Blue on Blue

by Charles Campisi

  Of course, there’s a big difference between a cop who honestly misjudges the amount of force to use on a perp and a cop who intentionally uses force on a nonresisting suspect for payback or intimidation. But most excessive-force cases in the NYPD involve the former, not the latter.

  Yes, there was a time in NYPD history when a perp who ran from the cops, or who fought with the cops, could expect some pretty comprehensive “street justice” at the end of the chase. Remember that teenaged burglar in the Seven-Three we caught in the abandoned building after a foot pursuit? He was terrified of what was going to happen to him—and in the old NYPD he might have had reason to be. Same thing went for a perp who was wanted for shooting or seriously injuring a cop. In the old NYPD, he was well advised to turn himself in at another precinct, with his lawyer at his side, if he expected to come out of NYPD custody in the same condition as when he went in. I’m not saying it was right, I’m just saying what it was. I never personally witnessed any serious abuse of a prisoner or what I considered excessive force in an arrest; when I was a young cop the other cops wouldn’t do anything illegal in front of me, and after I became a supervisor, the cops under me knew better. Still, I knew that it happened.

  But it’s different now. There are too many cell phone cameras, too many surveillance cameras, too many police brutality lawyers, too many reporters looking for a police brutality story, too much Department supervision—not to mention the many IAB investigators standing by to pursue cops who intentionally cross the line. Today every cop in America knows that if a perp is seriously injured or dies while he’s wearing your handcuffs, whatever the cause, you’re in a lot of trouble. Just ask those six cops in Baltimore who were indicted for manslaughter in 2015 after a suspect died in the back of a police van.

  The bottom line is that despite what you may think from watching the news, bona fide intentional excessive-force cases in the NYPD are actually pretty rare.

  But do they happen? Of course. During my time at IAB there were a number of controversial and highly publicized “excessive-force” cases in which people died in confrontations with the cops. But one of the most controversial lethal “use of force” cases in recent NYPD history occurred after I retired. In July 2014 cops in Staten Island attempt to arrest Eric Garner—forty-three, six-three, three hundred fifty pounds—for selling illegal “loosie” cigarettes on a sidewalk; Garner had been arrested thirty times previously. Garner resists, and eventually five cops get him to the ground and handcuff him. After saying “I can’t breathe” several times, Garner stops breathing and is declared dead at a hospital an hour later. The ME rules that Garner died of compression of the neck and compression of the chest, with asthma, heart disease, and obesity as contributing factors. The case sparks nationwide antipolice demonstrations, although a grand jury declines to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who allegedly used an illegal chokehold while subduing Garner. As of this writing, a federal investigation is continuing.

  There were also numerous less than lethal excessive-force encounters that made the news and angered the public. There was the rookie cop—the guy had eleven days on the job—who violently pushed a bicyclist off his bike at a rally in Times Square. The veteran cop who, also in 2008, hit a handcuffed suspect ten times with an ASP, paused to take a cell phone call, and then hit the guy ten times more, all caught on a surveillance camera. The deputy inspector who, for questionable reasons, pepper-sprayed Occupy Wall Street protesters in 2011. The list could go on and on—and when you stack them up like that it may seem like the NYPD has a chronic and frequent excessive-force problem.

  But consider these numbers.

  In 2013 the New York Civilian Complaint Review Board received about 5,300 allegations of excessive force by NYPD cops, everything from people who said they were beaten in a patrol car to people who said the cops roughly pushed them on a sidewalk to arrestees who said their handcuffs were too tight. Admittedly, that sounds like a lot of allegations, and it’s the number that anticop activists and reporters home in on.

  But let’s look a little deeper. About half of those allegations were dropped for various reasons, usually because the complainant didn’t follow up on the complaint. Maybe the complainant thought it was too much trouble. Or maybe it was a perp who figured that just filing the complaint was enough payback against the cop who arrested him. Or maybe the complainant was someone like Barry in Brooklyn—That cop stabbed me in my fucking eye!—who made excessive-force allegations two or three times a week.

  Whatever the reason, that takes the number down to roughly 2,200 excessive-force allegations that were investigated by the CCRB that year. Of those, about 900 were ruled “exonerated,” meaning the cop in question used the force the complainant described, but that use of force was legal and justified. Another 200 force allegations were ruled “unfounded,” meaning that the alleged use of force never took place. In about 200 of the cases the CCRB investigators were unable to identify the officer, and in almost 800 cases the allegations were ruled “unsubstantiated,” meaning there was insufficient proof either way.

  So how many allegations of excessive force against NYPD cops were ruled “substantiated” by the CCRB, meaning that in the CCRB’s opinion the cop in question had, in fact, gone too far in using force? To put it another way, how many allegations of “police brutality” were found by the CCRB to be true?

  The answer is 40. In a Department that made about 400,000 arrests that year, and out of the thousands of allegations of excessive force investigated by the CCRB, only 40 of those allegations were substantiated by the CCRB. And remember, this is the Civilian Complaint Review Board, not the NYPD, that investigated those excessive-force allegations. (About half of those 40 cases resulted in Department discipline against the officers, up to and including dismissal; in the other cases the Department trial advocate—also a civilian—decided that there wasn’t enough evidence to proceed with a Department trial. None of the CCRB cases resulted in a criminal indictment.)

  Obviously, that number doesn’t represent every instance in which a New York City cop gave a resisting suspect or even an ordinary citizen one punch too many, or one push too hard, or otherwise exceeded the regulations for the lawful use of force. A lot of alleged instances of police excessive force don’t get reported.

  But the numbers demonstrate that despite the perception of the NYPD as an excessively violent institution—a perception fueled by antipolice community activists, police brutality lawyers, and the press—the truth is that most NYPD cops do their jobs in a professional manner. Again, at times they may have to be rough, even brutal. But in the vast majority of cases, it’s not police brutality.

  But if that’s true, if the NYPD is not inherently an excessively violent institution, how can I reconcile that with what happened to Abner Louima?

  The answer is that I can’t reconcile it. I couldn’t reconcile it then, and I can’t reconcile it to this day. And neither can most other NYPD cops.

  The truth is that when they first heard about the Louima case, almost every cop I knew, me included, couldn’t believe that it really happened.

  But it did happen. And it was IAB’s job to prove it.

  * * *

  It’s eight o’clock Monday morning, nine hours after I got the first call about Louima, and I’m waiting in the oak-paneled foyer outside the police commissioner’s office on the fourteenth floor of One Police Plaza. Commissioner Howard Safir steps out of the elevator, and as he makes his way to his office he’s smiling and offering morning greetings to the aides and secretaries as he passes their desks. And then he sees me there, waiting, and suddenly he’s not smiling anymore.

  That’s something you have to get used to if you’re chief of the Internal Affairs Bureau. On a personal level, you can have great relationships with the people you work with, but on a professional level, nobody is ever happy to see you coming through their office door or waiting outside to see them. They know you aren’t there to give them good news.

  Commissio
ner Safir is no exception.

  This isn’t good, is it? he says, and I tell him, No, it’s not. He can probably see in my face that it’s not ordinary bad news.

  So we go into his office and I start laying it out for him.

  I tell him we’ve got a thirty-year-old victim—Louima is a victim now, not a perp—arrested for dis-con (disorderly conduct) at a club in Brooklyn early Saturday morning by cops from the Seven-Oh. We’ve confirmed that when he was arrested and booked there was no sign of serious injuries, but he’s now in intensive care at Coney Island Hospital with massive internal injuries—so obviously the injuries occurred while he was in our custody. We got the first call about it at the Command Center Sunday afternoon from some of his relatives, and we rolled out on it immediately and talked to the victim and some of the medical staff.

  I have to pause for a second at this point. I can hardly believe what I’m about to say to the commissioner. But I have to say it.

  What the victim is saying, I tell the commissioner, is that two cops took him into the bathroom at the precinct, and one of them rammed a stick, maybe a toilet plunger, into his rectum, and then the cop waved it in his face and told him he’d kill him if he told anybody. The docs say his injuries are consistent with assault with a blunt object. The victim also says that on the way to the precinct four cops beat him while he was handcuffed in the car. From the precinct desk records, it looks like they left him bleeding in a holding cell for a couple of hours before an ambulance finally came and took him to the hospital. He hasn’t ID’d the cops yet—he was still heavily sedated last night—but we’ve got an IAB team at the precinct, and from the arrest report and desk logs it looks like four officers and two sergeants were involved in the arrest and booking. Our guys at the hospital are going to try to show him a photo array to see if he can pick them out. We’ve got an IAB team at the precinct, they’ve got it locked down, and the crime scene guys are there.

  Now, Safir’s a tough guy, and he’s been in law enforcement for a long time, starting with the old Federal Bureau of Narcotics (forerunner of the DEA) and later the US Marshals Service, where he headed a program to pursue dangerous fugitives around the world; he’s seen his share of the seamy side of crime and law enforcement. But as I’m telling him all this, the look on his face is first one of incredulity, and then, after he hears what we’ve got so far, genuine horror.

  Oh my God, the commissioner says. Are you sure about this?

  Yes, Commissioner, I’m sure.

  I show him the personnel file photos of the four targeted officers and two sergeants who were directly involved in the arrest, and I tell him what we know about them so far.

  Officer Justin Volpe, twenty-five, four years on the job. A graduate of St. John’s University, Justin Volpe lives in Staten Island with his mother and father, retired NYPD Detective Robert Volpe, who was known throughout the Department as “The Art Cop” for his investigations and recoveries of stolen Picassos and Byzantine artifacts. Justin Volpe has four EPD medals (Excellent Police Duty) and two MPDs (Meritorious Police Duty) for some gun arrests. He’s got one CCRB complaint, unsubstantiated. But from what we’re hearing, Justin Volpe is known in the Seven-Oh as an aggressive, sometimes reckless young cop with a short temper; a burly, buffed-up bully that other Seven-Oh cops don’t like to work with.

  Officer Thomas Bruder, thirty-one, Volpe’s partner that night, joined the Transit Police in 1991 and transferred to NYPD three years later. Lives with his mother in Hicksville, Long Island, and was planning to take a new job with Nassau County police in a couple of weeks. Two civilian complaints, one unsubbed, one administrative discipline.

  Officer Charles Schwarz, thirty-one, six years on the job. In 1992 he was suspended for fifteen days for hitting a guy in the face on St. Patrick’s Day while he was off-duty. He lives in Staten Island with his wife and helps take care of his paralyzed younger brother. A six-foot-two former Marine, he was the driver of the car that took Louima to the precinct station house.

  Officer Thomas Wiese, thirty-three, eight years on the job, two excessive-force complaints, both unsubbed. A karate expert, he’s the PBA delegate on the Seven-Oh midnight tour, and he was Schwarz’s partner on the night Louima was arrested.

  The two targeted sergeants are Michael Bellomo, thirty-five, ten years on the job, no civilian complaints, who was the patrol supervisor that night; and Jeffrey Fallon, thirty-two, nine years on the job, two unsubbed excessive-force complaints, who was the desk officer.

  Except for Schwarz’s fifteen-day hit, there’s nothing in the officers’ or sergeants’ backgrounds to indicate a serious excessive-force problem—certainly nothing to indicate any of them would be capable of something like this. And yet it had happened.

  And there’s another issue enveloping this case like a foul mist. There were dozens of cops who passed through the precinct that night, many of whom had to have noticed Louima bleeding and moaning in the holding cell. But as far as we know now, none of them did anything about it.

  And one other thing. Again, in a perfect world this wouldn’t matter, but in this world it does: The victim, Louima, is black, and all of the targeted officers are white.

  The commissioner and I talk a little bit more about how the investigation is progressing. I tell him we’ve got an expanded IAB team, about a dozen investigators, at the Seven-Oh to freeze—secure—the arrest and command logs, and the roll-call rosters. The Brooklyn DA’s office has been notified, I tell him. We’re pulling out all the stops on this one.

  The briefing over, I leave the commissioner’s office, but an hour later he calls and says we have to brief the mayor. So Safir, First Deputy Commissioner Pat Kelleher, and I walk over to City Hall. On the way, Pat, himself a former IAB chief, keeps saying: I can’t get my arms around this, I just can’t get my arms around this. Intellectually he knows that something horrible has happened, and that cops did it. But emotionally he’s having a hard time believing that other cops could do such a thing.

  Inside the mayor’s office we sit down around a conference table. Outside of a few official functions, it’s the first time I’ve met Rudy Giuliani. The commissioner has already given him the basic information over the phone, and I can tell that, like the rest of us, the mayor is having a hard time with it. Although known for his tough anticrime and pro-cop stands as mayor, as a young assistant US attorney Giuliani had been a prosecutor in the NYPD corruption scandal that became the movie Prince of the City, and he knows a lot about bad cops. But this? He’s never heard anything like this.

  But as I explain what we’ve got, the prosecutor in him takes over. He starts asking tough, hard questions—have we done this, have we done that, do we have enough manpower on it? It’s almost like he’s building the case himself.

  There’s one other thing I notice. Despite his aggressive, confrontational, take-no-prisoners personal style and his frequent outbursts of almost volcanic temper—most people who cross Rudy Giuliani soon have reason to regret it—the mayor seems genuinely concerned about the victim, Abner Louima, and the pain he went through. He keeps saying, over and over, The poor man, the poor man. Sure, the mayor has an election coming up in a couple of months, and something like this is bound to hurt him politically, so you’d expect him to act concerned in public. But this is just him and us and a couple of aides sitting in his office. He doesn’t have to act concerned now, but he is.

  We talk for about forty-five minutes, and at one point the mayor asks us: Does the press have the story yet?

  That’s a prosecutor’s question, not a politician’s question. No matter what the political fallout, no one in the room thinks for a minute that this case can, should, or will be kept secret indefinitely. To try to cover up something like this would be not only unethical but completely and totally stupid and bound to fail.

  Still, the longer it is before the story breaks, the better it is for us.

  Yes, the public has a right to know. But from a prosecutor’s or investigator’s viewpoint, the pub
lic doesn’t have a right or a need to know right this minute—for obvious reasons. As with any controversial case, once it hits the papers and the TV news, reporters are going to swarm around the same places we are—the hospital, the precinct, the club, Louima’s home, and so on—and start asking people questions. And in any criminal case, it’s important that we get to those people first and get their stories locked in before they read in the papers what other people are saying about the case. For us, the perfect time to bring the press and public in on this investigation—or any investigation—is after a grand jury has already returned an indictment and the DA or the US attorney has called a press conference.

  Unfortunately, it often doesn’t work that way—and it doesn’t work that way in the Louima case. Within a couple days, the late Daily News columnist Mike McAlary breaks the full story, with a hospital interview and photograph of Louima, under the headline “TORTURED BY COPS.” A lawyer for Louima also publicly claims that Internal Affairs had been out to talk to Louima and had then done nothing, which is a dumb thing to say, even for a lawyer.

  Eventually the spin will be that but for the doggedness of the press, the Louima case would never have seen the light of day, that IAB would have ignored it, that it would have been covered up by a Department desperate to protect its reputation. Which is flat-out ridiculous. Anybody who believes that either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the facts.

  The fact is that by the time the story of Louima’s ordeal breaks in the press, we have already had hundreds—literally hundreds—of IAB investigators and specialists working the case for the past two days.

  And we’re ready to start arresting some cops.