Two days later, a package arrived at the editorial offices of the New York Times and another at the studio of WLIB, a black-owned radio station. Inside the package was the license plate of the car sought by police in the shooting, wrapped in pages from the New York Post, accompanied by a typed note that read:
Here are the license plates sort [sic] after by the fascist state pig police. We send them in order to exhibit the potential power of oppressed people to acquire revolutionary justice. The armed goons of the racist government will again meet the guns of oppressed Third World Peoples as long as they occupy our community and murder our brothers and sisters in the name of American law and order. Just as the fascist Marines and Army occupy Vietnam in the name of democracy and murder Vietnamese people in the name of American imperialism are confronted with the guns of the Vietnamese Liberation Army, the domestic armed forces of racism and oppression will be confronted with the guns of the Black Liberation Army, who will mete out in the tradition of Malcolm and all true Revolutionaries real justice. We are revolutionary justice. All Power to the people.
Few cops had ever heard of anything called the Black Liberation Army. Those who had found the reference ominous. As some had feared, out of the ashes of the Black Panther Party had arisen something potentially more lethal and militant.
That night, as news of the BLA note made its way through the police grapevine, two cops responded to a domestic disturbance call at the Colonial Park Housing Project at 159th Street and Harlem River Drive, where the Polo Grounds sports stadium had stood until it was torn down in 1960. Patrolmen Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini entered one of the eight massive apartment complexes that composed the Colonial Park projects, only to discover that the call had been a hoax. As the two uniformed policemen—one black, one white—were leaving the grounds of the project, they were ambushed from behind by two assailants later identified as black males. Jones, African American, was shot dead with a bullet in the back of the head. The white cop, Piagentini, was shot and fell to the ground. One of the assailants approached, pulled the officer’s gun from its holster, and blasted away at point-blank range using Piagentini’s own service revolver. The assailants then fled the scene on foot. Piagentini, shot thirteen times, died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.
The next day a typed note arrived at the offices of radio station WLIB claiming credit for the killings. The wording was similar to the previous message, and it was signed REVOLUTIONARY JUSTICE.
There had never been anything quite like this in the history of the NYPD: cops being executed randomly, regardless of their identity or even skin color. It was open season on the Men in Blue.
“We’re in a war,” declared Edward J. Kiernan, president of the PBA, as he arrived at Harlem Hospital into the middle of television news cameras and a gaggle of reporters. The head of the PBA was traditionally a stalwart and sometimes bellicose defender of his tribe, and Kiernan was no exception. “I refuse to stand by and permit my men to be gunned down while the Lindsay administration does nothing to protect them. Accordingly, I am instructing them to secure their own shotguns and to carry them on patrol at all times.”
“Do you think that will make a difference?” asked a reporter.
“I don’t know,” said the PBA president. “But we’ll do whatever is necessary. If we have to patrol this city in tanks, that’s what we’ll do. This is a war. I want all my men to understand that in any situation in which they have to draw their weapons, they are to shoot to kill. This is a battle to the death, and I want everyone to know that we won’t be the only ones taking casualties.”
Three blocks away, in a detective squad room on the second floor of the Thirty-second Precinct station house, Mayor Lindsay and Commissioner Murphy hosted a somewhat more sedate gathering of the Fourth Estate. Describing the shootings as “an organized attempt…deliberate, unprovoked, and maniacal,” the commissioner released to the press a copy of the note from the BLA in response to the Curry and Binetti shooting. When a reporter told Murphy that the PBA president had “ordered” his men to carry their own shotguns, the commissioner blanched. “Police officers will carry regulation firearms,” he said, refusing to comment further.
Moments later, the commissioner and the mayor left the station house, a four-story brick fortress, and came face-to-face with a gathering of twenty-five to thirty off-duty cops. The men stood between the officials and their waiting limousine.
“Jonesy and Joe are dead,” someone shouted. “What are you gonna do about it?”
“What are you gonna do about us?” another cop demanded, with a chorus of voices sounding their approval.
“I don’t know about you guys,” said another cop, “but the next time I go out there I got my shotgun with me.”
In a soft voice, Commissioner Murphy said, “That’s not the answer. Those two patrolmen were ambushed from the back. Shotguns wouldn’t have done them any good.”
“That’s them. I gotta be able to protect me.”
“That’s not the answer,” Murphy repeated.
Mayor Lindsay said nothing. He was out of his element, surrounded by hostile officers who viewed him as the enemy. As he and Murphy moved toward their waiting car, a young patrolman stepped forward and spoke directly to the mayor. “We’re targets. Every day we go out there, we’re targets. They don’t fear us or respect us. Maybe if we carried shotguns, maybe if we got tough with them…” The cop’s voice trailed off.
The mayor nodded and climbed into the limo with the police commissioner. Their car drove off, leaving behind a handful of cops muttering to themselves, feeling angry and wounded.
IN LATE MAY, George Whitmore was released from jail in New Jersey after serving nine months for attempted robbery. He moved in with cousins at a tenement apartment in Brooklyn. As with most of his periodic stints behind bars, Whitmore returned to a society that seemed to be worse off than when he went into prison—fewer jobs, more crime, more overt hostility. This time, Whitmore rejoined the civilian population at a time when New York City seemed to be in the midst of a war. News about police shootings, or attempted shootings, were in the tabloid headlines nearly every day. In the black community there was a heated debate about the morality of the shootings. Although the BLA had its defenders, most people were disturbed by the random killing of police officers, either black or white. An editorial in the Amsterdam News captured the mood:
There are those who call themselves your brothers. They stand on rhetorical platitudes and shout at the top of their voices that they are fighting for the rights of their black brothers. But how black are they? Black is not only a color as it applies to us. It’s a state of mind that stands for courage. And most of all, pride. A pride that would not allow a black man to cravenly shoot down another man when his back is turned, and then condone the act by calling it justice. Especially another black man who has sworn to protect and stand between his people and harm. Cast them out for they are not of you, they have become infected with a poison that could kill us all.
Whitmore skimmed the articles, read the headlines, and scratched his head. He did not support the black radicals. He was against random killing on moral grounds. Most of all, he couldn’t see how shooting cops was anything but counterproductive. George came from a generation who believed that if you challenged the police, they would only use it as an excuse to bring the hammer of repression down on you even harder. George also had personal reasons for being concerned about the social agitation of the black militants: it was bad for his case. Somehow, he feared, the actions of the black revolutionaries could be exploited to deny him his freedom.
That freedom was hanging by a thread. Whitmore was out of jail, but still firmly in the clutches of the system. He and his lawyers were waiting for a final ruling from the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court on whether Elba Borrero’s identification of him as her assailant back in 1964 would stand. The judge could call for a new trial, or, better yet, dismiss Borrero’s identification altogether, throwing
the ball back into the court of the Brooklyn D.A. Of course, there was also a third possibility: the judge could uphold Borrero’s identification and Whitmore’s conviction—in which case George would immediately be taken back into custody and serve out the remainder of his five-to-ten-year term for assault and attempted rape. There was no way of knowing which way it would go.
Meanwhile, George, as usual, was broke and without a job. With each new round of legal complications, his rap sheet grew and the likelihood of his ever finding meaningful employment faded further.
In the midst of his now familiar cycle of legal limbo and poverty, George got a surprising call from Myron Beldock, asking George to come to his office. There was someone who wanted to meet him—a famous Hollywood screenwriter.
Abby Mann was a Hollywood player at the top of his game. Having won an Academy Award in 1961 for his screenplay Judgment at Nuremberg, which had started out as a teleplay for the prestigious CBS drama series Playhouse 90, he was considered a go-to writer for subjects of serious social import. Now he wanted to adapt George Whitmore’s story for film. Universal Studios had purchased the rights to Selwyn Raab’s book Justice in the Back Room and hired Mann to work it up into a script—but in the interest of authenticity, Mann wanted to meet directly with the man at the center of it all.
George took the long subway ride into Manhattan to Beldock’s midtown office, where he met the screenwriter. In his midforties, with jet-black hair and a perennial suntan, Mann had the look of an authentic Hollywood character. He told George he wanted to create a movie that was “faithful to the true story of George Whitmore.” It was his intention, and the producers’, to use real names and real locations for the picture, which was slated as a feature film for theatrical release.
George was intrigued, but he kept waiting to hear the words “and you will be paid this amount for your participation.” Mann suggested that he might be hired as a technical adviser, but no promises were made.
George had to borrow thirty-five cents from his lawyer for the subway back to East New York.
As the train emerged from the tunnel onto the elevated tracks in Brooklyn, George peered from the window at the dingy tenement buildings, liquor store signs, and church spires of the borough’s skyline. He’d often been told by lawyers, journalists, and civil rights activists that his story was incredible; now a famous Hollywood screenwriter was saying the same. He had suffered a terrible injustice, they said; if people knew the details, the criminal justice system would be reformed forever. He was an important man, they said, and his case was a part of history. Hearing all those kind words made George feel good; it gave him a feeling of relevance, gave his life a sense of purpose. But then they would go back to their lives, and George would go back to his, and nothing had changed. In fact, his financial situation only seemed to get worse as time went on, and his legal situation was like an artifact from another age, mired in sludge, calcifying further with each passing day.
Your day will come, they told George. But his daily routine, his struggle for shelter, work, sustenance, and survival weighed on his shoulders like a bag full of bricks. Out on the streets and in the courts, nothing seemed to change. Some people looked at this reality and became angry—they robbed and they shot at police and engaged in acts of civil disobedience. Whitmore mostly felt despair. No matter how hard he tried, in the collective eyes of the city he remained a nigger with a rap sheet.
[ seventeen ]
NEWKILL
THE RAT-A-TAT-TAT OF machine-gun fire strafed the ceiling at the Triple-O social club. Plaster, dust, and debris rained down on the patrons, huddled together in only their underwear. The group of fifteen men and fifteen women had been ordered to strip by Dhoruba Bin Wahad. After they’d dumped their clothes in a pile in the middle of the floor, he called for everyone to “shut the fuck up!”—and unloaded a round of bullets into the ceiling for emphasis. Everyone shut the fuck up.
“Get the money,” Dhoruba told Jamal, who had already grabbed cash from behind the bar and dumped it into a bag. Another accomplice, Augustus Qualls, fleeced the patrons’ clothing for cash and other valuables.
“Stay cool and you won’t get hurt,” Dhoruba told the patrons.
The employees, and some of the patrons, knew the routine. Robberies were a common occurrence at the Triple-O, a gambling and narcotics joint located on a desolate stretch of Park Avenue at 171st Street in the South Bronx. The place was an illegal after-hours club, so the owners weren’t likely to call the cops to report a robbery. The only way a club like the Triple-O could protect itself was to have plenty of security on the premises, but Dhoruba and his crew—Jamal Joseph, Qualls, and Butch Mason—negated all that by showing up with an arsenal big enough to intimidate a small army. Dhoruba brandished a .45-caliber M3A submachine gun, also known as a “grease gun.” Jamal carried a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun in one hand and a 9-millimeter Browning automatic in the other. Qualls had a sawed-off shotgun and a .357 Smith and Wesson Magnum. Mason had a Colt .45-caliber revolver. In the glove compartment of their getaway car, they’d brought along a U.S. Army hand grenade, for good measure.
In the four months since Dhoruba had gone underground, he and a small core of supporters had been living off what Carlos Marighella, in his urban guerrilla manual, referred to as “expropriations.” Wrote the Brazilian revolutionary: “It is impossible for the urban guerrilla to exist and survive without fighting to expropriate.” In other words: one must steal to survive. In Marighella’s case, expropriation involved “government resources and the wealth belonging to the rich businessmen, the large land owners and the imperialists.” For those in the black urban underground in America, it meant robbing banks, bars, gambling spots, and social clubs. Black Liberation Army members referred to this as their “narcotics eradication program”: they targeted known drug spots—especially those suspected of making regular payoffs to the police—which allowed them to claim they were doing good for the community while expropriating the one thing they needed most: cash money. According to Dhoruba,
The black underground had taken on the campaign of eradicating drugs with direct action. We would raid the after-hours places and destroy the drugs, and when it was necessary we would punish the drug dealers ourselves.
Dhoruba’s crew had chosen the Triple-O partly because of its desolate location. One thing they hadn’t anticipated was that a gypsy cab driver would drive by as they were entering the club, guns in tow. The cabbie alerted two cops in a squad car a few blocks away, and the cops were driving up to the club when they thought they heard machine-gun fire inside the building.
Butch Mason was standing guard outside the club when the green-and-white cop car approached. It was Mason who’d lost his cool during the assault on the BPP newspaper distribution center in Queens six weeks before, killing Sam Napier; Dhoruba had posted him outside to keep him away from the action in the club. With his .45 tucked in his belt, Mason saw the cop car driving up just as he heard the sound of gunfire inside. Mason turned and ran in to see what was happening.
Dhoruba, Jamal, and Qualls were gathering up cash and valuables when Mason rushed in. “Hey, what the hell’s going on in here? There’s cops out there.”
“How many?” asked Dhoruba.
Just one car, Mason said—but they were bound to call for backup after hearing the gunfire.
Dhoruba ran over to the window and peeked from behind a curtain at the street below. He saw four squad cars, with more arriving from all directions. There were half a dozen cops in the street with their guns drawn, motioning others to cover the rear entrance.
Damn, Dhoruba mumbled to himself. These motherfuckers got us surrounded. The words of Marighella rang in his ears: “The urban guerrilla is characterized by his bravery and his decisive nature…. [He] must be a person of great cleverness to compensate for the fact that he is not sufficiently strong in weapons, ammunition and equipment.”
Turning back to the patrons, Dhoruba said, “Okay, folks, put your clothe
s back on. There’s a bunch of pigs outside. Let’s all be cool. We’re gonna act like nothin’s happening, you dig?”
The patrons did as they were told. By the time the cops came through the door, everyone was mostly dressed—shirttails hanging out, one shoe on and one shoe off, but presentable. Stashing their guns under a table, Dhoruba and his crew mixed in with the patrons.
“What’s going on here?” asked a police sergeant.
“Nothin’,” said one of the patrons.
Something was odd; the patrons were unusually somber.
“We heard shots being fired,” said a patrolman.
The patrons looked around at one another.
“No, there wasn’t no shooting here,” one woman said.
“Yeah, some dudes tried to rip us off,” a man said. “But they ran out the back. They gone.”
The cops looked at one another. The patrons looked down at the floor. Then someone spoke up from the back of the group. “No, that’s not true. The cats you looking for are right here. That’s him, and him and him and him.” He pointed at Dhoruba and the others. The people moved aside, and the cops cuffed Dhoruba and the others without a struggle. A few minutes later, they found the small arsenal of weapons under a table.
The cops didn’t know who they had. Dhoruba and Jamal were carrying false identification, Qualls and Mason no ID at all.
One item that immediately caught the attention of the police was the .45-caliber submachine gun, the same type of weapon used in the shooting outside D.A. Hogan’s home three weeks earlier. The machine gun was immediately rushed to the ballistics lab.
Meanwhile, the four robbery suspects were loaded into separate vehicles and taken to the Forty-eighth Precinct on Bathgate Avenue in the Bronx, where they were photographed and fingerprinted. Remembered Dhoruba:
We were lucky to be taken alive. The only reason we weren’t killed is because of the confusion surrounding our arrest at the club. The police didn’t know who we were at first. If they had, I’m pretty sure we would have been dealt with at the club or, even better for them, in the street where there were no witnesses.
The Savage City Page 40
