Читать книгу Beat Cop to Top Cop - John F. Timoney - Страница 11

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From Sergeant to Management

I'm in the New York Times; I'm dead in the water.

—PATRICK MURPHY, CHIEF OF OPERATIONS

I had passed the police sergeant's exam in 1973 with a decent score. However, with little seniority and no veteran's preference points, I wound up ranked between eight hundred and nine hundred on a two-thousand-person list. Historically, the NYPD would have promoted up to fifteen hundred sergeants on that list, so I was pretty certain of getting promoted. Unfortunately, with the police layoffs in 1976, there was obviously less of a need for sergeants, and so I “died” on that list.

In 1978, I took a new sergeant's exam and scored much higher. I was in the first group of sergeants to be promoted from that list two years later. The NYPD conducts a three-week orientation course that is meant to assist police officers in their transition from cop to supervisor. New sergeants are exposed to a variety of challenging situations, from conducting roll call to overseeing an internal investigation for a minor violation by a member of his or her squad. The real eye-opener of the course is a series of reality-based scenarios where a sergeant is placed in a situation in which he or she will have to make a tough decision. It is usually a confrontational situation, maybe with racial or gender overtones, maybe with a serious violation of the rules and procedures, maybe even a criminal act. Each scenario ends with the admonition phrased as a challenge: “It's your move, Sergeant.” I didn't realize that I would get to play in my own real-life scenario less than a month after being assigned as a patrol sergeant to the 32nd Precinct in Central Harlem.

The 32nd Precinct is one of the most revered of the seventy-six police precincts in New York City. More police officers have been killed in that precinct than in any other. As you come through the double glass doors, you are greeted by the pictures of those officers who paid the ultimate sacrifice. The precinct commander was a deputy inspector, a tough little Italian American who had spent most of his career in Brooklyn. He was a no-nonsense commander and would remind you often: “I don't put up with that bullshit.” He and I seemed to hit it off right away, and I enjoyed his fatherly advice.

Every two weeks, on payday, a supervisors’ meeting was held in his office, and every sergeant and lieutenant was required to attend, even if it was their day off. At one particular meeting he informed us that the Inspections Division from headquarters had been visiting some of the hospitals throughout the city, checking on hospitalized prisoners who were guarded by police officers from the local precinct. As you might expect, the Inspections Division always found numerous violations, including situations where guarded prisoners remained uncuffed for hours on end. This was a serious breach of protocol that would not be tolerated by the fair-haired boys at One Police Plaza. The city-run Harlem Hospital was just three blocks from the precinct house and always had two or three prisoners under guard at any one time. At the supervisors’ meeting the commander reminded us of our duties to check on the cops and the prisoners at least once during each shift. While doing so, we were to ensure that each and every prisoner was handcuffed, “no exceptions, no bullshit.” A few days later, as part of my regular patrol duties, I visited the three police officers guarding the prisoners at Harlem Hospital. The three officers were all well groomed and fully attentive. Unfortunately, only two of the three prisoners were handcuffed. The prisoner who was not handcuffed was the most dangerous of the three by virtue of the fact that he had received his wounds in a shootout with detectives from the nearby 28th Precinct.

When I questioned the officer as to why this prisoner was not handcuffed, he replied, “He's not going anywhere. I have my eye on him. And besides,” he added, “it's inhumane.” I reminded him that he was not in the humane business, and I then directed him to handcuff the prisoner. He refused. I had an immediate flashback to the training session at the academy: “It's your move, Sarge.”

The two other officers whose prisoners were handcuffed sat watching me with the obvious question on their mind: What are you gonna do, Sarge? I instructed the police officer to keep the prisoner in constant sight and I would be right back. I went downstairs, brought my driver back upstairs with me, and directed my driver to handcuff the prisoner. I indicated that he would remain guarding the prisoner for the rest of the shift. I told the original guarding officer to get the car keys and drive me back to the station, where we would address the matter. As we were driving across 135th Street to the station, the guarding police officer didn't say much except one statement, which unnerved me a little: “You know, Sarge, if I don't want you here, I can just make you disappear.” That was the extent of the conversation.

At the station, I went in to see the commanding officer, told him what happened, and explained that I was taking disciplinary action against the police officer, recommending two weeks’ suspension for failure to follow a direct order. The commander seemed satisfied with my actions, exclaiming, “At least somebody has got some balls around here to do what they're told.” I took that as a compliment and began the paperwork process. I was soon brought to reality when two fellow sergeants confronted me, saying, “Timoney, what the fuck is wrong with you? Don't you know that cop's a psycho? That's why he's guarding prisoners!” “Oh,” I replied.

A couple of weeks later, while working the late tour on a cold February night, I was reading through department directives and bulletins when I came across an announcement from the NYPD Scholarship Unit for a series of college scholarships, including one to Hunter College for a master's degree in urban planning. It seemed too good to be true: a year's leave of absence with pay to obtain a master's degree. As I look back on that cold February night, finding that scholarship announcement was probably the turning point in my career.

There was one minor problem. I had already received a master's degree five years prior on my own time. The next day I called the Scholarship Unit at the police academy to inquire if my master's degree would disqualify me from applying. The woman said, “No. That's not a problem.” “But I don't have a rabbi,” I replied. (In NYPD parlance, a rabbi is someone who can get favors done for you.) “You don't need a rabbi,” she replied. “This is legit. It's an open, competitive process, and the winner is chosen by committee. The only thing you need to do is retake the Graduate Record Examinations.” I took the GREs a few months later, scored well, and was awarded the scholarship to study urban planning at Hunter College later that year.

My first master's was in American history, as had been my bachelor's. The next year at Hunter College a whole new horizon was opened up for me. I began to mingle with professors and others who introduced me to this whole new notion of public policy. It was at Hunter where I met Donna Shalala for the first time. She had come from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to be the president of Hunter. She would later go on to become the president of the University of Wisconsin, serve for eight years in the Clinton administration, and then become the president of the University of Miami. Professor Peter Salins, a market-oriented housing expert, was affiliated with the Manhattan Institute, a think-tank policy group that would have huge influence on the so-called “new mayors” of the 1990s. Professor Eugenie Birch, a historian by training but one of the forerunners of “mapping” housing patterns—including abandoned areas and their relationship to social ills, such as crime—was working with early computer programs that examined the relationship between housing, abandonment, poverty rates, and a whole host of quality-of-life issues. It was Genie who, in 1993, shared with me a new computer program that looked at the correlation between housing abandonment, poverty, and unemployment rates. (Years later, when I became the police commissioner of Philadelphia, Genie played a critical role in providing the Philadelphia Police Department with young, talented computer mappers from the University of Pennsylvania, where she is now a professor.) And there was Professor Donald Sullivan, a great housing advocate and policy wonk who proved that he could still have fun in the sterile atmosphere of academia. Donald unfortunately died of AIDS much too young.

In September 1982, I returned to Harlem, this time to the 25th Precinct. I had my new master's degree, but I was wondering, What happens next? It was clear to me that past recipients of these scholarships were eventually brought to headquarters, usually sooner rather than later. I was ambivalent regarding working at headquarters. I wanted to return to the Narcotics Division as a sergeant. Narcotics had been so much fun the first time around.

My first day back on patrol in the 25th Precinct was a Sunday. I was the patrol sergeant on the 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. shift. My driver was a young, good-looking, six-foot-three-inch-tall Italian American named Michael Verde. Verde filled me in on his career to date. He had gone through the academy and had arrived at the 25th Precinct while I was away on leave. Most of the morning was spent visiting police officers on post and signing memo books. At one point in our conversation, Verde was talking about the precinct commander and what a good guy he was. A month earlier, Verde had gotten married, and in a very unusual step, the precinct commander had given Verde the first two weeks of August off for his wedding. The notion of a rookie getting two weeks in August off is unheard of. Recognizing that, Verde wondered out loud to me why the commander had given him the time off. He stated, “I just kind of got here, just came on; I don't know why he gave me the time. He didn't need to mollify me.” I immediately directed Verde to stop the car, and I asked him, “Who are you?” He said, “Huh?” I said, “Who are you?” “I'm Michael Verde from Astoria, Queens.” I said, “Not where are you from, who are you? Cops don't use words like mollify, so who are you?” “Oh,” he said. “Before becoming a cop, I graduated from Columbia University.” He was clearly a smart, up-and-coming young officer with the balls to match his brains. I made a conscious decision that day that, going forward, I would always keep Verde in the back of my mind.

Four months later, I received a phone call to report to the Chief of Operations Office at One Police Plaza, where I would be assigned as a research analyst for the then four-star chief of operations officer, Patrick Murphy. I had never met Murphy but had seen him numerous times on television. With his tightly cropped silver hair and steely blue eyes, he looked like a typical Irish cop: tough. Some would say he looked nasty. It may be the first time in my life when I met someone whose personality in no way matched his looks. Pat Murphy was a kind, gentle man with self-effacing good humor, and he was always considerate of those who worked for him, including the civilian staff (which was not always the case in the NYPD). The one word that constantly comes to mind regarding Pat Murphy is class. It was not uncommon for him as he got his coffee in the morning to sit around for a half hour or so, talking to my fellow sergeant Bobby Nardoza and me about the department, policies, or whatever police news was in the morning headlines. He became an enormous influence in my life.

As a research analyst, it was my job to review proposed changes in policies and procedures that had been suggested or created by other entities within the NYPD, in the hope that we would improve the delivery of police services. Part of that included determining that any new policies and procedures did not conflict with any existing ones. After doing this rudimentary and boring work for three months, I was finally given an assignment I could sink my teeth into. I was assigned the task of developing the NYPD's new policy on high-speed police pursuits. My attitude toward high-chases was a typical cop's attitude. You blow a red light, you run from the police, you try to escape, and we'll get you, no matter how fast and how well you can drive a car. We'll get you. And most of the time we did. Clearly, there was the possibility of an accident, but with the testosterone level screaming and the pedal-to-the-metal approach, who thinks about accidents? We're gonna get the guy, even if it kills us, even if he is guilty only of running a red light.

As I began to research what was going on across the country, it became clear that most cops thought like I did. What also became clear was that an awful lot of innocent people paid with their lives so that guys like Timoney could get their guy. There needed to be some kind of balance. In the midst of my research, I discovered that the agitation for these policies was the result of lawsuits. In one particularly tragic case, a man sued a police department in the Midwest after he lost his two daughters when his car was T-boned by some knucklehead being chased by police because he had run a red light. All across the country, there was case after case with similar horrific endings. Once I began the research, it became clear that police departments needed to strike a balance. It's actually very simple. When the danger to the community outweighs the danger of allowing the person to get away, it's incumbent upon the police to terminate the vehicle pursuit. Creating the rationale for the policy is the easy part. Creating rules and procedures within the policy is what's difficult.

After numerous iterations, we created the policy that still stands today. The lesson for me was transformative. For years I had viewed the mindless memos and policies emanating from the “puzzle palace”—a derisive term for police headquarters—as an effort by the top brass to handcuff police officers, to dissuade them from doing their duty, to make their lives miserable. But as I read one tragic case after another, it became clear that there was a real need for such a policy. At the end of the day, the policy was meant to support our primary mission: to save lives. If by not pursuing some sixteen-year-old kid joyriding in a stolen car we save the life of an innocent pedestrian or motorist, then that's what we're all about. Ironically, I had heard this policy articulated a dozen years earlier by the informal leader of the 44th Precinct, police officer Desi Flaherty, who on more than one occasion would call off a chase that he felt was too dangerous and not worth the risk with the admonition “Don't worry. God will get him.”

Congressional Hearings on Police Brutality

Not only can policy affect police shootings; so can the press. In 1983, a congressional oversight committee came to New York to investigate the issue of police brutality, including police shootings. The mayor and the police commissioner were among the many people asked to testify. The hearings were politically and racially charged, and unfortunately the committee had reached a foregone conclusion—before the hearings had even begun. They felt the NYPD was a racist organization whose cops indiscriminately shot and killed members of minority groups. I was given the task of researching police shootings over the previous fifteen years. This really piqued my interest in the issues surrounding deadly physical force, and it is an interest I still have to this day.

The research was fascinating in what it revealed. The NYPD was probably the most progressive and restrained police department in the nation, and the numbers proved it. More important for me was that the research showed that good, sound policy can have an immediate, dramatic, and lasting impact. Prior to the implementation of the shooting policy in August 1972, the records of the police shootings in the NYPD were unreliable. Police statistics for police officers discharging their weapons were kept at the police firing range. The statistics regarding those killed and wounded were pretty accurate. However, accidental discharges and “misses” were completely unreliable. So the numbers maintained at the range should be considered conservative numbers. But what they indicated was that in 1970 and 1971, the NYPD recorded around eight hundred discharges. Between ninety and a hundred people were killed, and dozens more were wounded.

The 1972 numbers showed a slight decrease. But that is deceiving. You don't appreciate the dramatic decrease until you separate the shootings from before and those from after the date the policy was implemented. Looking at police shootings for the first eight months of 1972, they appear to be quite similar to those from 1970 and 1971. However, when you look at the last four months of 1972 and prorate these numbers, there is an immediate decline in shootings of about 40 percent. There is an additional decline in 1973 and another decline in 1974. This trend continued, and a decade later, the number of all reported discharges was around 350, and the number of people killed was around twenty.

My research clearly indicated numbers that showed the NYPD had greatly improved in the area of deadly physical force. But the statistics dealt only with officers discharging their weapons. What about when officers don't discharge their weapons, even when they would be fully justified in doing so, including times when they are being shot at? Unfortunately, those statistics were not readily available. I conducted a rather laborious hand check of all Firearms Discharge and Assault Reports and was able to uncover numerous instances in which police officers could have discharged their weapons justifiably but elected not to do so. This was another indication of the restraint used by members of the NYPD. Going forward, I instituted a policy that captured these instances under the title Shot at but Did Not Return Fire.

My research put me in touch with James Fyffe. In 1977, Fyffe, a police lieutenant assigned to the police academy, completed his doctoral dissertation on police shootings in the NYPD, using the 1972 policy as the impetus for his thesis. Jim went on to become a college professor, the author of numerous books on police use of deadly physical force, and America's number one expert on the subject. Jim passed away in 2006, but his contribution to this field will live on.

Unfortunately, even with statistics on your side and a clear improvement in performance in the area of deadly physical force, opinions were set in stone. The congressional oversight committee disregarded these numbers and came to the same conclusion it had reached before the hearings began.

A few years later, while continuing to review and monitor police shootings, I noticed a disturbing trend. Not only can policy affect police shootings, so can the press. In a seven-or eight-month span, six police officers were indicted and arrested in six separate incidents involving the discharge of their weapons. One was an off-duty situation, in which the officer killed an individual and was arrested for homicide. The other five were all on-situations and would fall under the category “There but for the grace of God go I.” The six indictments and arrests garnered inflammatory headlines in the tabloids and on television. As a result of the coverage, the number of people shot, and especially those killed, reached an all-time record low. It was clear to me that police officers had become hesitant to use their firearms even in situations where they were fully justified in doing so. It is almost impossible to prove that theory, but one anecdote may make the point.

The scene was in Brooklyn's Bushwick section. A police sergeant was signing the memo books of rookie police officers on their posts. As the sergeant was in the process of signing one rookie's book, an old man, the owner of a liquor store who had been robbed two days prior, informed the sergeant that the guy who committed the armed robbery was on the sidewalk walking toward them. The sergeant got out of his car and confronted the guy, who pulled out an automatic revolver, let some shots go at the sergeant, and then ran down the street. The sergeant pursued him on foot for about three or four blocks; along these blocks the sergeant passed no fewer than two rookies who observed the chase and his ongoing gun battle with the bad guy. The armed felon ran into an alley, climbed the fire escape, and entered a fourth-floor bedroom window.

As he entered the bedroom, he startled a man and woman as they lay in bed. The man was an off-duty NYPD officer. The woman was an off-transit police officer. Spotting a man with a gun coming through their window, both officers discharged their weapons, killing the felon. Good story, happy ending, except: when the sergeant began to retrace his steps and question the rookie officers he had passed during the running gun battle, they told him they weren't sure if they could shoot because they had seen a lot of police officers get arrested for discharging their weapons during the prior six or seven months. It is hard to know if this was a failure of training at the police academy or not, but clearly the negative headlines had had a negative effect on those rookie police officers.

The power of the press to influence police policy and practice is a fantastic phenomenon not often appreciated by the average citizen. The chilling effect of the negative stories regarding police officers being arrested for discharging their firearms is clear. The statistical evidence bolstered by some anecdotal evidence supports the theory. These negative stories can also have an inflammatory effect, especially in the case of prosecutors. A feeding frenzy by the press can cause some prosecutors to overreach. I have seen it time and again where police officers who did nothing wrong or who simply made a mistake were arrested or indicted.

Ben Ward

In late 1983, Police Commissioner Robert McGuire announced that he would be retiring at the end of the year, after serving six years in one of the most demanding and stressful jobs in the world. McGuire had guided the department through the turbulent years coming out of the layoffs and the blackout. He had been asked to provide the same police service even though he was about ten thousand police officers short of the 1975 staffing levels—an impossible task. Throughout this period, McGuire displayed an air of confidence and competence. By and large, the rank and file viewed him quite favorably.

Once McGuire announced his intentions, all eyes turned toward who his successor would be. Those of us who worked for Chief Pat Murphy were hoping Murphy would be chosen. However, one morning over coffee, Chief Murphy announced to us, in his typical self-effacing manner, that he would not be the choice, especially given that the New York Times, earlier that morning, had predicted he would be the choice. Murphy exclaimed with a rueful smile, “I'm in the New York Times; I'm dead in the water.” He was prescient. A few days later, Mayor Koch announced that Benjamin Ward would be the first African American police commissioner in the history of the NYPD.

Speculation was rampant, as it usually is in these situations, as to why Ward was chosen. The overwhelming argument was that the racial animosity emanating from the recent congressional hearings on police brutality was largely responsible for his promotion. Mayor Koch denied this, stating that Ward had been chosen due to his police background and the fact that he had held high positions in other parts of the city government, including commissioner of the Department of Corrections. No matter what the speculation, the appointment opened old wounds regarding an incident on April 14, 1972, at a Harlem mosque on 116th Street. Officer Phillip Cardillo of the 28th Precinct was shot there after responding to a phony call for an officer needing assistance. Two other police officers were seriously injured. Hundreds of police officers responded to the location, and there were skirmishes along the streets all day and night. Tensions ran high.

Immediately after the shooting, Deputy Inspector John Haugh, the commanding officer of the 28th Precinct, arrived at the mosque and took charge. Haugh reported that when he entered the basement of the mosque, there were approximately fifteen men (suspects) facing the wall, with one other male on the floor suffering from injuries received during the skirmish with the responding officers. Haugh ordered an ambulance for the injured man and directed that the fifteen other individuals await interview by investigating detectives. Haugh then went to the street to handle a growing unruly and angry crowd.

A few higher-ranking members of the NYPD also responded to the mosque, including the chief of detectives, Al Seedman; the deputy commissioner of community affairs, Ben Ward; and the deputy commissioner for public information, Robert Daly. Also responding to the mosque was Minister Louis Farrakhan and a number of his assistants. The plan, as Haugh understood it, was to take all of the suspects to the 24th Precinct (where the borough detectives were headquartered) for further investigation to determine who shot Officer Cardillo and who assaulted Police Officer Victor Padilla.

Someone, it was not clear who, made a deal that would allow all of the suspects to leave the mosque without police escort and without handcuffs and report to the 24th Precinct for interviews. Not surprisingly, none of the suspects showed up at the 24th.

As if this was not bad enough, the top brass of the NYPD refused to issue a statement supporting Police Officer Cardillo and his fellow responding officers. Meanwhile, Minister Farrakhan held daily press conferences and made outlandish charges—including the charge that other police officers shot Officer Cardillo. Officer Cardillo succumbed to his injuries and died six days later in his hospital bed, still with no support from the top brass at headquarters. To make matters worse, if that were possible, Commissioner Murphy, who had been on a trip to England when the original incident happened, remained in England, failing to attend Officer Cardillo's funeral.

The incident at the mosque and the subsequent investigation, or lack of investigation, remained an open sore in the annals of the NYPD. There is nothing in the long history of that department that comes close to matching the killing of Officer Phillip Cardillo.

It was against this backdrop that Ben Ward was announced as the new police commissioner of the NYPD, beginning in January 1984. The allegation against Ward was that, while he had responded to the mosque to calm tensions, he had ended up striking the deal with the suspects. The bad blood that stemmed from this dogged Ward for years and resurfaced again when he was promoted to police commissioner.

Ward's position at the time—deputy commissioner of community affairs—would not have allowed him to strike a deal with the suspects in the mosque. He had no operational authority. However, Ben Ward was no shrinking violet, and it is more likely that he offered his strong opinion and recommendation to the operational commanders at the scene. Three or four years after Ward's appointment to police commissioner, Al Seedman, who had been the chief of detectives during the mosque incident, admitted he was the one who struck the bargain to allow the people involved to turn themselves in. When asked later by New York Newsday reporter Len Levitt why he had not come forward to admit this, Seedman responded lamely, “What difference would it have made?”

As an aside, while I was researching police shootings for the congressional hearings on police brutality, I found an old folder in the bottom of a file cabinet at headquarters that contained memos and handwritten notes regarding internal discussions about the Harlem mosque case. Though these memos and notes didn't give a full view of what happened that day, one thing was clear: Ward did get into a heated argument in front of the 24th Precinct with Haugh regarding the police response after Officer Cardillo was shot. Both Ward and Haugh were lawyers and argued with each other about the laws that were applicable to the situation. However, the finer points of the law gave way to charges by Ward that Haugh was exacerbating tensions by the way he deployed and utilized responding police personnel. Ward thought the visible display of force, particularly by the officers who carried rifles, was unnecessary. The 28th Precinct commander was highly respected by the rank and file, and his very public argument with Ward (which subsequently led to his resignation/retirement over the department's handling of the matter) added to his stature, all to the detriment of Ben Ward.

Thirty-seven years after the killing of Phillip Cardillo the case remains unsolved. In 2009, Raymond Kelly, in his second stint as police commissioner of the NYPD, ordered a reinvestigation of the incident at the mosque.

Ward hit the ground running when he became commissioner in January 1984. He chose Pat Murphy as his first deputy commissioner and Robert J. Johnston Jr., who had been the chief of patrol, as the new four-star chief of operations, and my new boss. Johnston was a silver-haired, barrel-chested man who seemed to be in perpetual motion. He was a take-charge, no-nonsense taskmaster and a great field tactician. He had a creative genius for logistics and was constantly thinking up new ways to improve police equipment and tactics. He spent endless hours over coffee with the mechanics at Fleet Maintenance, devising ways to create and build equipment. For example, he designed a fleet of trucks and cars with high-powered lighting systems that could illuminate several city blocks in the event of a blackout or civil disturbance. He also created the “Mandela mobile,” similar to the Pope mobile, to facilitate African National Congress head Nelson Mandela's historic visit to New York City in 1991. Finally, Johnston was the architect and greatest proponent of overwhelming force, long before it was known as the Powell Doctrine. The bottom line was that, like most great leaders, he was both feared and loved by the troops who served under him.

By 1984, as a result of an influx in hiring over the prior four years, NYPD staffing levels were starting to rise. Though the number of police officers was nowhere near the 1973 levels, there were a few thousand more officers than existed in 1980. Ward made it clear to his executive staff that he was not just going to put the hundreds of additional officers in police cars to respond to 911 calls. His rationale was simple. The police department was already doing a decent job handling the 911 calls, and the additional officers would be able to make only marginal improvements in this area. Ward had other ideas as to how to use these new officers.

These new officers gave the police force the ability to attack crime in a serious fashion for the first time in my career in the NYPD. Until that point, the notion of fighting crime seriously had not really existed due to the focus on police corruption after the Knapp Commission hearings and the loss of nearly ten thousand officers due to layoffs and attrition.

In the early months of his administration, Ward unveiled a crime-fighting plan known as Operation Pressure Point, which dealt mainly with drugs and violence in the Lower East Side. The program was a huge success because there were extra police officers assigned to the area in both uniform and plainclothes. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, so Pressure Points 2 and 3 were unveiled later that year.

The Death of Eleanor Bumpers

While things were going well for Ward in Lower Manhattan, the same could not be said for the Bronx. In mid-1984, Emergency Service Unit police officers were dispatched to a housing project in the 44th Precinct to assist housing police officials with an eviction. ESU officers are specially trained to handle emotionally disturbed persons. The person to be evicted was Eleanor Bumpers, a sixty-seven-year-old African American grandmother. She was a large woman, over two hundred pounds, who was, at times, emotionally disturbed. Bumpers threatened to do harm to anyone who came into her apartment. Apparently, she was suffering from a paranoid delusional episode. Bumpers held a long knife in her hand as emergency service officers broke down her door down with a battering ram and entered her apartment. At the time, officers would use a T-bar (an implement about six to eight feet long that would keep the armed person at bay). The officer who was carrying the T-slipped upon entry into the apartment, allowing Bumpers to gain the advantage. She raised her hand, as if to plunge her knife into the back of the officer. A backup officer fired two rounds into Bumpers, killing her instantly.

This incident was a tragedy. There was no shortage of critics of the NYPD, and specifically of Officer Steve Sullivan, who had killed Bumpers. (I had worked with Steve Sullivan when I was a rookie cop in the 44th Precinct. He was an even-tempered, thoughtful police officer who was held in high regard.)

The reaction of the African American community was instant and understandable. The clear question in the air was how a sixty-seven-year-old grandmother could be evicted from a New York City Housing Authority building. In other words, this was not the action taken by a private landlord. This was the city. And how could an eviction of a grandmother ever lead to her death? Those were legitimate questions by the public. Equally legitimate were the questions, or rather feelings, of the average New York City police officer: there but for the grace of God go I. We all knew that we could find ourselves in an equally horrific situation on any given day.

The district attorney for the Bronx was Mario Merola, a person held in deep distrust by the vast majority of Bronx police officers. Merola seemed to be more of a politician than a professional district attorney. If indicting a cop could win him support or votes, a cop was not given the benefit of the doubt in close-call situations. Merola impaneled a grand jury to investigate the Bumpers case and, not surprisingly, a murder indictment was handed down against Officer Sullivan. This, in turn, brought about the largest demonstration of off-duty police officers in the history of the NYPD. Over ten thousand police officers converged at 161st Street and the Grand Concourse to express their outrage, demand Merola's resignation, and protest other assorted complaints. Needless to say, this further heightened racial tensions in the city.

Early on in the Bumpers case, Commissioner Ben Ward made an offhand but understandable comment that infuriated police officers and their union. He remarked, upon seeing a picture of Bumpers, “That could have been my grandmother.” Ward was just stating a legitimate feeling that any human being would register. However, in the racially charged atmosphere, many police officers viewed Ward's words as taking a side, and not one in support of Officer Sullivan. The charges against Ward were unfair, and anyone who viewed his statement in an unemotional, detached manner would conclude that they were the statements of someone who understood the plight of Bumpers and her family. Nonetheless, Ward took an unfair beating from his police officers.

As the case moved forward, it became clear that while Ward fully empathized with the Bumpers family, he obviously understood Officer Sullivan's predicament and was quite vocal in his denouncement of Merola's indictment. When the case went to trial, there was a great deal of testimony, especially from medical personnel. A doctor testified that the first shot had struck Bumpers in the hand that was holding the knife. This immediately disabled her and brought into question the necessity of the second shot. This had an alarming impact on police officers. They began to ask themselves, Am I expected to stop after firing every single bullet to check the medical well-being of the opponent?

The issue was cleared up when the defense presented its side of the case. It turned out that officers in the Emergency Service Unit had been trained to discharge two successive blasts from their shotgun and then look to see if the opponent had been hit. Police training at the firing range is meant to instill in officers tactics and protocols that they will use in real life. The training over the years has varied, based on trends in policing. For example, when I was a rookie, we trained with bull's-eyes at twenty-five yards. The more often you hit the bull's-eye, the higher your score. There was no reality check or correlation to what actually happened on the street. Over the years, training became much more realistic. The goal of the training now is to develop what athletic coaches call “muscle memory.” There is no forethought, there's no thought, there's just action. In stressful, emotional situations, the survival instincts that are embedded in police officers during training take over. In the case of Steve Sullivan, he did what he had been trained to do, and he was rightfully found not guilty.

The Eleanor Bumpers case was the beginning of a series of sometimes tragic, sometimes unfortunate, sometimes necessary police shootings that inflamed tensions during Ward's time in office. The irony was that Ward was an African American, and a lot of those who were shot were African American or another racial minority. Ward was in a no-win situation. If he supported his cops, he was seen as a traitor to his race. If he empathized with the person shot, he was viewed as not fully supportive of police. In fact, Ward supported the cops, but he also recognized that there was a better way of doing police business.

At that point, I had discharged my gun twice during my career. The first time, I killed two wild German shepherds that were running loose in a six-story apartment building and had bitten at least one tenant. The second time was during the gun battle on Sixth Street with my partner. Other than those two experiences, my dealings with police shootings had been an academic exercise. I had reviewed thousands of pages of data, conducted informal internal studies, graphed trends, and performed all of the studies a good academician would do to fully understand a topic. What I lacked was operational experience in conducting investigations of police shootings; captains had the responsibility to lead the police shooting investigations at that time. However, that was about to change, when I was promoted to captain in the summer of 1985.