Then it was time. Coffey, Mullins, Trapani, Fennell, and Detective Eddie Wright, a veteran investigator of sports fixing and gambling, surrounded Frazier and Durham. Sparring partners, trainers, and Aquafreda and his Garden security formed an outer perimeter and in a wedge formation pressed through the packed arena and into the ring. High above them cops patrolled for snipers and all around detectives stared into the crowd, alert to any threatening gesture.
“When we got to the ring, I wished him luck and Frazier simply whispered, ‘Thanks, man.’ I thought that if he lost I would cry. Now I could only hope that if there was a sniper, he would miss,” Coffey reflects.
For the next hour, the only threat Joe Frazier had to worry about was Muhammad Ali, and he handled that like the true champion he was. In one of the greatest heavyweight fights of all time, Frazier and Ali traded blow after blow, both proving they were worthy of a championship belt. Eventually, Frazier wore Ali down. In the eleventh round he decked him, breaking his jaw. And by the end of the fight Coffey and the others were sure their man had won.
The judges agreed. As soon as the decision was announced, the security team led Frazier away from the ring. The actor Burt Lancaster, working as a fight commentator that night, pushed his microphone in Frazier’s face only to be knocked aside by a detective.
Frazier at this time was barely able to walk. He had taken a tremendous beating from Ali and he had fought the fifteen rounds with blood pressure at the bursting point. Coffey noticed a glaze in his eyes and, despite the roaring crowd, heard him say he didn’t think he could make it back to the dressing room.
Without hesitation Coffey wrapped his arms around the sweat-soaked fighter and supported him as they pushed their way back to the dressing room. Halfway up the aisle, from the middle of the crowd, New York Mayor John Lindsay was pushing his way towards the champ to get his picture taken with the biggest name in sports. But in the crush Lindsay slipped and fell to the ground. That’s when Eddie Wright’s wallet, containing his badge and police identification card, was stolen. As Wright bent over to help the mayor, he felt a hand on his hip. But there was nothing he could do about it. By the time he got up, the pickpocket was gone. Eventually Wright was fined thirty days’ pay for losing his badge.
Finally in the dressing room, Coffey deposited the exhausted fighter on the dressing table. Durham and his corner team worked over him, getting him out of the trunks, sponging him down, and putting on a sweat suit.
Coffey, the roar of the crowd still ringing in his ears, was flushed and breathing hard. “Frazier was in agony. I’ve been around presidents and actors and ballplayers, but I never saw anyone as tough or professional as Joe Frazier—he was remarkable that evening.”
Technically the job was completed. Joe Frazier had made it through the fight alive, the only damage being done by Ali. But by this time the security force had grown so fond of Frazier that they all agreed to stay on until he was safely tucked away in bed.
Coffey had to practically carry the fighter back to the Pierre, and he personally laid him down on his bed in the suite. Frazier’s family was gathered around him now, and the detectives began to slip quietly out of the bedroom.
As Coffey was about to close the door behind him, Frazier lifted his head from his pillow and called the big Irish cop to his side. “Joe, don’t let your guys go yet. I’ve got some gifts for them,” he said, his voice barely audible.
Coffey tried to tell him those things could wait until he felt better, but the heavyweight champion of the world insisted. Joe stayed as Durham brought over a box of souvenirs and Frazier, in agony, autographed pictures, scorecards, caps, and T-shirts for the DA’s men. For Coffey he autographed a special plate, which was made to commemorate the fight, and a fight brochure. He wrote: “To Pat Coffey, you have a good man … don’t forget it.”
When he finished he practically passed out.
The next day, the plate and the brochure turned up at the Northside School, where little Joe Coffey was able to prove what his father had done.
The next time Frazier fought Ali at Madison Square Garden was January 28, 1974. Neither man was champion and there were no death threats. Joe Coffey and his partners handled the security as a moonlighting job for $500 a day.
As for Ruby Stein and Jiggs Forlano, the wiretap indicated they had lost heavy money on Ali. Eventually both were convicted of loan-sharking.
V
TERROR
Although no terrorist attack was ever carried out against Joe Frazier, it was clear that elements existed in the United States at that time that would find some motive for murder. Later in his career Joe Coffey came face to face with such factions.
Joe reported to uniform patrol in East Harlem’s 25th Precinct in March 1973. He was quickly placed in the mix with the other precinct sergeants and charged with supervising the precinct’s patrol officers, both on foot and in the worn-out green and white RMPs—radio motor patrol units.
Uniform patrol was the front line of police work. When the public thought of a police officer, the picture that most often came to their mind was of a tall Irish-looking young man in a deep blue, heavy woolen uniform with an uncomfortable-looking high collar. On the man’s chest would be a gleaming silver badge in the shape of a shield. Joe Coffey fit that picture to a T, except that his badge was gold because of his rank and he had three light blue stripes on his arm.
It wasn’t his first assignment in uniform. Directly out of the Police Academy, Joe was selected for duty in the elite Tactical Patrol Force (TPF). That was a unit of cops six feet tall or taller who were used as a reserve force for duty in especially troubled areas. During the campus disruptions of the sixties the TPF developed a reputation among students as storm troopers whose only mission was to bust the skulls of young people exercising their constitutional rights. It was while serving in the TPF that Coffey first met the future chief of detectives who would have a profound effect on his career, James Sullivan.
But uniform work was not the kind of police work he wanted to do. He looked at it as a necessary evil, a short, detour from his upward path in the detective division. Each day as he buttoned the heavy winter blouse, before beginning his tour through one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city, he reminded himself of Frank Hogan’s promise. He expected to spend only the minimum amount of time—six months—in the two-five before being transferred back to the Detective Division as a detective sergeant in the office of Queens District Attorney Thomas Mackell. The threats of William Aronwald, the federal prosecutor whom Joe had accused of foot-dragging in the Vatican case, to block his path to promotion did not enter his mind.
Shortly after he arrived in East Harlem similar threats came from another direction. One afternoon the radio in Coffey’s patrol car barked an order for him to return to the station house. When he got there he found a lieutenant and a sergeant from the Internal Affairs Division—the unit that investigates corrupt cops—waiting to speak to him.
Sitting in the precinct commander’s office, the two men from “downtown” offered Coffey the opportunity to join their elite unit. They explained that very few cops are given the chance to perform such important work. They said service in IAD was a quick route to promotion. If he accepted the offer he would be back in plainclothes fast. A a detective of his proven ability and honesty could make an outstanding reputation for himself.
Joe knew what kind of work Internal Affairs did. He knew it was essential to the running of a clean department. But it was not what he wanted to do.
“Look, Lieutenant,” Coffey replied after the two men finished their recruiting pitch, “I already have a good reputation in the department. And I have a lot of friends. I couldn’t do the job. I have to look at myself in the mirror when I shave every morning. Besides, I’m going back to the Detective Division shortly anyway.”
The two IAD men were not accustomed to uniform cops working in dangerous precincts refusing their offer of a headquarters job with a high-profile career path.
“If you don’t accept our offer you’ll spend at least two years in that blue suit you’re wearing,” the lieutenant said.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Coffey responded, bringing the interview to a halt. He stood and carefully placed his cap with the gold braid on his head as he left the two gumshoes sitting in the precinct commander’s office.
Coffey was proud of turning down the opportunity to get back to detective work by spying on his fellow cops. But when six months came and passed without a change in assignment, he began to wonder if he wasn’t making too many enemies. Undoubtably the IAD guys had the clout to hold him back. There was also Aronwald, and when Queens DA Tom Mackell, who had indicated he would welcome Coffey, was indicted for corruption, the chance for transfer began to grow slimmer. A short time later Frank Hogan died of cancer, and Coffey saw his return to the Detective Division passing away.
While he waited, he had no choice but to keep pestering influential friends in the department and doing his duty as a patrol supervisor. That duty almost got him killed one cold night in January 1974.
It was a subfreezing morning. Joe was working the midnight to 8:00 A.M. shift. He and police officer Ralph Fico, who was driving, had been enjoying their brand-new patrol car. It was a 1974 Plymouth painted in the department’s new colors, blue and white. Not only was it a pleasure to get genuine acceleration when the gas pedal was stepped on, but the car did not yet have the musty odor caused by constant use, shuttling of prisoners, and occasional duty as an ambulance when a victim did not have the time to wait for the paramedics. Best of all, the heater worked.
At a little after 3:00 A.M. Coffey ordered Fico to begin “coop” patrol. One of the duties of a patrol supervisor is to check out the nooks and crannies of the precinct where tired cops might go to catch a nap when they were supposed to be cruising their sectors.
It was a perfect night for “cooping.” As usual the cold weather put a damper on street crime. The radio on the dash board, which normally squawked out commands constantly to the busy two-five, was quiet. The streets were cold and empty. It was difficult for cops on the overnight shift to stay awake on nights like that. But Coffey knew it was his job to make sure they did.
Fico headed for a coop on a small street adjacent to the Harlem River Drive. As they approached the spot, hidden from other streets by the approach to the drive and kept in constant darkness by the surrounding industrial buildings, Coffey noticed a car straddling the middle line of the two way street. It was not a police car.
He reached out to touch Fico’s arm to signal him to slow down, but the driver too had already spotted the car and was lightly tapping the patrol car’s brake.
“Stay behind him; don’t go alongside,” Coffey ordered. As they pulled to a stop the heads of four black men, two in the front and two in the back, were visible. The car was a late model Lincoln.
At this time the radical Black Panthers and their even more violent offshoot, the Black Liberation Army, were carrying out a shooting war with police officers across the country. Cops in pairs had been ambushed and murdered in New York, and the BLA had even tried to attack the home of District Attorney Frank Hogan. The two cops who thwarted that attack were both critically wounded by machine gun fire. The assailants escaped.
With that on his mind Coffey was being very careful. He and Fico stayed about fifteen feet behind the Lincoln as Coffey radioed the license plate to headquarters. When Fico put the turret lights on, the Lincoln started slowly backing up. Coffey thought it might be pulling alongside. His hand went to the revolver on his hip.
Then in a sudden move the Lincoln backed into the patrol car. It hardly touched the front bumper before screeching forward again. It kept going, making a sharp right turn onto the entrance to the Harlem River Drive. Without waiting for orders, Fico pursued the Lincoln.
By the time they hit the drive, both cars were going 100 miles per hour. Coffey radioed headquarters to report the chase. He requested that units from the 32nd Precinct try to cut the Lincoln off at the next entrance to the drive, about three miles away. Other cars from the 25th, monitoring the radio calls, sped northward towards the drive. Coffey remembers thinking that his old RMP could not have kept up and being thankful for the new car.
With the Lincoln still well in front of them after about one minute of chasing, Coffey could see the flashing lights of the cars from the three-two spreading out across the roadway.
The driver of the Lincoln also saw them. He hit his brakes, and for a moment Joe thought his car was going to ram the suspects’. But before he came to a full stop, the driver of the Lincoln executed a fantastic U-turn onto the southbound roadway. When they spotted all the other police cars heading up the drive, the suspects decided to abandon their car. They skidded to a halt, almost adjacent to where Fico had braked, and jumped out of the Lincoln.
Coffey and Fico also jumped out of their car, and units were closing in from all sides. In desperation the four men from the Lincoln opened fire. Two had shotguns; the other two fired nine-millimeter automatic pistols.
Coffey, for the second and last time in his career as a police officer, fired three shots from his .38 caliber Smith & Wesson. Fico also returned fire.
As all the other police cars pulled up to the scene, the gunmen gave it up. They threw their weapons to the ground and surrendered to Coffey and Fico. No one had been wounded.
Later the gunmen confessed they were members of the Black Liberation Army and were waiting at the cooping spot to ambush a police car. Coffey and Fico both received medals for meritorious duty.
During the next year Joe settled into his patrol duties. The six months he expected to spend out of the Detective Division had come and passed. He did not give up hope, but realistically he knew it would be a tougher road than he had emotionally prepared for.
Then on January 26, 1975, one of the most outrageous acts of terror ever committed in the United States accomplished for him what Frank Hogan and Tom Mackell could not do.
At 1:25 P.M. that day a thunderous explosion ripped through a 100-year-old annex to the historic Fraunces Tavern in New York’s Financial District. The tavern was the scene on December 4, 1783, of George Washington’s farewell address to his officers.
Four people were killed and fifty others injured. One of the dead was decapitated.
The victims in the tavern restaurant and the second-floor dining room of the adjacent Anglers Club were thrown from their tables. For fifteen minutes, until help arrived, the three-story red brick building was a scene of terrifying screams amid flying debris, collapsed walls, and a fallen marble stairway. The force of the blast wrecked a truck parked outside the restaurant and shattered heavy plate-glass doors and windows in a New York Telephone Company building across the street.
Fifteen minutes after the blast, callers identifying themselves as members of Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriquenda (FALN), a Puerto Rican revolutionary group, telephoned the Associated Press. They said, “This is FALN. At Bridge Street and Water Street, ten feet from the corner in a telephone booth, there’s a communiqué there.”
Police found a three-page document in which the FALN took all responsibility for the bombing. It went on to say that the FALN was the armed forces of Puerto Rican nationalists and that the bomb was in retaliation for the “CIA ordered bomb” that had killed three people in a restaurant in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, two weeks earlier.
The revolutionary rhetoric went on to charge the United States with terrorizing and killing Puerto Ricans in order to stop them from seeking independence. It called for the release of political prisoners and said that a storm had been unleashed that “comfortable Yankis cannot escape.”
It ended with the demand, “Free Puerto Rico right now.”
The FALN was not unknown to the New York Police Department. Since the late sixties they had been setting off small explosive devices and making threatening telephone calls in the name of Puerto Rican independence. In late 1974 they seemed to be increasi
ng their activities, first by setting off small bombs in Manhattan office buildings in October, which injured no one, then on December 11, they set a booby-trap bomb that blew up in the face of Police Officer Angel Poggi. It was the twenty-two-year-old cop’s first night on duty. He lost his right eye in the explosion. Coffey and Fico were the first cops on the scene of that booby trap. Joe held Poggi in his arms, trying to stem the flow of blood from his head until another patrol car arrived and they were able to rush the rookie cop to a hospital.
The NYPD’s Bureau of Special Services Intelligence was having no luck in dealing with the FALN. They seemed incapable of developing useful information and were not able to identify its leaders or predict its movements. At one time they resorted to putting a rookie cop with no training directly into an undercover assignment. But it also was to no avail. With few Hispanics on the force and weak ties to the Hispanic communities, the police were desperate. The bombing of Fraunces Tavern, however, threw the problem into the public spotlight, and the NYPD was forced to react.
The day after the bombing, Police Headquarters sent out a call for all officers who might have a special ability to help in the top-priority investigation of the FALN. Joe Coffey’s reputation as a wiretap and bugging expert, developed during his years in Hogan’s office, overcame any intradepartmental resistence to bringing him back to the Detective Bureau. Before the week was over he was ordered to put away his sergeant’s uniform and report to the Arson and Explosion Squad at Police Headquarters.
The department’s quick fix, aimed at making it appear in the media that something constructive was going on, was to assign 150 cops to the investigation.
The first night that the new group assembled at headquarters, it was Detective Sergeant Joe Coffey’s duty to assign them to the various leads that had been pouring in to the department’s switchboard. Sitting at the supervisor’s desk in the eleventh-floor offices of the Arson and Explosion Squad, he tried to make some sense of the mass of 150 cops squeezed in around him.
The Coffey Files Page 14