The hearts of New Yorkers go out to the family of Dillon Stewart, the police officer who died early yesterday morning after being shot in the line of duty while on patrol in Brooklyn. Stewart’s 4-month-old daughter will never know her father, but when she is old enough to understand, she will know that he was a hero.

Police yesterday were questioning a suspect in the shooting. If the decision is made to charge him, and if the law permits it, a federal prosecution would allow for the death penalty, which New York law as interpreted by the state’s high court does not provide for. Federal prosecutors are already bringing a death penalty prosecution against Ronell “Rated R” Wilson for what they charge is his role in the 2003 killing of two New York City police detectives, James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews.

Governor Pataki has called for revising and reinstating the state’s death penalty statute to allow capital punishment at the state level. But the effort has been blocked in the Democrat-controlled state Assembly. The city’s police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, has been clear on the point: “Anyone who murders a police officer should himself forfeit his life.”

Dillon Stewart joins an honor roll that is too long and that has included recently not only Nemorin and Andrews but also Detectives Robert Parker and Patrick Rafferty, slain in the line of duty in September 2004. Not to mention New York Police Officer James McNaughton, killed while serving as a military policeman in Iraq, and the 23 members of New York’s finest who were killed in the terrorist attack of September 11,2001.

As we noted in the case of Nemorin and Andrews, when Mr. Kelly, who served as police commissioner under Mayor Dinkins and as director of the Customs Service in the Clinton administration, argues for the death penalty in such cases, he is joined by millions of New Yorkers from all political backgrounds who shudder in horror upon hearing that a police officer who is protecting them has been shot and killed.