yes, it turns out there are classic police car restorers out there.

If we take sentimental value out of the equation, we’re looking at a parts car at best, and not a very useful one. And, the 1980s Caprice isn’t exactly the most desirable or the most valuable car in Chevy’s catalog. This one is special, though, and it deserves a new lease on life. It should look pretty much like it did in 1987 when all is said and done, with the exception of the bullet hole that’s being intentionally retained.

The officers tackling the project expect that the restoration will cost up to $50,000, which they hope to raise through private donations, and they’re planning on having the Caprice finished before February 26, 2026. That gives them a little less than a year to knock out a ground-up restoration. When it’s done, the car will be displayed at the police academy in Queens for future generations of police officers to check out. This news report provides more info and visuals:

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