Numerous cops from more departments than I knew existed dragged the driver from the Chevy. He was fine and putting up a struggle. Cops, adrenaline pumping like a broken water main and highly agitated from risking their lives in a prolonged pursuit, spilled from their vehicles and pounced on the car thief.
* * *
Days went on, routine resumed.
But in Fort Apache nothing is ever truly routine. What was about to transpire would be the second time I’d killed a criminal for sure—the third if it indeed was my bullet that pierced George Carter—and it wouldn’t be my last. I’d never get used to it.
* * *
My partner now was Bobby DeMatas, an active cop about three years older than me. We were in a yellow cab, one of the undercover vehicles assigned to the unit. I was driving.
At about 9 PM, three hours into our tour, we observed several teenage boys walking along Southern Boulevard stopping passersby and asking for money. Some complied, offering up change, sometimes a bill, while others just kept walking. Then they walked up to a Hispanic man who looked to be in his late thirties. We later found out the conversation went as follows:
“Hey, man,” one of the teenagers asked, “you got some money?”
“Fuck you,” the man said. “Take a walk.”
The kid got his macho up, machismo being the cause of more homicides in the South Bronx than I can count. “Fuck me?” the kid replied, and shoved the man, knocking him back a few paces.
The man’s response was to produce a revolver from his waistband and fire a round into the kid’s chest. The kid went down; it happened in the blink of an eye, before Bobby or I had a chance to react.
I drove right up to the shooter, drew my gun, jumped out of the cab and yelled, “Police—don’t move!”
The guy with the gun whirled and took off, but not before he and I exchanged gunfire. I was right behind him while Bobby pursued from across the street, running parallel to the shooter.
Within half a block, the shooter took cover behind a parked car as pedestrians scattered, including most of the kids who had been asking for money. The kid who got shot remained motionless on the ground.
Bobby ducked behind a car directly across the street from the gunman, while I sought cover in a stairway leading to the basement of a tenement. My partner and I had the shooter triangulated.
The gunman and I continued to trade shots. Bobby didn’t have a clear view from where he was and so far hadn’t fired at the guy, but this didn’t stop the shooter from firing at Bobby. The gunman was methodical; he’d fire a shot at each of us in turn.
I was incredulous. How could I have missed at this range? The shooter began to reload with loose rounds (not only was this guy carrying a good weapon, but he had extra ammo—something that was rare for the times), and I took the opportunity to draw my backup gun and aim three more rounds at his torso. Still nothing. It only seemed to piss him off, because he emptied his gun at me and Bobby and began to reload again! I had to have hit him. What was keeping this son of a bitch up?
I was behind the shooter, who was about thirty-five feet from me, a clear and easy shot. I aimed carefully and let two shots go. The shooter didn’t budge; instead, he fired another round at me, while Bobby, who didn’t have much visibility, fired at the shooter, striking him in the shoulder.
The shooter grabbed his shoulder, dropped to his knees, and then rolled over on his back.
I shouted, “He’s down!” I had two rounds left and ran up to the gunman. I was a few feet away when he propped himself up and leveled his gun at me. I fired one round, getting him in the forehead, watching the back of his skull blow off. He was down for the count now, no doubt.
Bobby came running over. Passersby began coming out of their homes. Cars stopped. Radio cars were responding.
The rest was pretty much a blur. The wounded kid, who turned out to be fifteen, was rushed to the hospital; he would survive. I’d hit the gunman eight times, the last shot obviously fatal. My first seven rounds were grouped tightly, and all had hit his torso—exactly what we were trained to aim for. The results of the autopsy would show a combination of booze and drugs in his system, which I figured kept him impervious to the bullet strikes.
Bobby DeMatas and I were awarded the coveted Combat Cross, the department’s second-highest honor after the Medal of Honor, during the NYPD’s annual Medal Day ceremony.
While I was grateful to be recognized for the incident, I’d prefer if it had never occurred. Taking a life hits me when the shooting is over, when I sit in the quiet of my apartment and reflect. I’d wonder what was in the mind of these guys and how they thought they could take on two cops and hope to survive. Similar thoughts came to me when cops killed themselves: What the hell were they thinking to bring them to a point where they had to know that they were going to die that day, and they could have prevented it.
This was my third shootout to end in a fatality, but they don’t come any easier with numbers. This engagement was prolonged; in comparison, when Kal Unger got shot, it lasted seconds. I was physically and mentally exhausted. I only had a few years on the job, and I’d seen and done what most cops never experience in their entire careers. What would be next for me?
* * *
There were numerous federal agencies working within the confines of the Four-One precinct, all investigating crimes that came under their jurisdiction. The FBI; Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA); Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), and other alphabet agencies too numerous to count wandered in and out of the station house on occasion. We worked in different worlds and rarely interacted.
The Anti-Crime Unit was enlisted to help the FBI, however, when one of their agents operating in the Four-One was robbed of his gun and thousands of dollars in marked bills during a fairly classic drug rip-off. During the sting operation, the bad guys were supposed to get busted but, instead, mugged the FBI agent.
One thing I’d learned about the FBI was that they really disliked being embarrassed, and having one of their agents lose his gun and “buy” money was a major faux pas.
I was with Bobby DeMatas in Captain Walker’s office as he explained the game plan. The captain was currently embroiled in a legal battle over the movie Fort Apache starring Paul Newman. It was Captain Walker’s contention that the film was ripped off from his book of the same name, and he was spending a lot of time with lawyers. This, however, didn’t stop him from being the exemplary boss he was; he was always focused on his cops and his job with the department.
“Special request from the head of the New York office of the FBI,” Captain Walker said, outlining the current problem. “You guys are good. Go out there and do whatever you have to do to get the stuff back.”
Bobby and I looked at each other. We got the message. We were given free rein, which included the use of force.
Captain Walker gave us the location where the agent was robbed and a description of the two guys who robbed him. “Any questions?”
I was going to ask if we could wear ski masks, but the captain didn’t look like he was in the mood for wise-guy humor. “Nope,” we both said in unison, and waited to be dismissed.
The captain said, “Why are you guys still here?”
The people we were looking for were obviously not law-abiding citizens; therefore, the individuals we’d be talking to were cut from the same cloth. To catch a scumbag, talk to a scumbag. Gentleness and understanding were not part of the interrogation plan.
We began hitting known criminal hangouts, mostly bars and social clubs, hammering these places with enough muscle so the creeps inside knew we meant business.
Most doors were locked, but we didn’t knock, opting to break the doors down for effect. Such an entrance is usually met with everyone initially freezing. If we were bad guys looking for trouble, guns would be drawn, and the standard mayhem would ensue. But Bobby and I were well known in the area, so all we got were looks of amazement.
We made a general announcement as to the particulars of th
e rip-off, asking if anyone knew who did it. Blank stares were forthcoming, but everyone got searched and we were coming up with numerous guns and drugs. We couldn’t make arrests because of our mission, so we called for sectors to follow us around to take the collars. We gave away over twenty arrests that night.
Little by little we gathered intelligence, which led us to a tenement in another Bronx precinct where one of the guys who ripped off the agent was said to live. The apartment door was made of heavy metal, and the jambs were solid too. It would take too many kicks to breech such a door, so we knocked and announced a water leak on the floor above. A male began to open the door, and that’s when I kicked it in, sending him sprawling backward on the floor. He fit the description of one of the robbers and was alone in the apartment.
Initially denying he had anything to do with the crime, within minutes he gave himself and his partner up. The money was under his bed, but the robber swore he didn’t know where the gun was and that when he last saw it, his partner had it. We had him call his buddy to come over. It took his partner in crime a half hour to arrive. In the interim, we tore through the apartment like Walmart shoppers on Black Friday, looking for any other contraband he might have hidden. The place was clean. His partner, completely oblivious to the trap, looked like a deer caught in headlights when we dragged him into the apartment and deposited him on the couch next to his buddy.
We read them their rights. When Bobby began waving around a blackjack, they invoked their right to talk; frantically telling us that the gun was on the roof, hidden at the top of the elevator shaft.
Elapsed time from inception of assignment to recovery of the items in question: three hours. When you absolutely, positively need something done quickly, call Anti-Crime.
Accolades came from our boss, and the FBI sent us a very complimentary letter, heaping praise on us. Basking in the gratitude of your boss is a good feeling. In my case, however, the feeling was fleeting. Within a week I got another dreaded forthwith to the station house. The captain wanted to see Kenny Mahon and me. I had a bad feeling about this.
4
The forthwith we’d gotten to the station house had to do with an incident that had occurred a month before.
Kenny and I were patrolling with another team in an unmarked auto when an alert came over the radio instructing all units to be on the lookout for a car wanted in connection with a drug transaction. The description of the car was vague, but there was a license plate number. Kenny wrote down the number, and we continued on patrol.
About an hour later, the four of us were bullshitting about nothing in particular when I spotted a car that fit the description.
“Kenny, you got that plate number?” I asked.
He checked his notes. It was a match.
There were four males in the car. We pulled alongside the vehicle, identified ourselves as police officers, and signaled for the driver to pull over, at which point we saw one of the males in the backseat pull a gun. Then the driver floored the car and took off.
We drew our guns and announced a pursuit over the radio. The chase was on.
We were shooting at the fleeing auto, but there was no return fire. Sector cars were converging from all over the command, but within minutes we had lost the car. We looked for it for the better part of the next hour.
When we understood the car was gone, we had a decision to make: whether or not to report that shots were fired at the car. A department directive had come down a few months prior prohibiting a member of the NYPD to fire shots at a fleeing auto unless deadly physical force had been used (or would imminently be used) against the pursuing officers.
We’d seen one of the car’s occupants holding a gun, but we couldn’t effectively demonstrate the imminent use of deadly physical force against us. Did we really want to be the poster boys for enforcement of the new department regulation against firing at fleeing autos? I think not. The paperwork alone would bury us. No one was hurt and the car and passengers were gone, so we decided to omit the fired shots from our official version of what went down.
We also came to discover that we were chasing the wrong car. When Central broadcast the alarm and plate number, they neglected to mention that it was a New Jersey license plate. What are the odds?
Weeks passed without fallout, and we forgot about the incident. Then, out of nowhere, about two weeks before the forthwith, a civilian got a flat tire, the result of a slow air leak. He thought he’d picked up a nail and went to a mechanic to get the tire fixed. The mechanic didn’t find a nail … he found a bullet.
The mechanic called the police, and the bullet went to Ballistics. In the meantime, it was determined that the car with the flat tire matched the car we had been chasing. The investigation began. Kenny and I, plus the other team, were interrogated by a captain. Had any of us fired any rounds at the car in violation of department policy? We had agreed to stick to our story and enthusiastically denied that any of us fired at the car. The captain told us that the recovered bullet was in pristine condition and we could have our guns tested to see which of us had fired the shot. He said he’d give us an out.
“You tell me who fired at the car now, and we’ll only hold the shooter responsible. The other three will take a verbal reprimand and that’ll be it. If no one fesses up and we have to test all your guns to find the one that fired the shots, all of you will suffer the penalty.”
The captain’s gesture was reasonable. However, we had anticipated the ploy and figured out a way to turn him down without punishment for anyone.
After the bullet had been recovered from the tire, all four of us went to a junkyard in another precinct and fired rounds into car tires using our service revolvers. An experiment. We fired quite a few, and all the rounds were disfigured to the point that a ballistics comparison would be impossible. The various tires had decimated all our bullets. The captain was bluffing.
We didn’t think the captain had a magic bullet, so we turned down the offer. Frustrated, the captain knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere, and the investigation was dropped.
We had the charges beat for sure, but knowing the NYPD as we did, we figured they would get us back for outsmarting them. And this is where the story began: with the forthwith.
Every command has an integrity control officer (ICO), usually a lieutenant. It’s the ICO’s job to investigate and punish violations of department rules on a command level (violations of the law were investigated by the Internal Affairs Division). The NYPD’s internal judicial system views cops suspected of wrongdoing as guilty until proven innocent. In this case, the job assumed we were lying about firing a shot and we weren’t going to get away with it.
The ICO recommended to the commanding officer that our partnerships be broken up. Kenny and I would be split, as well as the other team. The CO went along with the recommendation.
This was a devastating blow. Truthfully, I’d rather have taken a loss of vacation days or a monetary fine (or both!) than lose Kenny Mahon as a partner. We’d been working together for a couple of years, and Kenny had been more than a partner. He was a good friend. I mourned the loss, and I’m sure the other team went through the same.
It was too late to change our testimony—to do so was to admit we lied, and an entirely new investigation would be opened. We had won the battle but lost the war.
* * *
I was in my apartment working out and listening to music, some much needed alone time away from the craziness of Fort Apache, when the phone rang.
It was my current girlfriend, and she was in a panic. “Ralph, you gotta help! Me and my mom, we’re at Gunhill Road and Jerome Avenue … There’re two guys here threatening us. Could you come here? We’re scared!”
The panic and fear in her voice was palpable. “I’m on my way … ten minutes.” I was out of my apartment and in my car in a flash. Her location was less than two miles away, and I broke numerous traffic laws getting there in record time.
My girlfriend and her mom had gotten into a
verbal dispute with two white males over a parking spot. By the time I got there, both guys were brandishing tire irons. I screeched to a halt, exiting the car at a run, gun drawn. I had my shield out and visible, and I identified myself as a police officer.
I was double-teamed almost immediately. One guy circled behind me while the other remained in front of me. Both of them attacked at the same time, tire irons swinging. The women began screaming. The first blow struck my right hand—my gun hand—breaking it, but I didn’t drop my gun. The guy behind me got me square in the head with his tire iron, fracturing my skull. My knees buckled and my vision began to darken. I knew I had to take these guys out or they’d wind up beating me to death while I was unconscious. I heard radio car sirens close by as I raised my weapon and fired a shot. The last thing I remembered was seeing my target go down. He was hit in the neck, the round exiting, traveling into his shoulder, and exiting once again; four bullet holes from one bullet. The guy behind me was about to strike me in the head again when a responding uniformed cop grabbed the pipe on the downswing. He probably saved my life.
Another close call.
My afternoon workout at home turned out to be something entirely different. I was hospitalized overnight because of the skull fracture and was on sick leave from work for two months while I healed. My head mended fairly quickly; the hand took months to get back to normal.
I understood that police work was hazardous and that, no matter how tough I was, there was always the chance that I’d be hurt bad. I now had one bad injury under my belt and knew there would probably be more in the future. I’d always mentally prepared for that future; I welcomed the challenge but now understood that the outcome might not always be favorable.
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