Circle of Six (9 page)

He raised the cadence of his voice as if he were on a pulpit. “One of these cops ran past our man at the desk and rushed up the stairs to the second floor. That act was disrespectful and provocative. The brothers had to bring the policeman back down the steps. And shortly after that, six other patrolmen tried to gain entrance.”

Farrakhan grinned into the cameras for supreme effect, “They were all expelled from the temple. And then they came with their submachine guns, automatic weapons, and every type of handgun imaginable, all the while wearing bulletproof vests.”

He held his hands suppliantly out, “A swift arrival with that much firepower had to have been a premeditated plan of attack. We demand a changing of the guard. No more of the blue-eyed devils surrounding our temples, our houses of worship, our streets, our schools. We demand a replacement of white cops and their commanding officers by strong black men in Harlem.”

The request was the equivalent, in my mind, of a kid running for class president, by promising to pump soda through the water fountains.

Throughout Farrakhan's venomous rhetoric, he never once mentioned the fact that he and his men were in possession of a stolen police revolver. He failed to mention that one cop had been mortally wounded by one of his men, and that three others were beaten to within an inch of their lives. The closest he came was saying the policemen were “expelled from the temple.” He also failed to mention that the police were well within their rights to enter the mosque in accordance with their duty, and that they were only
expelled
after being attacked five-to-one. Nor did the press ever question the veracity of his statements. They did, however, view the silence of the NYPD as an admission of guilt.

We—the rank and file—now viewed ourselves as simple bargaining chips, risking our lives day-in and day-out for what? Heavily armed and dedicated rubes, to be kicked and held down, tugged back and forth over politically drawn lines. Cops hurt, shot, and killed? We were nothing but collateral damage in their campaigns. But those six individuals—Lindsay, Murphy, Ward, Codd, Farrakhan, and Rangel—had made a huge miscalculation if they thought the rank and file of the NYPD was as blind as those six were politically hungry. Bottom line: cops were getting angry, watching Farrakhan glom the news cameras, spouting untruths as a cop lay dying, and not a word from the brass. Farrakhan was getting what he planned, to divide and conquer the almighty NYPD.

The street cops began to shun their bosses, looking inward for leaders and representation. Thirty thousand armed, angry, demoralized, and demilitarized cops festering in an already dangerous city was a powder keg waiting to blow. But they weren't totally powerless. The bargaining chip that every cop knew he had in his pocket was passivity. Without the cop on the corner or in the car coming when needed, the people of the city would
be enraged. A police standstill would be far more damaging than anyone in that circle of six could ever imagine. That's what they'd soon find out.

I had been in a coma for the better part of twenty-four hours with a massive concussion. I was hit on the right side of my head and lost control of all bodily functions for approximately five days.

When I awoke, I was four doors down from Phil Cardillo. There was one uniformed cop guarding my door. His name was Ray Kelly of the 2-3 anticrime. He was a young cop, but would go on to become chief and then commissioner under two mayors one day. At my bedside two people were keeping vigil: my old partner, and closest friend Jimmy Aurichio, and my girlfriend, Lynn. It was comforting to open my eyes and see them there. I knew Jimmy would have found a way to get Lynn in the room. There was an
immediate-family-only
restriction to any visitors and for just cause—the BLA had me in their sights, and there was that little 50,000-dollar lifetime contract put out on my head by Albert Victory and company. Victory and his accomplice, Robert Bornholdt, were two vicious mob associates who committed the cold-blooded murder of a young patrolman, John Verecha, on Third Avenue outside Arthur's, an upscale disco, four years earlier. I had put them away for life by arresting them and testifying at the trial.

Lynn wasn't
immediate family
, but Jimmy snuck her in anyway.

There was a pile of newspapers at the base of my bed. The first one I picked up was
The Daily News
. The front page had a picture of me, bloody and unconscious, being dragged to safety by my boss, Inspector John Haugh. I can't explain it, how eerie it felt to see myself in that prone position. I felt anger roaring through my body.

I rifled through the rest of the papers, becoming more and more agitated. No arrests had been made, and according to the press, two patrolmen entered the mosque “under circumstances that are still unclear.”

But here was the kick in the ass: “Cardillo might have been shot by another cop.”
Why wasn't anyone refuting them? Hadn't they done paraffin and ballistic tests by then?
More papers read more of the same: lots of Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Charles Rangel, and another Harlem clergyman, Reverend Dr. Henry Dudley Rucker, all of whom declared that the black community was rallying support for the Muslims against the police.

Where in the hell were the facts of the case?
It was our responsibility—our job—to provide a truthful outline of the case to the press without tainting the investigatory process. But then, there was no mention of any investigation by the NYPD either.

This Reverend Rucker continued the demand for an apology from Lindsay and Murphy for the, “reckless, disrespectful, anti-religious manner in which one of our religious temples and groups were rudely and crudely shot up.”

Farrakhan again insinuated that the cops had entered the mosque as a purposeful and premeditated attack on the Muslims. I knew what was happening. The public was being fed disinformation in an effort to manipulate a potential jury.
If you tell a lie enough times it becomes the truth.
I was starting to feel a cold uneasy prickle up my spine. I needed to get out and do something, go back to work, anything other than lying in bed. I stood. My legs were weak. I almost collapsed, and then I realized there was a catheter attached to me. I wasn't going anywhere.

Jimmy grabbed me and helped me back in the bed. I asked, “What the hell is going on, Jimmy?”

He just shook his head. Jimmy was never at a loss for words, but that Saturday morning, he, like the rest of the NYPD, was staggering on the ropes, hopelessly waiting for someone to speak up for us. That would only happen days later, however, with Benjamin Ward and Commissioner Murphy.

I awoke to the smell of barbecue and cigars. Cops were surrounding my bed. These were the men who I entrusted my life to, my partners, the men I'd die for, who'd die for me. And now when I looked at them, I couldn't help noticing that not one of them was white. It hadn't been an issue before. But now, after Ward's announcement, we were different. Now it wasn't us cops; it was black cops, white cops, Hispanic cops, whatever. Thanks to Ben Ward, we weren't brothers, because we weren't the same color.

They were the big guns of the 2-8 squad and the sixth division. Jerry Leon, Elwood Ambrose, the 2-8 squad boss or
whip
, Sergeant Walter Kirkland, and a 2-8 uniform, Jerry Harvey. Walter McCafferty of the adjoining 3-2 Precinct was running interference with a cute nurse who was trying her damndest to regain control of the room. Detective Cyrus Bartley, also from the 2-8, was an impossibly large man with a large personality. He leaned onto my bed and hugged me. In his uniquely low voice he bellowed, “How you doing, little brotha?” His laugh shook my bed up and down. He took the newspaper, pointed to a picture of me and said, “We gonna make this come out right.”

As far as I was concerned, these were some of the best cops on the force. We had all ridden together, closed out many homicides together. There was zero bullshit or pretense with any of us. And I knew exactly why they were there. They wanted me to know that we were still a team,
stacked deep with respect for one another, regardless of what was force-fed to the media. Commissioner Murphy wasn't there and no one else from the porcelain palace had shown face either. These guys were my support—the gumshoes who faced death every day—the same men who were indiscriminant of any color but blue—my partners, my brothers.

Jerry Leon laughed as he unfolded a clipping from
The Daily News
. I recognized the scene: rioting men, Inspector Haugh, and me after I was hit and out cold. He looked around the hospital room where the men were smoking and eating chicken and ribs from Sherman's, and said, “No good deed goes unpunished, ain't that the way it is, fellas?” All of the men laughed, that made me less nervous. The fact that all the men still had a camaraderie, even after everything. We were just a bunch of cops trying to make the best out of a situation. It was nice to think we could, but it just didn't seem possible.

Before the nurse finally wrestled the men out of the room, Amby turned to me and said, “Hey, Randy, Mitchelson wanted to know if he can come up and apologize.” I nodded. After a series of short good-byes and hands on my shoulder, I was alone again. I saw the police department no longer as a whole entity, but as a department suddenly halved. It wasn't good guys and bad guys anymore. Now it was split between the bosses and the cops—the black cops and the white cops. In one afternoon the job had become as polarized as the city itself.

While I and the rest of the NYPD absorbed all of this duplicity, all the king's men were high atop Manhattan strategizing. These were the power brokers of the job. But they weren't sitting down with detectives, poring over suspect photos, deciding who was to be arrested. No, these super chiefs and commissioners were deciphering what their press statement was going to be and how best to pacify the snapping racial tensions that had developed over the years under Lindsay's tenure. And the injured cops and their families? Well, who really
gives a fuck?

In attendance was First Deputy Police Commissioner William Smith who was Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy's first in charge, in the event of his absence or untimely passing. Deputy Commissioners Benjamin Ward and Robert Daley, Chief Inspector Michael Codd, Chief of Patrol Michael Cawley, and Chief of Detectives Albert Seedman were also present.

According to Robert Daley, Benjamin Ward came out swinging against the cops. His stance was that
they were without merit to enter the temple.
He saw the cops as unprofessional from the time the thirteen was called in, till
the time
he
pulled them off their posts. “Those cops were shooting through the glass to kill at point blank range, and the bullets went into the ceiling because they were
scared
. Their hands were shaking so hard the bullets went into the ceiling. The uniform was shot by another cop,
not
one of the FOI soldiers.”

According to Seedman, it was all he could do to contain his rage and contempt toward Ward, who didn't even have the decency to call the mortally wounded cop by his name: Phil Cardillo. In that room he saw the future of the NYPD. The whole of the job had been distilled down to a bogus press release covering everyone's ass at the expense of the people, who in his estimation, meant the most—the cops.

Seedman shook his head “no,” lifting up the ballistics report as he read. “Powder burns prove that,” Seedman made sure to over-accentuate the name, “
Phil Cardillo,
was shot at close range, the gun four to six inches from his jacket.
Phil Cardillo
was not shot by one of us, Commissioner.”

Undeterred, Ward fought over every word that was to be released. He screamed, “The cops had no legal right to enter that mosque, none whatsoever. I can understand why the people up there think this was a deliberate attack. That mosque is a place of worship. Cops would have never entered a synagogue or Saint Patrick's Cathedral in the same manner. They had no legal right, ya hear?!”

None of the yelling mattered. Whatever these men decided to release need to be signed off by Murphy and then by Lindsay himself. Everything else was moot. The only thing that mattered was what Lindsay and his people
said
mattered. That was the bottom line.

And so it went, more hours of backbiting and tooth-and-nail fighting, all for a doctored half-statement that wouldn't be released for another two days—five days too late.

The only statement made to the bosses by the mayor's office was terse and scarily to the point:
When the cop dies, let us know immediately so the mayor can get up to the hospital.
Phil Cardillo was no longer Patrolman Cardillo. He was just a piece of meat on a slab, ready to be bagged up and dropped in the ground. According to these men, he was just another almost-dead cop.

Murphy hadn't been to the hospital since the day of occurrence, nor had he been up to the 2-8, nor any of the precincts located in Zone-6 to offer condolences. This had Inspector John Haugh and the rest of his men fuming—at least show some support for the man's wife and children—but
nothing that civil would transpire.

The 2-8 PBA delegate, Bart Gorman, called for a meeting in Astoria Park, Queens. Every cop who wasn't working showed up. And many of the 3-0, 3-2, and 2-5 cops showed up too. The point of the meeting was to vent and to get answers. It was unanimously decided that the job would be done by-the-book until something was done to investigate these crimes.

Harlem was always moving on eight pistons. The
by-the-book
made it a beaureaucratic mess. This was just the beginning of the internal war within the NYPD.

While this meeting was taking place, Commissioner Murphy was having a meeting of his own. It wasn't with any of the injured cops, their family members, or their superiors. No, Murphy wanted a sit-down with Minister Louis Farrakhan.

Murphy had somehow secretly gotten word to Farrakhan, requesting his presence at One Police Plaza—headquarters. Later, I would come to understand how easy it was for Murphy or any one of his minions to get word (or evidence for that matter) in and out of that mosque. But before I took on the case, I was on the outside looking in, just like everyone else.