Two Nassau County police officers were honored posthumously for their services to the community with their North Hempstead hometown streets renamed for them 65 years after their deaths.
The two officers remembered were Joseph L. Coote, a Manhasset police officer shot and killed by a suspected robber in 1961, and Robert H. Pickwick, a New Hyde Park officer killed in a car crash while on duty in 1960.
“You hear people say ‘never forget’ but over time people do forget the tremendous sacrifices officers and their families make,” Town Council Member Edward Scott, a retired New York City police officer, said. “It gives me great personal satisfaction to know that those who made the greatest sacrifice will now be memorialized forever.”
Ceremonies were held on Saturday, May 24, for the two officers.
Coote was honored with a renaming at Brinkerhoff Lane and Third Street in Manhasset, and Pickwick was honored at Hillside Avenue and Third Street in New Hyde Park.
Both the Coote and Pickwick families were in attendance at the street renaming ceremonies, alongside North Hempstead town officials, Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder and Nassau County police officers.
The street renamings are the latest to occur as part of the Nassau County Police Department’s 100th anniversary. The department is seeking to honor all 50 cops who have died in the line of duty throughout its history.
The Town of North Hempstead started honoring its crop of fallen police officers with Brian R. Abbondandelo, who died in 2016 of cancer related to his response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The formerly named Garden Street in Roslyn Heights, where his widow JeriAnn Abbondandelo and family lives, was the street renamed in his honor.
