Street Warrior

by Ralph Friedman

  But just when you think the world is full of assholes and criminals, along comes a guy like the one who protected his wife. It makes you realize that what it means to help people can come in many forms.

  8

  When I came to the Five-Two I’d expected a calmer, more civilized precinct than what I’d been used to in the Four-One. At first glance, the crime statistics indicated I was correct, but as time went on things began to heat up.

  I’d caught a simple domestic case in which a woman’s ex-boyfriend had returned to the apartment they shared and stolen every piece of furniture. How did she know it was her ex?

  “Because the son of a bitch told me!” she exclaimed. “He called me up and said, ‘I got your furniture, bitch.’”

  She described her ex as fifty-five years old (eighteen years her senior) and connected to the Mafia. In the years I’d been on the job, I’d come to realize that most people lie to some extent when dealing with cops. Complainants tend to exaggerate what happened to them and make the person who did them wrong out to be a modern-day Jack the Ripper. I doubted her description of her ex as a mob guy, but I ran his name and, sure enough, he had ties to a Genovese crew, the street soldiers of the parent Genovese crime family of the America Mafia.

  “And he’s violent too. Both him and his psycho son … cut from the same cloth,” she added.

  I got the ex’s address and drove there with another detective, Timmy, upon leaving the complainant. The son met us at the door. He greeted us with a sneer that dripped insolence.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  He was in his late twenties and dressed like a mobster wannabe: jeans, black silk shirt, highly polished black boots. He also had a swept-back ninety-mile-an-hour haircut, enough gold chains to weigh down a dead body, and the obligatory pinky ring.

  I told him we were looking for his father.

  “He ain’t here.”

  His old man might’ve been in the apartment, but we didn’t have a warrant and the crime he was accused of wasn’t at the level of forced entry. First of all, we still needed to verify the complainant’s story and make sure she wasn’t lying to get back at her ex. Furthermore, we figured we might be able to settle the dispute without making an arrest just by talking to the former boyfriend. Breaking down a door would be counterproductive.

  “He’s accused of stealing some furniture from his ex-girlfriend,” I said.

  This kicked off a string of curses describing the girlfriend. We waited patiently until he was through.

  “He’s gonna get arrested if he can’t clear this up,” I told the son in a calm voice.

  “Oh, yeah, motherfucker?” sonny boy said. “You come for my father, you’re gonna have to deal with me. You ain’t taking my dad.”

  I sighed. I didn’t like the way this was going. The accusation was relatively minor, and I wanted to end this with as little turmoil as possible.

  His parting words before slamming the door were, “Well, fuck you. You come for my dad and there’s gonna be a problem.”

  Truer words were never spoken.

  Over the next few days we found that the ex-boyfriend did in fact take the furniture and that he had it stored in a warehouse. So we returned to his apartment. I figured we might have a problem with the son, so we got our nightsticks and slipped them up the sleeves of our jackets.

  His son opened the door again, but I spoke before he had a chance to tell us how much of a badass he was.

  “Okay,” I said, “we’re here to lock up your father.” Then I gave him my standard warning: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Your choice.”

  He didn’t budge from the doorway. At this point the father appeared behind his son, and we told him we were there to arrest him.

  The son swung a punch that narrowly missed my head. Timmy and I drew our nightsticks and stepped away from him, thinking he’d cool down upon seeing the menacing batons. Apparently he didn’t give a damn, though, because he came at us again, fists flying.

  We overtook the jerk in less than a minute, but he kept on fighting, or at least trying to. His father was screaming curses at us but kept his reaction to the verbal kind. His son may have been stupid enough to try to protect his dad, but evidently that street didn’t run both ways. What he did do, however, was clutch his chest, grunt, keel over, and collapse to the floor. We were too busy with his son to pay too much attention to what we thought was a desperate attempt at distraction. His son kept on swinging, and we did likewise. When he finally surrendered, I cuffed him while Timmy attended to the father, who was rolling around on the floor. Great actor, I thought; looks like he was having a real heart attack. Turns out he was.

  Timmy used the apartment phone to call an ambulance. “And put a rush on it,” he said.

  The ambulance came and scooped up the dad (who had remarkably regained the strength to yell nasty things about our mothers), and we took the son to the squad room to start the arrest paperwork. He looked as if he’d taken a direct hit with an artillery round and was very docile and quiet now. But he still had the swagger of a wise guy as we led him to our car for the ride to the squad.

  Sergeant Cantor heard voices from his office and came to see what was up. He took one look at our prisoner, pointed to the floor, and said, “Jesus fucking Christ. What the fuck is that?”

  I heard Timmy exclaim, “Holy shit!” I whirled and saw my partner staring wide-eyed at the floor. One of our prisoner’s fingers had fallen off. Off! As in totally detached from his hand.

  This was perplexing. The only thing I could figure was that while he was throwing punches back at the apartment, one or more of our nightstick blows must have connected with the finger joint and broken it. The finger was probably hanging by a thread of skin, and came off when we got to the squad room. I looked at our prisoner. He was sitting in a chair like nothing had happened. He’d never said a word. Talk about stoic.

  The handful of detectives present were staring alternately at our arrestee and his finger, probably trying to imagine what could possibly have happened. We were doing the same. A simple complaint had morphed into a heart attack victim and a son who, if looking for a Mafia nickname, could now and forever be known as “Fingers.”

  Sergeant Cantor took command of the situation, pointed to the finger, and said, “Get that fucking thing out of here.” Then he turned and went back into his office.

  Father and son wound up in adjoining beds in Jacobi Hospital’s emergency room. Dad would make it, the heart attack being of the mild variety. Doctors attempted to reattach the son’s finger. I don’t know if the surgery took, but the next day he was in court looking like the Invisible Man. He had bandages everywhere.

  The presiding judge looked over the top of his reading glasses at my prisoner.

  “What happened to the prisoner, Detective?”

  “He resisted arrest, Your Honor.” I responded in a clear and authoritative voice.

  “Hmm,” the judge said. Then to the prisoner he said, “Were you mistreated in any way, sir?”

  The mummy couldn’t speak very well, but he managed to squeak out a “no.”

  I had to give the guy credit; he was a true believer in the mob dictum omertà. He had made the choice to take on two cops and paid the price, sucked it up, and moved on. Maybe he’d make a good gangster after all.

  During my entire career I never raised my hands to a civilian unless they chose to fight. Some, like our budding mobster, knew the consequences of attacking a police officer and lived with them. Others didn’t and availed themselves of the Civilian Complaint Review Board to file charges. I’ve had 205 civilian complaints lodged against me. And I don’t mean for it to sound like I’m boasting about that number; all were thoroughly investigated and found to be unsubstantiated.

  Some people take issue with the use of a nightstick, or with two cops restraining one prisoner. Police officers have one rule, which is to survive. Once the person either gives up or is subdued, the fight is over.

&n
bsp; * * *

  On February 16, 1977, I got involved in an incident that was to have a profound—though delayed—effect on my life.

  I was near the end of my tour and Roger had left for the day. I was processing an arrest in the squad room when one of my confidential informants came in and told me about a guy he knew who was trying to sell a gun.

  “What kind of gun?” I asked.

  “I dunno … just a gun,” my informant said. “He’s looking for a buyer all over the neighborhood.”

  I went to see Sergeant Cantor and related the CI’s story.

  “He reliable?” Cantor asked.

  “Gold.”

  We made a plan: Cantor would work with me in Roger’s absence. We would send the CI to buy the gun, and after the sale we’d lock up the salesman. Of course we’d go through the pretense of arresting my informant so he wouldn’t get made as a snitch. He’d be released later.

  The deal would go down on the roof of the seller’s building. The CI had some cash, so we didn’t have to go through the mountain of paperwork to request buy money from the department. Talk about everything falling into place. Cantor and I would be a few buildings away observing the sale. Then, after the CI had possession of the gun, we’d run across the adjoining rooftops and take our prize.

  “Sound good?” I asked Sergeant Cantor.

  He shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”

  * * *

  We positioned ourselves on a rooftop five buildings away and waited for my CI to make an appearance with the perp and the gun. We didn’t have to wait long. But when he showed up we realized that there would have to be a slight change in plans; he had a partner. There were two bad guys. Cantor and I felt we could still handle the operation. After all, we had the advantage of surprise. However, the surprise, we’d soon find out, would be our own. We couldn’t hear what was being said, but we saw money changing hands and saw the gun, which turned out to be a rifle, a 30-30 Winchester from the looks of it—a very powerful weapon.

  Instead of a simple business deal, the guy with the rifle, a Hispanic man about thirty years old, walked to the edge of the roof with the weapon. He took aim at the street below and started pumping out shots. Apparently, he was showing our CI that the gun worked.

  What we had was something bigger than the gun sale: a crime in progress. And one that had to be stopped before the nut killed someone. It was cold, so there weren’t too many people on the street. But there were enough to litter the area with at least a dozen bodies.

  Cantor and I ran for the shooter, identifying ourselves as police officers along the way. As soon as the rifleman heard “Police!” he whirled, aiming right at us.

  I fired as I ran, emptying my revolver. I hit him in the thigh and hip. He went down. My informant hit the deck. Cantor was right beside me but held his fire. The second man took off and ducked out of view behind a kiosk.

  “I’ll go after the other guy!” I yelled to Cantor, who went to the downed perp and kicked the rifle out of his reach. I drew my backup revolver and slowly made my way to the kiosk. These extensions are on almost every tenement roof and usually include dumbwaiters, elevator shafts, airshafts, and pipes. They were about seven feet high, big enough to provide cover and concealment. I had no sight of the second man; I assumed he was behind the kiosk, but I couldn’t be certain.

  As I rounded the corner, he materialized with a raised knife, already practically on top of me. In that fraction of a second I knew he had me; I was going to get stabbed … bad.

  I heard a shot. Cantor had appeared out of nowhere and shot the attacker from behind, who promptly went down. Sergeant Cantor had saved my life, no doubt about it.

  The perp was on his back and didn’t appear to be conscious. As I neared him to take the knife from his hand, he quickly sprang to his feet with the blade extended in my direction in an overhand grip. I instinctively fired a round, hitting him in the stomach, killing him instantly.

  The rifleman was in custody, and our CI was ceremonially handcuffed for effect. The man with the knife I’d killed was identified as Manny Rivas, a small-time hoodlum with several arrests to his credit. Back then I thought the encounter with Rivas was the closest I’d ever come to dying—until the day I actually die, of course. But I would be proved wrong.

  This was the fourth person I’d killed. I was cleared by a grand jury of any wrongdoing in his death; my actions were deemed justifiable, and life went on for me. It was, however, a surreal incident and made me understand that regardless of my excellent training and physical shape, a random series of events could cause my death. I had made over two thousand arrests, assisted in four thousand more, and was injured numerous times. The number of times I’d been shot were few compared with the number of arrest encounters and other violent incidents I’d experienced. I deplore having to shoot someone and did everything humanly possible to avoid the use of deadly physical force. I’ve lost count of how many armed adversaries I’ve disarmed without firing a shot—the preferred way—but when it came down to my life or someone else’s, it was going to be his.

  * * *

  A New York Post article titled “New NYPD: Think Twice and Be Nice,” dated February 22, 2016, reports that Commissioner Bratton asked his commanders to read several news articles before attending a seminar on the NYPD’s new guidelines for the use of force. One of the guidelines calls for police officers to “weigh whether the general public would view their use of force as proportional to the threat posed” before taking action.

  I find this suggestion unrealistic. When threatened with the use of deadly force against them, cops have little time to consider how their actions look. The New York State Penal law requires that a police officer’s actions need only be reasonable when using physical force. And a fraction of a second is sometimes all the time that’s available to determine that. What could anyone—civilian or otherwise—possibly think was the last thought that would occur to me as Manny Rivas moved to stab me in the head. The Post article further states that “when engaging a person with an edged weapon, an officer should sometimes pull back to keep a safe distance.”

  Many studies have shown that knife attacks that occur within a distance of twenty-one feet or less are usually harmful if not fatal to police officers, who at that distance do not have time to draw weapons and successfully incapacitate attackers. Thirty percent of people attacked with knives are killed; knives don’t have a line of fire like a bullet, don’t run out of ammunition, and take little if any skill to use effectively. And an attacker with a knife gives little warning about his intentions. So how far are police officers to “pull back” before the officer, who is sworn to uphold the law, is in full retreat?

  The helplessness I felt when Rivas had the drop on me was a sobering experience, one that I alone could do nothing to prevent. How, in pursuit of a perp who may or may not have been armed, could I have “pulled back”?

  * * *

  Sparing a life is always better. An incident where I could afford to chose life over death occurred on a chilly November day. I was on patrol in an unmarked car with Detective Joe Sahlstrom. We were about thirty minutes into the tour when a call came over the radio that a man was shot at 2400 Sedgwick Avenue. We were a few blocks away and told Central we’d respond. There was no description of the shooter, but that’s not unusual. Whoever called 911 left a brief message and hung up when asked for his name.

  We’d driven about a block and a half when I observed a male walking north on Bailey Avenue. There were other pedestrians on the street and nothing unusual about this one. Except for the blood on his coat.

  Joe pulled up behind the guy, and we quietly exited our unmarked car, coming up behind the suspect with our guns drawn. When we were within fifteen feet of the suspect, Joe and I both hollered, “Police, don’t move!”

  The suspect whirled around, throwing back his knee-length coat, and leveling a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun.

  If there was ever justification to use deadly physical force, this situation w
as certainly it. There’s no fiercer personal weapon that a shotgun, particularly one of the 12-gauge variety. Loaded with double-ought buckshot, one pull of the trigger would unleash anywhere from eight to twenty-seven steel ball-bearing-like pellets in our direction. We were close enough that he wouldn’t even have to aim; one blast would take us both out, and it wouldn’t be pretty.

  We stood our ground for five of the longest seconds of my life before the gunman dropped his weapon. My finger had been pressing against my Colt’s trigger. One more moment of hesitation on our suspect’s part would’ve found him riddled with bullets.

  When a police officer takes a human life, it’s a measure of last resort that none of us welcomes. It’s a matter of survival. I would spare many lives over the course of my career, including that of a robber who pulled a knife on me after I chased him down. He didn’t want to take a life any more than I did.

  These are just two of the hundreds of times I chose not to shoot.

  We breathed a little easier when the man with the shotgun was handcuffed and in the backseat of our car, but just then a brown Volvo shot past us down Bailey Avenue. Since the Volvo was coming from the direction of the Sedgwick Avenue shooting, we figured there was a good probability that the Volvo was somehow involved.

  Our minute’s respite over, Joe and I jumped into our car and took off in pursuit of the Volvo, which was doing at least 75 miles per hour on side streets. It lost us quickly, so we proceeded to the Sedgwick Avenue scene.

  With our prisoner secured in the car, Joe and I talked with units who had been at the shooting scene for a while. Turns out, the shooting emanated over a dispute between drug dealers. No surprise there. While we were talking to some cops, I noticed a blood trail leading to a building down the block. We followed it to an apartment, where we found a male shot up pretty badly, plus guns and 627 glassine envelopes of heroin.

  The shooting victim and our prisoner would later accuse each other of attempted murder, saying they each shot back in self-defense. It was a typical excuse and one that we had heard so many times it would mean the prisons were full of innocent people if it were true. We would let the courts figure out who did what to whom. We never looked for the Volvo; by the time we took our prisoners and the evidence from the scene, the Volvo could’ve been miles away.