Still from The Laughing Policeman (1973). Mario Biaggi was the most decorated member of the New York Police Department when he retired in 1965. Over the course of more than two decades as a cop, he shot and killed multiple suspects, including one who tried, but failed, to carjack him, and he was wounded eleven times, once by a runaway horse that left him with a lifelong limp. In 1968, Biaggi was elected to Congress as a Democrat, flipping a Republican stronghold in the Bronx, and bringing the movement for police power to Capitol Hill. Biaggi was the first of a new breed of tough-on-crime northern Democrat. He spent his political career championing police priorities in Washington, choreographing lobbying efforts, and uplifting the police officer’s perspective at committee hearings. “He was recognized as the guy to go to if you had a concern about law enforcement,” his aide Craig W. Floyd recalled.…