Washington – Thirty-five years after Wallie Howard Jr. was shot and killed during an undercover drug bust, Rep. John Mannion wants to help keep the Syracuse police officer’s name remembered.
Mannion plans to introduce a bill Wednesday that would name the only remaining post office on Syracuse’s South Side in honor of Howard, who was killed in a grocery store’s parking lot only blocks away.
If the bill is signed into law, the Colvin-Elmwood Post Office at 2200 S. Salina St. would become the Officer Wallie J. Howard Post Office Building.
It would be the second building in Syracuse to be named in honor of Howard. In 2007, Onondaga County designated its new forensic laboratories the Wallie Howard Jr. Center for Forensic Sciences.
Mannion, D-Geddes, said the bill has broad bipartisan support in the Republican-controlled House.
Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican from Oswego County, is among the bill’s 17 co-sponsors, all House members from New York.
Howard, 31, was killed Oct. 30, 1990, outside Mario’s Market at 2735 S. Salina St., where he was waiting in a car to make an undercover drug buy of 4 pounds of cocaine.
Syracuse police officer Wallie Howard Jr., murdered in 1990
At the time of the shooting, Howard was the first Syracuse police officer slain in the line of duty since 1929.
The father of two graduated from Henninger High School and attended Syracuse University before joining the Syracuse police in 1982.
“Naming the South Salina Street Post Office in his honor ensures that future generations will remember his bravery and dedication to the city he served,” Mannion said in a statement.
The U.S. Postal Service considered closing the Colvin-Elmwood Post Office in 2011. It was included on a list of 3,700 post offices nationwide marked as candidates to be shuttered in a cost-cutting move.
But the Postal Service decided to keep the office open, in part, because Onondaga County agreed to install a green roof with vegetative cover that could cut the cost of heating and cooling the building.
South Side residents had circulated petitions to keep the post office open. If it closed, the nearest post office would have been in downtown Syracuse at 444 S. Salina St.
After the shooting, Robert “Bam Bam” Lawrence, then 16, was convicted of murder. He had approached Howard with two accomplices to rob him of cash he carried for the drug deal.
Lawrence was granted parole and released from prison in 2020 two days before the anniversary of Howard’s murder.
Lawrence had been sentenced to serve life in prison. But after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that juveniles shouldn’t be given life sentences, a federal judge reduced his sentence to 31 years.
A second man convicted for his role in the murder, Jaime A. Davidson, was released from prison in 2021 after President Donald Trump commuted his sentence.
Davidson’s release after nearly 29 years in prison outraged and stunned Central New York law enforcement officials.
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