Street Warrior

by Ralph Friedman

Back at the command, I repeated Fernandez’s story to Captain Walker, who sat transfixed. When I finished, he nodded his head imperceptively for a few seconds, apparently digesting what I’d just told him. The bombing was a major case with a lot of political pressure to make quick arrests. Captain Walker never asked me if I thought Fernandez was believable. I was in his office; I wouldn’t have gone that far if I had thought differently.

  “I’m calling Arson/Explosion,” the captain said.

  The Arson/Explosion Unit was in charge of the Fraunces Tavern bombing case. Captain Walker related the story to Sergeant Joe Coffey, who was running the investigation. After a five-minute back-and-forth, the captain hung up, sighed, and said to me, “Okay, Coffey’s very interested. Truth be told, they have nothing so far.” He shook his head. “A month into it and squat to show.”

  It would be ascertained later that the FALN worked in small cells. There were quite a few cells in the organization, but no one cell knew what any other cell was doing or its membership. This system made it difficult for law enforcement to infiltrate the group, and, if an arrest was made, no information could be garnered from the prisoner other than what he knew about his own cell.

  The captain continued. “You’ll be working exclusively with Arson/Explosion, nothing with Anti-Crime. I’ll tell your bosses you’re doing something for me for a while.” It wasn’t that Captain Walker didn’t trust other cops, just that the fewer people who knew what I was doing, the better. An inadvertent slip somewhere could wind up in tomorrow’s Daily News and the suspects would scatter. “Don’t tell anyone … no one … That includes your partner. Get hold of your CI … what’s his name?”

  “Rafael Fernandez.”

  “Fernandez. You think he’ll talk to Arson/Explosion?”

  “He’ll talk some, but I don’t think he’ll trust anyone to be on the street with him but me.”

  Captain Walker pondered this. “Sounds reasonable. I’ll talk to Coffey about him.” He gave me a look as if to say that we were both on the same page when it came to Coffey’s reputation.

  Joe Coffey was a great cop; there wasn’t anyone on the job who knew him that didn’t think so. But he had a reputation for being a headline grabber and liked to micromanage his cases. A flashy guy who was always well turned out in tailored suits, the press loved him. The brass respected him too because he got results. I didn’t see a problem working with Coffey—but I was soon to find out that my confidence was premature.

  * * *

  I met with the Arson/Explosion Unit detectives the following day in their office in 1 Police Plaza in Manhattan. The team working on the bombing case was made up of seasoned professionals, each detective with many years on the job. It was a specialized outfit consisting of detectives who had paid their dues in borough detective squads before being bumped to the more specialized unit. These guys were the best at what they did and they were under pressure to get the case solved ASAP.

  Coffey, who was wearing a tie that probably cost more than my car, introduced me around and then we got down to it. I was to continue meeting with Fernandez, stick with him, and pick his brain every day. When we knew for sure where the bombing suspects were, I was going to get wired with a recording device and show up with Fernandez to do a little socializing and tip off Coffey’s guys when everyone had arrived. Fernandez wouldn’t have to meet the detectives until the day the arrests were going down. Coffey was smart enough to realize that I was in the CI’s comfort zone and they weren’t. The upside of this plan was that they trusted me to do the right thing with the CI and make their case. The downside was that if the plan went bad, I’d get blamed for it. “That fucking Friedman screwed up the whole thing.” This would be the NYPD’s plausible deniability.

  I would pretty much fit right in for a meeting with the bad guys. I’d always been a jeans-and-boots kind of guy, tattooed, bearded, and looking nothing like a cop. We were into March, and if we got a halfway-decent day, I even planned to roll up on my Harley. What could possibly go wrong?

  Over the next month, I met with Fernandez ten times while he searched the Bronx for the bombers. He talked to people and asked subtle questions trying to pin the suspects down. In the meantime, Sergeant Coffey was getting edgy. I’d check in with him daily, and with each call he was getting more and more impatient.

  “Time’s not standing still, Ralph. What the fuck is your boy doing?”

  I knew whatever I said wouldn’t placate him; he was under pressure from his bosses to make some collars. “He’s doing his best, Sarge,” I said. “I can’t rush this guy. I don’t think he wants the next bomb shoved up his ass, which is what’ll happen if they make him.”

  Another week went by, and then Fernandez got something. He called me at home.

  “These guys, Ralph, they’re gonna be at the Eastchester Manor for a wedding on Saturday. One of their own is getting married. Gonna be eighty guys and whoever they’re bringing, like dates.”

  Eastchester Manor was a well-known Bronx catering hall on Eastchester Avenue in the 47th Precinct. “What’s the guest list like?”

  “I was told FALN, some supporters, some neighborhood guys,” he said breathlessly. “And me. I’m a neighborhood guy, I suppose.”

  “Neighborhood guys” meant assorted stickup men, burglars, and dope dealers. I was sure most would be armed. Wonderful.

  I called Coffey.

  * * *

  I got wired for sound in an unmarked, blacked-out Arson/Explosion Unit van. Coffey originally wanted Fernandez to wear the wire, but he would hear none of it.

  “No fucking way, man. You think I’m James fucking Bond?” Fernandez was a nervous wreck, and I couldn’t blame him; he was going with me into a den of killers. The detectives treated him with respect—he could probably count on the fingers of one hand how many times he’d been referred to as Mr. Fernandez before that day—and he soaked in all the instructions without asking too many questions. These detectives didn’t want to do anything to give Fernandez a reason to walk away from what some people might call a suicide mission.

  What would happen if we were searched? We were, after all, strangers in a crowd where everyone knew each other. I was wearing a tape recorder called a Nagra. It was state of the art for its time, about as small as a pack of cigarettes (king-size) but still big enough not to be overlooked in a pat-down.

  Joe Coffey went over the dos and don’ts for Fernandez. Basically, “Don’t fuck up.”

  And he said to me, “Don’t touch the recorder. Stay away from a live radio, or you may start broadcasting music out of your crotch.” Everyone except me got a big laugh out of that.

  “And don’t get it wet,” Coffey continued. “It may short out … catch fire.”

  Great, in addition to risking my life, I had to be concerned about self-immolating.

  Coffey gave a dismissal wave. “Don’t sweat anything—you’ll be fine. We can hear everything that is said in real time.”

  The plan was to arrive on time so we could mingle with other guests. We departed for the hall in my car with an unmarked department auto following at a discreet distance. A vanload of armed-to-the-teeth cops from the Emergency Services Unit was right behind them. After Fernandez fingered the suspects, the cops would burst in and lock them up. Fernandez and I would stick around, at least for a while. If the cops decided to take every male in the joint, we’d go along with the program. What the hell? We were guests.

  It was cold, not a Harley day. I was wound tight but tried to exude control and calmness. Fernandez was fidgeting like a junkie after a two-day heroin drought.

  “Be cool, Rafael,” I said. “No one will suspect a thing. You’re invited and you’re bringing a friend like they said it was okay to do. Nothing can go wrong.” I wished I believed my own words.

  “Yeah, well, just in case I got this.” He reached into the bag he was carrying and extracted a .38 Smith & Wesson snub-nosed revolver. “Nice fucking gun,” he added. Not only was this numb nuts carrying a weapon (which
I was sure was stolen), but, because the transmitter strapped to my body was live, he’d just admitted as much to a carload of detectives.

  “Holy shit!” I bellowed, but didn’t get anything else out before we got a short yelp on the siren from the unmarked car behind us. I turned around to see a frantic Coffey with his arm out the window pointing to the curb signaling us to pull over. I complied.

  Coffey ran to the passenger side of the car. He grabbed Fernandez by the collar and dragged him to the street. He was pissed.

  “You’ve got a fucking gun, asshole?” It was a rhetorical question. He confiscated the revolver from the floor mat. To me he said, “You knew about this?”

  “First I’m seeing it, Sarge.” I tried to remain calm, but Coffey’s tirade didn’t make it easy.

  “If I find out you bought him this gun, you’re gonna wish you never met me.” He had one of his detectives cuff Fernandez, who was shoved into the backseat of the unmarked car. He would be booked for criminal possession of a firearm, a felony. Coffey looked at me. “Follow me to the Four-Seven.”

  My mind was spinning in a thousand different directions. Coffey actually thought I gave the gun to Fernandez. By the time we got to the detective squad room at the Four-Seven station house, Coffey was livid. For five hours he kept accusing me of supplying the gun. The more I denied it, the more pissed off he got. I was getting nowhere with him, and I had no advocate to back me up. I was in that gray area between interrogation and getting placed under arrest, or at the very least suspended from the job. I needed help fast, and my first thought was of Captain Walker. I called him.

  The captain was there within fifteen minutes. He and Coffey went into an empty office and shut the door behind them. Within ten minutes Captain Walker came out, made a beeline for me parked in a chair, and said, “Grab your coat, Ralph. We’re getting out of here.” He had talked some sense into Coffey, citing my record and lack of any disciplinary problems.

  And that was that. Everything seemed to shut down after the gun incident. I never heard another word from Coffey and the investigation into the bombing went nowhere. I tried to go to bat for Fernandez on the gun rap with the Bronx DA but got no cooperation. Sure, Fernandez screwed up, but I had to try to help him. For one thing, if I didn’t, word would’ve gotten out on the street that I didn’t take care of my CIs and I’d have been hard-pressed to get cooperation from my other informants or anyone even thinking about cooperating with me.

  I heard later that some detectives returned to Fernandez to try to get him back into the fold on the bombing case, but he told them to go fuck themselves. I couldn’t really blame him.

  The Fraunces Tavern bombing was never solved.

  3

  Things were heating up.

  I was working a tour from 10 PM to 6 AM with Detective Eddie Fennell and police officers Bobby DeMatas and Nathan McCain. It was around one in the morning, and the streets were quiet, or as quiet as they get in Fort Apache, when we heard a radio run of an armed robbery in progress at a bar on Longwood Avenue. Uniforms had been assigned to the job, but we arrived first.

  As we spilled out of the unmarked auto, we encountered gunfire from the occupants of a parked car. McCain returned fire, and the car sped off. At that point we saw a man in front of the bar leveling a sawed-off 16-gauge pump-action shotgun at us. Eddie Fennell fired at him, and the guy dropped the weapon and ran away on foot. Eddie and I took off after him.

  Meanwhile, DeMatas and McCain raced back to our auto to pursue the getaway car. More cops spilled into the area in marked cars and cornered the fleeing auto. There were four occupants and two handguns in the car, as well as the robbery spoils—jewelry and cash.

  Eddie and I overtook the fleeing suspect after a three-block chase. He fought us with everything he had, which of course wasn’t enough—another fool who thought he could beat up two cops. We searched him once he was subdued, finding a quantity of cocaine.

  We arrested a total of five holdup men from this one incident. We prepared our paperwork for the rest of the night, then slid through the court process as we had been doing.

  * * *

  Juggling court cases at a slower rate than I was making arrests had created a logistical nightmare for me. I was piling up the overtime—that was a good thing—but I needed to take more shortcuts to cut down on administrative work. Streamlining the court intake process had been a time saver, for sure, but there was still evidence to be logged and stored. Seized guns had to be analyzed at the Ballistics Unit located at the police academy. Balistics could catalog it and ascertain if the gun had been stolen or used in another crime. The evidence had to be delivered to Ballistics on the officer’s next tour of duty after the arrest was made, which meant driving from my home in Yonkers to the precinct, picking up the gun, then driving to Manhattan.

  Most active cops sped up the process by taking the evidence home with them and driving straight to Ballistics the next day, cutting out the trip to the command. While certainly efficient, this was a blatant violation of NYPD rules, and legally the case could get tossed due to the broken chain of evidence, which had to be signed in and out every step of the way. No matter, many cops did it; the bosses knew it and turned a blind eye. The faster we got through the lab process, the quicker we were back out on the street. Of course, if something out of the ordinary happened to bring this detour around protocol to the attention of the courts—or, worse, the press—the bosses would feign ignorance, and the cop would be left swinging. I ended up taking this shortcut countless times and expected that things would always go well. I was never concerned that it would go wrong, but on one occasion this system did set me up for quite a bit of anxiety.

  I had made a gun collar and took the firearm home with me, which by then was nothing out of the ordinary for me. Only this time, since it was Sunday and my day off, I decided to take a girl I had been seeing with me on the road trip to Manhattan the next day. Why did I do this? Good question, but it was a combination of her not being busy that day, having lunch at a restaurant whose name wasn’t preceded by the word “El,” and having some decent conversation.

  It was raining when we reached Ballistics in Manhattan. While I dropped off the gun, the techs showed off for my lady friend by firing a machine gun into a drum of water. Afterward, we decided to head uptown to find a place to stop for lunch, avoiding the FDR, which was now flooded.

  We’d stopped for a red light at 105th Street and 1st Avenue when all hell broke loose. Two men in a knife-and-gun fight came out of nowhere and flopped onto the hood of my car. The guy with the knife, who had been shot at least once, was slashing away at his opponent with one hand and trying to keep his victim from shooting him again with the other.

  My friend let out a yelp. I thought quickly—my first thought was for her safety. To that end I told her to get on the floor, then I got out of the car, locked her in, drew my gun, and identified myself as a police officer. The two combatants kept on fighting, but in a second or two they registered the “police officer” part of my announcement. The guy with the knife tried to run, but I grabbed him and cold cocked him with the butt of my gun. The other guy was cut badly and surrendered meekly. He would die soon after in the hospital.

  I heard sirens in the distance: the cavalry to the rescue. My adrenaline was flowing like a raging river while I tried to gather my thoughts. What I was a bit concerned about was the woman I’d been with, because she wasn’t my steady girlfriend. Numerous witnesses and a platoon of cops saw her; if the story hit the press, I’d have plenty of explaining to do to the woman I’d been seeing on a steady basis. Fortunately, that never happened. I was off-duty and in my own car, so there was no apparent violation of department rules involved in the incident except that I’d taken the gun home with me, which the department never addressed.

  * * *

  A few months later I had a male friend who wanted to do a “ride-along.” This is when a civilian asks for official permission from the NYPD to accompany a team out on patrol
. Usually civilians must supply a reason other than cops are cool. For example, writers or actors are normally given authorization to conduct research. My friend wasn’t either; he just thought he’d enjoy the experience. He didn’t have permission, but I had known the guy a long time, trusted him. Still, I set a few ground rules. There were going to be two other Anti-Crime cops in the car, and they needed to be protected; this was my idea, and I shouldered the blame for anything that went wrong.

  “Okay, first: if we tell you to get out of the car, don’t question it, just do it. This’ll happen if we’re going on a possibly hazardous job.”

  My friend said, “No problem.”

  “Second: if we’re approached by a civilian, don’t say anything. Not a goddamn thing.”

  He agreed.

  “Last: if you want to get out of the car, say so. We’re trained for this shit, you’re not.”

  “Sure, got it.”

  And off we went, three cops and my buddy. Almost immediately we spotted a car with four males inside cruising down Southern Boulevard. The car was going at a snail’s pace, which is what attracted our attention. When I pulled alongside it none of the passengers glanced at us. To me this was a sure sign that they made the unmarked car we were in, were up to no good, and wanted to avoid eye contact.

  I pulled back, gave them a blast on the siren, and they pulled over. We had them up against the car and spread-eagled in seconds and searched. All four were armed with guns. They surrendered meekly and were quickly cuffed. We got an “attaboy” from our bosses for good collars. I took the arrests with my two partners assisting. This, of course, after we dropped off my civilian buddy by his car and told him to forget what he saw—in fact, to forget everything that occurred after he got out of bed that morning.

  Eventually, I had to go to court for a preliminary hearing, and as the arresting officer I was called to the stand to testify as to the circumstances surrounding the arrest of the four defendants. The assistant district attorney (ADA) who was prosecuting the case ran me through particulars, which were pretty cut and dried; nothing I hadn’t done hundreds of times before. After going through the standard who, what, when, where, and how scenario with the ADA, defense counsel had its turn.