ALBANY - A trooper killed by friendly fire in a shootout with a fugitive last year received the top state police award for heroism and a standing ovation Wednesday from hundreds of officers and their families.

David Brinkerhoff's widow accepted the Brummer Award. Superintendent Harry Corbitt held the Brinkerhoffs' infant daughter. Pictures memorialized the event. Earlier, the other five troopers in the shootout received commendation awards. Each in turn stopped and embraced Barbara Brinkerhoff as they walked from the State Police Academy auditorium stage.

“You still have a family and we care about you,” Corbitt said in closing remarks also greeted with standing applause. The state police, he said, is a family organization.

Most of the 38 troopers and staff recognized for work in 2007 were accompanied by children. Particular efforts included life-threatening rescues, the investigation that helped catch Buffalo's serial killer known as the “bike path rapist,” firefights with other armed suspects, and a trooper who wrote 3,843 of the million traffic tickets state police issued last year.

With a couple of babies crying in the audience, Gov. David Paterson joked, “What you're hearing are some legislators that are not going to get what they want this year. ‘Cause there's a new sheriff in town.”' Then he added more seriously that the awards were symbolic, representing daily heroism unimaginable to most people.

According to state police, the Brummer Award has been given 88 times, now 13 times posthumously.

A member of the force's SWAT-style mobile response team, Brinkerhoff died April 25, 2007, in a shootout with 23-year-old Travis Trim in a farmhouse near the Catskills. Police said Trim shot another trooper, striking his body armor, a day earlier during a traffic stop, fled and was hiding in the farmhouse.

State police said Wednesday that Brinkerhoff, 29, fired one of two bullets that killed Trim. The investigation also identified which trooper's bullet struck Brinkerhoff, but authorities have declined to disclose that detail or precisely what went wrong or whether the Mobile Response Team has changed its methods since.

Corbitt, 60, joined the state police in 1978, was a noncommissioned officer for several years at its basic school, eventually promoted to colonel and deputy superintendent in charge of internal affairs before retiring in 2004. He defended the 5,000-member force against allegations some officers were involved in political surveillance.

“Most recently this organization has been accused of doing something improper,” Corbitt said. “It's not consistent with the New York State Police I know.”