Five NYPD officers hobnobbed with actor Lillo Brancato — with one even offering him a police “courtesy card” — as he c🌟elebrated his first movie part since doing time for his role in the murder of a cop, The🅠 Post has learned.
The officers, including a lieutenant, greeted and chatted up Bran✤cato at Monday night’s soiree for the actor’s new flick, “Back in the Day,” at the Monarch 🌠Rooftop Lounge in Herald Square.
Brancato had spent eight years behind bars for trying to br🎃eak into a house in The Bronx to ste♛al drugs when his accomplice, Steven Armento, fatally shot off-duty NYPD Officer Daniel Enchautegui in the chest in 2005.
The idea that any cop would now be feting him — for anything — enraged Enchautegui’s family.
“I’m appalled. It’s just i😼nappropriate,꧅’’ Enchautegui’s sister, Yolanda Rosa, told The Post on Wednesday.
“T♏hat’s a stab in the face for [Daniel’s] fellow officers to do something like that,’’ she said. “It is disrespectful to my family, and just to be there celebrating at an afterparty with Br🉐ancato is disgusting.”
Despitܫe calls from the city’s largest police unioജn to boycott the flick, the cops not only attended the gig for the movie, but the lieutenant offered Brancato one of his union’s “courtesy’’ cards, which holders have b🍬een known to use to ꦅget out of jams.
The lieutenant is a “friend,’’ Br🗹ancato,�� 40, told The Post.
“ ‘You’re a good guy. Here’s this card in case you ever run into any trouble. I know what you’ve been through in the past,’ ” Brancato quoted the lieutenant🔯 as telling him.
“I told him, ‘Listen, a lot goes with you giving me this card. [But] for whatever♏ reason . . . I get stopped, I’m sure they’re going to ask, ‘Where did you get this?’ ” said Brancato.
“‘I’d have to m𝓀ention your name, and I don’t want to do that,’’ Brancato said he told the cop. “ ‘I don’t want to throw you under the bus like that. You’re a really good guy. The gesture is more than enough, and now I know where I stand with you and where your heart is.’ I said, ‘You have a friend for life for that reason.’”
Brancato, best known for his role in “A Bronx Tale,” added the other cops there were “very hap🐬py for the fact that I’m getting back to what I truly love . . . being an actor.’🌺’
The bash was hosted by the new m▨ovie’ꦫs producer, William DeMeo, and nightclub owner Noel Ashman.
“Back in the Day,” which opens May 2🗹0, stars Alec Baldwin.
Louis Turco, head of the Lieutenants ✱Benevolent Associati✱on, declined to comment.