I could depend on Rafael, and that’s all I cared about. His family came first, and that’s the way it should be. I learned a lesson from him and other cops in a similar financial squeeze: I intended to stay single for as long as possible. I liked my creature comforts, my Harley, my leisure time at the gym, and dating up a storm. Many women gravitated toward cops because they assumed we weren’t serial killers, and I was taking full advantage of my single status.
We were cruising up Southern Boulevard late into a day tour with Rafael driving when he elbowed my arm. “Holy shit, Ralph, get a load of that fucking guy!”
He was pointing to a big man—had to be at least six foot four—pistol-whipping a girl half his size. He was wailing on her face and body, rapidly pounding at her with the gun. Blood was spewing everywhere, and she was trying to protect her head. A few passersby glanced at the mayhem but kept on walking. This was New York, and, to take it down a notch, the South Bronx.
Our sector car was in middle of the street, stuck at a red light. I jumped out, yelling to Rafael to pull around as I ran toward the one-sided battle.
The thug saw me racing toward him and screaming for him to stop. I had my gun drawn. Apparently, he didn’t give a shit who I was because he kept brutalizing the woman.
I kicked him in his rib cage with everything I had, and he toppled off his victim. His gun went flying, and I holstered mine. He let out a stream of curses, jumped to his feet, and came for me. He had a good five inches and fifty pounds on me, but he was heavy and out of shape. I pummeled his face with roundhouse punches and kneed him in the balls, which brought him down.
He was done but still gurgling and made an attempt to get up. By now, I had a cheering section; there must’ve been fifty people urging me on. Rafael tried to jump in, but I waved him off. “Look after the girl!” I told him and went back to subduing the guy. I broke his right arm; he would be hospitalized for a week. His victim was also admitted but released before he was.
When his yellow sheet (criminal record) came back, I discovered he was a Mafia associate, a street scumbag who thought his intimidating size gave him carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wanted. The incident was a boyfriend-girlfriend “dispute” that could’ve turned into a homicide had we not happened by.
We recovered a .45 semiautomatic pistol, an expensive piece and a rarity in those days. Guns seized back then were usually of the Saturday-night-special variety, cheap stamped metal pieces of garbage that shot inaccurately, were manufactured mostly in the South, and were sold on the street for fifty bucks.
This was my first incident where I used excessive force, but it certainly wasn’t going to be my last. The NYPD of the 1970s didn’t frown on force, excessive or otherwise. Bringing a prisoner in dead wasn’t advised, but anything just short of it was usually overlooked and considered good police work. The job has changed, and most police officers today aren’t apt to exert the amount of force we did, whether because of more training or the proliferation of smartphones with cameras. For us cops it was a fight for survival in a borough gone rogue: if a cop showed fear or went easy on thugs, he was viewed as weak. If that happened, your career, at least in the shithole of high-crime precincts, was over. I wanted to be respected and feared.
I wanted to be the last man standing.
A battle-weary Fort Apache cop, a survivor of many street encounters, once told me, “We use violence to implement justice.” In the Four-One, these were words to live (and survive) by.
* * *
Not every incident, however, ended with victory.
A few weeks later, my partner was on vacation and someone was filling in. I don’t recall who I was riding with, but a routine car stop we made will be forever etched in my memory.
We were working a four-to-midnight tour. A few hours in, we observed two males in a brand-new Lincoln cruising casually through a section of the precinct known for street drug sales. Even by Four-One standards, this was a reckless area.
We decided to pull them over strictly on gut feelings. These guys hadn’t done anything illegal, but that indefinable sense cops get when they know something’s wrong was nagging at us. Profiling? It wasn’t the fact that the men in the car were black—the precinct is predominantly black and Hispanic—it was the new expensive car, which was rare for the area, plus, after following them for a while, they didn’t seem to have a destination. Our judgment told us they were trolling for a drug dealer.
The car pulled over as soon as we gave it a short blast on the siren and momentarily flipped on the roof lights. We got out of the car and approached the Lincoln from two sides, which was tactically correct. We did, however, forget something that would have us fighting for our lives shortly: we left our nightsticks in the radio car, a big tactical error.
This is how cops get hurt. The constant repetition of stopping cars made us sloppy; it was just another car stop that might result in an arrest, or a few issued summonses. If there was cause to arrest and they resisted, we thought we could control the situation—people who resist arrest always lose the battle. Cops come out on top, right? Not this time.
Both men were large. Later we would find out they were hired muscle for labor organizations and had no fear of cops.
The driver was sullen but handed over his paperwork. The car and license were legit, but we decided to search the vehicle anyway. Both driver and passenger objected and got out of the car. This was a bad sign; exiting a car during a police stop is forbidden, and we told them so. They didn’t give a shit, and before we knew it the battle was on.
They pounced immediately, the driver on me, the passenger on my partner. They had caught us unaware and unprepared. These guys were professional enforcers and knew if they were going to win this battle with the police, their attack had to be overwhelming and brutal … and it was.
Both of us were putting up a good fight, but we were outclassed; their fists and feet pummeled us with lightning speed. If I can be thankful for anything, it’s that neither of them had any weapons.
Speaking of weapons …
I reached for my nightstick—oops! That’s when I realized our error. The nightstick could’ve evened the odds. Known as a “baton” on the job (sounds more user-friendly than “nightstick”), it’s made of cocobolo wood, which is very dense, heavy, and durable. Cocobolo makes for a devastating weapon, but of course you have to have it to swing it.
To make matters worse, our nearest radio was the hardwired one in the car. I was on the ground trying to remain conscious and knew that the radio was our only chance to get out of this mess alive. I was being kicked like a football as I started crawling toward the car. It was twenty feet away, which might as well have been twenty miles. I prayed I could reach it before being beaten into a coma or shot with my own gun.
I finally reached the car and called in a 10-13 (officer needs assistance) while still getting the shit kicked out of me. Almost immediately, I heard sirens. A signal 10-13 is the most urgent call a police officer can broadcast. It is not overused but saved for desperate, life-threatening situations. If the position my partner and I were in didn’t fit that definition, I don’t know what did. Cops drop what they’re doing and respond, and not necessarily from the parent command; they come from everywhere.
The sound of that familiar siren whine helped me hang on; it was the sweetest music I’d ever heard.
Cops were there in less than a minute—lots of them. And as hard as it is to believe, the two guys who had been beating us didn’t take off; they continued to beat us until the responding cops arrived and then they took on the reinforcements! These guys weren’t even winded.
Cops met them head-on, nightsticks swinging. You have to give those two guys credit; they stood their ground and fought against overpowering odds. The word “tough” didn’t begin to describe them, but within seconds they were down and cuffed. While I would have loved to take part in the victory, I was too exhausted and injured to do much except breathe, and doing that made me wince.
&
nbsp; I was the arresting officer; don’t ask me how I did the paperwork, because to say that I was hurting was a gross underestimation. My two prisoners were transported to the Four-One station house and placed in a holding cell until they were to be driven to court the next morning.
When someone assaults a police officer, retribution is swift and severe. While the two prisoners got their bruises on the street, it was nothing compared with what was about to happen.
Every cop working that night got a “forthwith” to the station house. You remember what that means? Drop what you’re doing and get to the house yesterday.
Every team got five minutes alone in the cell with these two tough guys. There were probably at least twenty cops on duty that night. Those guys took a hell of a pounding. Sure, they fought back but not even those two could put up with the hammering they received. Within an hour, they were beaten so bloody their own mothers wouldn’t have recognized them.
My two prisoners hobbled into court the next day. When asked by the judge what happened to them, they just shrugged. They had played the game, hurt some cops, and got their asses kicked as a result. To them it was the way the system worked, and they weren’t about to complain. And on top of that they each got a year in jail.
About five years later, I got a call from an FBI agent regarding the two enforcers we’d collared that night. The mere mention of the incident made my ribs hurt. The agent was conducting an investigation into organizations promoting employment of blacks in the construction industry in New York.
“It’s a scam,” the agent said. “The group demonstrates at construction sites calling for jobs for black men who they say are underrepresented in the trade. They block deliveries, start fights, and wind up shutting down the site until they get positions for their members. Your guys—the two assholes you locked up—assault construction workers and bust up equipment. So when the construction companies relent and say, okay, they’ll hire a few black guys, they find out it’s for no-show jobs. None of these guys want a job. It’s a shakedown.”
None of this surprised me. “What do you need from me?”
“No one’s willing to complain so we’re trying to pin something on them. What can you tell me about the guys that attacked you?”
“The driver had a helluva right hook, and I’d say a size thirteen shoe. Other than that, the last I saw of them was when they were being led away to do their time, nothing since then.” I wished the agent luck. “If I never see those two mopes again, it’ll be too soon.”
* * *
I got my first tattoo when I was twenty years old and still a police trainee. It was of an eagle and located on my right bicep. I never thought about getting any more ink, but over the years my body became a tapestry of my life and career. I memorialized or commemorated all that was important to me. As of this writing I have well over a hundred tattoos.
I frequented Big Joe’s Tattoo Parlor in Mount Vernon, New York, right over the Bronx line. Back then it was the Mecca for quality work and I became one of Big Joe’s best customers. Members of the New York chapter of the Hell’s Angels were also regulars at Big Joe’s. There, I met the president of the chapter, Chuck Zito, and we became friends; we’re still in touch today. Chuck was tough and very smart. He’d later become an actor and was featured in dozens of TV shows and movies.
The Angels and law enforcement weren’t exactly buddies. After all, they were about as antiestablishment as you could get. But I got along well with Chuck. His crew varied with their acceptance of me, but for the most part we were cool. I rode a Harley, so that helped. I also treated them with respect, and they reciprocated, some of them being Vietnam veterans who commiserated with cops because they knew what it was like to be a target.
I was filling in a sector on a day tour when we got a radio run of an assault in progress inside a building. The building housed a social club on the ground floor, and, while not an Angel hangout, that day there were about five bikers from the New York chapter present. Chuck Zito wasn’t among them.
Some drunk had wandered in from the street wanting to shoot pool. The Angels had both pool tables occupied and told the interloper to wait his turn. The drunk, not knowing with whom he was about to tangle, began to get belligerent and said something that pissed off the bikers. He was roughed up and tossed out. It was the drunk who had called in the radio run; he was the victim.
The club was dim with a cloud of cigarette smoke hovering over the tables. I spotted the complainant right away; he was the bloody guy. The Angels acted like me and my partner weren’t there at first, and to me that wasn’t a good sign. I mentally mapped out escape routes, fields of fire, and methods of cover should things go bad.
The drunk started acting like an asshole as soon as he saw us—cursing, waving his arms, threatening to sue everybody. He figured he could spout his bullshit with relative impunity since two cops were there to protect him. I guess he still hadn’t learned whom he was pissing off, because the Angels would just as soon beat the shit out of cops as revisit the complainant with another beating. These guys weren’t afraid.
I looked for a familiar face from Big Joe’s, but with the dim lighting and most Angels looking similar anyway, I couldn’t spot anyone. While my partner was containing the drunk, I started over to talk to the bikers.
As I neared them, a mountain of a man said, “Hey, ain’t you that cop from Big Joe’s? Chuck’s friend?”
The situation was defused in a few seconds. The biker, known as Tiny (he would be killed in a motorcycle wreck a few years later and have a spectacular funeral procession on the Lower East Side of Manhattan) introduced me to the other Angels. My partner and I talked the drunk out of pressing charges, and everyone was happy.
With a mixture of regret and relief, I can’t help imagining the situation if someone had a smartphone back then. It would have been nice to preserve such a sweet moment, but then again a video of me with five outlaw bikers might have wound up on YouTube.
* * *
I was making numerous arrests for drugs, illegal possession of guns, assaults, robberies, burglaries, rapes—you name it. As a result, precinct supervisors were recommending me for departmental recognition—medals—for the best collars. I took a few of the most violent criminals into custody in walking condition, unusual for the times. Normally prisoners were transported directly to the station house for processing. Most of mine went to Lincoln Hospital.
I was getting a reputation as someone who didn’t take shit from the street. If criminals cooperated during the arrest, they were fine; if they raised their hands to me, I raised mine to them. My goal was twofold: make it home in one piece and get the word out on the street that if you fucked with any cop, particularly with Ralph Friedman, you were going to pay for it.
The rules of the job, as dictated by the NYPD Rules and Procedures—a mammoth guidebook that would increase in size every time a cop did something that wasn’t covered in the previous edition—said that a police officer could use only the amount of force that was necessary to control a situation. Any more could lead to charges, both departmental and criminal. The problem was defining what was “enough” and what was “too much” force. How should a police officer stop to evaluate in the middle of subduing a felon who is putting up a fight?
Did I use just enough force to stop him? Does he pose a threat or is he down for the count? Or is he faking, and is he about to rebound and kill me?
Questions, questions.
I always wanted to err on the side of caution when it came to my safety and that of my partner.
It’s my belief that many cops today are inactive (forget proactive or reactive) for fear of being disgraced or losing their jobs on account of what the public deems excessive force. I’m in touch with many police officers through social media and Internet police forums, and the general feeling currently is that there are not too many cops who are going to put their careers and lives in jeopardy because some elected official wants to make a political football out of Monday
-morning quarterbacking a cop’s arrest.
The use of the chokehold is a good example. The press, politicians, and others consistently use the term “illegal chokehold” when describing this perfectly legal takedown method. The chokehold is against NYPD policy, but it’s not illegal. This is why police officers who use this method of subduing a prisoner don’t get arrested for it—departmental charges may result, but no one’s going to jail for applying it. Unless, of course, it’s used to excess and results in a fatality, which is a whole different deal.
As of this writing, a bill has been introduced in New York to make the chokehold illegal, meaning possible jail time for a police officer who uses it. Picture a police officer in a life-or-death struggle on the street with a criminal, during which the cop uses a chokehold to subdue the guy. If this bill passes into law, that cop is going to be arrested, whether he was making a good arrest or not. I’m wondering if a better law would require lawmakers to ride along with patrol officers for a week and then make an educated judgment about what should be against the law.
There isn’t a cop out there who wouldn’t use a chokehold if his physical safety depended on it, rules or no rules. A cop will take the fine or loss of vacation days, but he’ll be alive.
* * *
I was constantly on the prowl to make quality arrests, the important word being quality. I doubt there’s a police officer in New York who couldn’t lock someone up thirty minutes into a shift. There’s always someone doing something wrong, but most infractions are trifling, and police officers are given discretion when deciding whether to make arrests for minor transgressions. These include simple assaults (particularly when the offender and complainant are friends), personal marijuana use, and misdemeanor criminal mischief when the offender is willing to make restitution. The NYPD allows discretion.
I was after felons. They don’t get the luxury of discretion, and, even if they did, they wouldn’t get it from me. This meant both on duty and off.
Street Warrior Page 6