This Military Service Page was created/owned by
PO William Raybold (Bill)
to remember
Faulkner, Daniel, PO.
If you knew or served with this Officer and have additional information or photos to support this Page, please leave a message for the Page Administrator(s) HERE.
Few police murders have received more national and even international coverage than the case of Officer Danny Faulkner. At around 4 a.m. on the morning of December 9, 1981, Officer Faulkner stopped a vehicle he had observed driving the wrong way down a one-way street. The stop was made in plain view of several witnesses. According to those witnesses, the culprit, William Cook, was violently resisting arrest when the driver of a taxi cab sitting across the street got out of his car, ran across the street and fired a bullet into Officer Faulkner's back. Moments later, the gunman stood over the injured 25-year-old officer and fired four more shots.
The murderer, it turned out, was William Cook's brother, Wesley (aka Mumia Abu-Jamal). At his trial, all of the eyewitnesses testified that Abu-Jamal was the killer and the jury quickly agreed. He was sentenced to death. But Abu-Jamal remains alive in a Pennsylvania prison more than 25 years later, still awaiting the outcome of further appeals of his sentence. Meanwhile, Officer Faulkner's wife, Maureen, is left to suffer the pain of losing a loved one. She once told her family and friends at a memorial service for her slain husband that "we will continue to stand behind [Danny's] name and speak out about the truth on the night he was murdered."
And, Maureen can also be comforted in knowing that it was Danny's life and death that inspired Philadelphia lawyer Jimmy Binns, in conjunction with the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police, to establish the Hero Plaque Program. When completed, the program will ensure that every fallen officer in the City of Philadelphia will have a bronze memorial plaque embedded in the place they laid down their life in service to their fellow citizens.
