He confessed, pleading guilty to manslaughter (he claimed he didn’t know the two Anti-Crime officers were cops and thought they were going to rob him), and was sentenced to twenty years to life in prison. He had copped to a lesser charge, but he would never see the light of day. David Navedo died in prison in 2003 of natural causes after being repeatedly turned down for parole.
* * *
Kenny Mahon’s funeral was held at Saint Gabriel’s Roman Catholic Church in Jackson Heights, Queens, on December 31, 1974. It was a raw, bitterly cold day, but that didn’t stop thousands of police officers, some from departments across the United States, from attending.
The church itself could only hold a few hundred people, so only family members, the usual assemblage of politicians, high-ranking brass, and pretty much every cop assigned to the Four-One was permitted inside. Cops from neighboring Bronx commands patrolled our precinct that day. The rest of the attendees stood in quiet formations outside the church, silent as the ghosts in the nearby cemetery.
There is a protocol for funerals of police officers who die in the line of duty. Every officer, including detectives, those assigned to plainclothes units, and Anti-Crime, wears dress uniform. The ceremony includes a group of bagpipers playing a funeral dirge. Pallbearers from the NYPD Ceremonial Unit usually escort the body at funerals for cops who die in the line of duty as well as those who’ve retired. There was a special honor guard, composed of Four-One cops in full dress uniforms on the steps of the church, the last tribute to a fallen member of their command as the coffin entered and left the church.
The service was a blur; I don’t recall much, and I suspect many others who worked the Four-One had the same experience. We were all still in shock. What I do remember was the coffin, since I was unable to comprehend that Kenny was in it. He was so full of life—how could he be dead?
Everyone was crying, some uncontrollably. Emile DeFoe was a wreck. Not only was he Kenny’s partner that fateful night, but he and Kenny were best friends. They were always at each other’s homes helping with projects, watching sports, sharing the camaraderie that only men who risk their lives for each other on a daily basis can understand. They loved to go fishing together, but after Kenny’s death Emile never fished again. Emile was also going to college on his off-duty time. He quit school.
Both Kenny and Emile received the Medal of Honor, Kenny posthumously, for their actions on December 28, 1974. Emile’s conduct was exemplary; he was a true hero by anyone’s definition of the word, but we all thought that Emile would never fully understand why he’d been decorated with the NYPD’s highest award for an incident in which his best friend had died.
Emile DeFoe was never the same. He received counseling, a lot of it, but the guilt persisted. He retired on a disability pension while still a young man. I hope, these many years later, that he has found some amount of peace. He’ll never forget Kenny Mahon; anyone who knew Kenny will never forget him.
I’ve kept the Mass card from Kenny’s funeral, which has his picture on it, on my desk for forty-two years. Kenny’s death was a blow from which I’m still recovering.
6
I’d been a sworn officer with the New York City Police Department for five years. During that time I’d achieved an impressive record of approximately one thousand arrests, not counting assists. I had taken many guns off the street, prevented an untold quantity of drugs from reaching customers, and placed numerous felons in alternative housing courtesy of the prison system. To put the number of arrests into perspective, I’d say that the average cop with my time on the job had around fifty arrests—very active cops perhaps up to two hundred. No one I know of has ever amassed arrest numbers that approach mine during five years on the job. At twenty-six, I’d also garnered over a hundred departmental medals (I would finish my career with 220 medals and 35 awards from civilian organizations).
I loved what I was doing. Every day I went to work amazed that I was actually getting paid for something I would do pro bono if the city suddenly went belly-up financially (an event that came close to reality several times during the 1970s).
The 41st Precinct’s Anti-Crime Unit was my home. I loved doing my part, the cops, camaraderie, and the excitement. I would have gladly stayed there for my entire career, but I also coveted the gold shield of a detective, a lofty goal, but one that I thought I deserved. Still, no promotion was forthcoming.
I was told countless times how valuable I was to the unit, and that got me thinking that perhaps I was too valuable and that my lack of movement might have been a selfish tactic of the area commanders. The thought wasn’t crazy, even if it was paranoid. Not only were street thugs out to get cops, but the NYPD bosses weren’t above sacrificing a cop or two when some political problem needed a remedied scapegoat. Or, as one cop I know so eloquently puts it, “It doesn’t mean you’re paranoid if someone really is out to get you.”
I’d never been political, never sucked up to bosses for favors. I just did my job, whatever was asked of me. If I were in the military, I would have been deemed a good soldier. So it came as a bit of a surprise—just as my hopes were growing dim—when I was told I was being promoted to detective, third grade, not for my arrest record but for the fifteen bribery arrests I’d made since I’d been in the Four-One.
The NYPD’s Integrity Review Board was established to reward police officers for their honesty, and there was no better way to gauge that than by a police officer’s history of bribery arrests. Fifteen arrests for bribery is indeed a big number, but when you take into consideration the thousands of potential bribe situations I’d been in (every time I made an arrest), the number of bribe offers seems reasonable.
Most bribery collars are pretty similar: I’d arrest someone, and then the prisoner would offer a sum of money, drugs, some kind of stolen swag, sex—you name it—to be cut loose. After the initial proposition, I’d get wired for sound by the Internal Affairs Division and then have the prisoner repeat the offer for posterity. As soon as he did, the charge of bribery of a police officer (a felony) would be added to whatever he was initially charged with. The size and nature of the bribe were irrelevant. I’d been offered anywhere from ten dollars to several thousand dollars to look the other way.
The Integrity Review Board was looking for a poster boy to counteract the bad press the department received during the recent Knapp Commission hearings on police corruption, which had painted police work with a pretty broad brush of systemic corruption in certain units. To my knowledge no cop had ever amassed fifteen bribery arrests, so I became a promising candidate for swaying the public’s opinion that all cops were crooked.
I was told that my promotion was imminent and was asked if I would like to remain in the Four-One Anti-Crime Unit as a detective. I was thrilled with the offer, even if I didn’t quite believe it. It came as little surprise to me that when I was promoted in a very public ceremony, which was covered by the media, it was announced that I wasn’t going to stay in the Four-One Anti-Crime Unit. The NYPD is famous for asking cops being promoted where they wanted to be assigned and then sending them in the opposite direction. My new home was to be the 34th Precinct Detective Unit in Washington Heights. I was being transferred to Manhattan? This wasn’t good.
The 34th was a very high-crime command, not unlike the Four-One—which was a good thing. But being in Manhattan was going to screw up my system of getting in and out of court rapidly, a system that I’d honed over the years in the Bronx. Most people knew me in the Bronx’s criminal justice system, especially the court personnel who worked with me to grease the wheels of justice and get me out of court in as little as an hour.
Manhattan Criminal Court was as far away as one could get from the 34th. They were located at opposite ends of the island with a nightmare of traffic between. A two-or-three-day wait to see an assistant district attorney and a judge in Manhattan Criminal Court was not uncommon, especially on weekends. Cops would actually bring lawn chairs to court with them and recline while waiting to
get through the system. I envisioned my arrest numbers rapidly diminishing; every day spent staring off into space or sprawled on a lawn chair waiting in court would be time away from the street.
I called people I thought could help me get back to the Bronx. No good. A source in the Personnel Unit told me the only way to get back to the Bronx was to get a “mutual transfer.” This meant I’d have to find a detective in the Bronx who for some unfathomable reason would rather work in the 34th in Manhattan and trade places with me: a body for a body. Plus the bosses of both respective squads would have to sign off on the transfer.
I set a plan in motion. I spent my first two tours in my new assignment designing and printing flyers requesting a “mutual,” then visited every detective squad in the Bronx and posted them. Day number 3 found me in the police academy attending the first day of the five-day Criminal Investigation Course (CIC), which all new detectives are required to take and pass—a sort of Detective 101 to acquaint the newly minted sleuth with a different skill set.
While I was in the CIC the miracle happened: a detective from the 52nd Precinct Detective Unit agreed to go to the 34th, and both squad commanders signed off on the transfers. I was back in the Bronx.
* * *
The 52nd Precinct covers the northern portion of the Bronx and was considered a medium-crime precinct. I was born and raised in the Fordham section of the Five-Two and knew better; crime was everywhere in New York City in the 1970s. You just had to know where to look.
It had been a neighborhood of Irish, Italians, and Jews when I was a kid; it was now slowly changing to an area of immigrant Albanians, Hispanics, and blacks. As the older generations died off, their children were choosing to seek opportunities elsewhere. As with any recently arrived ethnic group from a foreign country, the Albanians tended to keep close and retain the customs of the old country. Many of the males sought employment in the upkeep of residential and commercial buildings as superintendents, janitors, and porters. The women mostly stayed home and raised the kids. A hardworking lot, the supers and janitors of yesterday became the landlords of tomorrow. Arthur Avenue, known as the Little Italy of the Bronx, would, by the early 1990s, be inhabited mostly by Albanians. When the Italians began to depart, the Albanians bought and continued to operate most of the Italian restaurants in the area.
Albanian gangs began to proliferate. Like the Italians, they were highly structured and exclusionary crime families (outsiders need not apply). Disputes were settled with guns—many Albanian men in the area carried them and weren’t afraid to use them. It was about this time that I arrived on the scene and made it my mission to take as many guns off the street as I could. As eager as I was to begin my mission, I first had to ease myself into my new home: the 52nd Precinct detective squad.
I was well known in the Bronx, but I didn’t want it to appear that I was going to be a lone wolf who didn’t listen to and respect authority. My dream was reality: I was an NYPD detective and was very proud, not only for what I’d accomplished but because I was now part of the best group of detectives in the world. However, with this promotion came some trepidation. I began experiencing separation anxiety after leaving the Four-One, which had become so much a part of who I was. I believe that Fort Apache was unique among the seventy-seven precincts that make up the NYPD. I’m certain I learned the job faster in the Four-One than I could’ve anywhere else. The Four-One was intense, not only for the mind-blowing crime and poverty problems but also for the bond created among the police officers assigned there. Cops depended on each other no matter where they worked, but it was always my suspicion that the Four-One created the strongest friendships in the city, not unlike infantry soldiers who face death on a daily basis and form connections that last long after their service is completed.
In many respects the Five-Two was the opposite of the Four-One. Because poverty and crime weren’t rampant in the command, I was going to have to acquire a new set of social skills when it came to dealing with the residents.
Then there’s the question of my own competency. I was a very good street cop, but I was not yet familiar with being a detective. My area of expertise was making arrests on the street, usually for crimes I’d observed in progress. Did I have that ability to reason, deduct, and carry a case through from beginning to end? I’d find out soon enough.
I knew a cop who got promoted to sergeant, and he told me that walking into his new command as a boss was one of the scariest days of his life. This, coming from a Vietnam combat veteran and excellent street cop.
“One day you’re a grunt, working the street with your buddies,” he’s said, “and the next day you’re a boss supervising a group of cops just like those you were working with the day before. All sorts of doubts fly through your head: Am I good enough to do this job? Can I come up with answers when asked for advice? Will I be a good sergeant, respected by my peers and subordinates?”
I had similar feelings, the fear of the unknown.
* * *
There were nineteen detectives assigned to the squad, and we were under the command of Sergeant Stephen Cantor. Cantor was a former cop with the Tactical Patrol Force who had the reputation of being a fair-but-no-nonsense boss. He was in his early thirties, young for a sergeant at the time, and very young to be a squad commander. Most of his subordinate detectives were older, but they all respected him.
All he knew about me was that I was twenty-six years old, had made over a thousand quality arrests, and earned numerous departmental medals. He was going to control me from the start and make me realize who was boss. I had no objection to what I knew was coming; I’d do my job just as I’d always done, prove myself, and then earn the freedom to really make a difference.
The mere fact that I was transferred to the North Bronx slowed down my high-voltage adrenaline flow to a trickle. There was going to be an adjustment period, but the blood and death that naturally came with policing the streets of the Bronx in the ’70s would resurface, and shortly my adrenaline stream would catch up. I caught my first case a few days after my arrival.
“Ralph,” Cantor said, “take care of this.” He handed me a complaint report.
I read the details, in disbelief that handling it required a detective. Two women in their eighties had gotten into a verbal dispute that had changed course when one of them hit the other one with a hairbrush. The victim wanted the hairbrush assailant locked up for assault. A detective surely wasn’t necessary for this bullshit—patrol could’ve handled it! But I was being tested to see how I followed orders and to get a clear understanding of who the boss was.
Sergeant Cantor probably expected me to complain, but I didn’t. I smiled, nodded, and said, “I’ll get right on it.” His expression was one of thinly veiled amazement. I was going to play the game until the good sergeant realized that I could be a team player. Once he understood that, I’d go about doing what I wanted to do (with the improved results).
I went with Detective Cortes, who was instructed by Sergeant Cantor to let me conduct the interview with the two women in order to see how I’d handle myself. Both ladies were still highly agitated, and the victim had a black eye. She insisted that I lock up her attacker for “ferocious assault.” Normally, when an assault victim with an obvious injury wants an arrest made, a police officer has to comply. In this case, I was damned if I was going to march someone’s grandmother into the Five-Two in handcuffs so every cop in the house could have a good laugh.
I used my discretion and deemed Hairbrush Lady a person in need of psychological evaluation. Instead of a paddy wagon to the slammer, she got a ride in an ambulance to the nearest hospital psych ward. They’d probably look her over, then send her home. No jail, perp and victim happy, and me not looking like a clown.
Back at the command, Sergeant Cantor called me into his office as soon as he saw me. “Where’s your collar, Detective?”
“The perp was obviously in need of psychological help, Sarge,” I said with a straight face. “She was transported by
ambulance to Jacobi Hospital.” I smiled. “Anything else?”
Cantor stared at me for a moment, and I could see the look of grudging admiration on his face. I’d outsmarted him, and he approved of it. Detectives think on their feet, make decisions based on expediency and what’s good for the squad. I was beginning to like Sergeant Cantor; his main concern was what was good for the job. I knew I hadn’t seen the end of the ball breaking, but he knew I could take it. I’d have to pay my dues before I became a trusted member of the team. I didn’t know what was coming next, but I didn’t have long to wait to find out.
Cantor gave me my first homicide case a few days later. The deceased was a squirrel, the victim of an alleged gunshot.
I played it with a straight face. “I hope he didn’t suffer, Sarge.”
“Well, Detective, that’s what you’re going to find out. A parking lot’s being constructed at Fordham University. One of the crew found the critter DOA, looked like it’d been shot. The squirrel could’ve been a person … someone taking target practice … or we could be dealing with a serial killer, just warming up, so to speak. Get right on it, okay?”
“Absolutely.”
A fucking squirrel murder. I couldn’t believe it, but you would never suspect it to look at me. The boss wanted an investigation, and he was going to get one.
* * *
A backhoe operator pointed the “victim” out to me. “I almost ran over the fucking thing … just lying there in the dirt. Looks like someone shot it … right?”
Street Warrior Page 15