The whole fucking Harlem stinks. Every hallway smells of piss, garbage, smelly fucking people. I hated the fucking place. I’d go on some of these family fights, and I’d walk in and I would be an absolute hostile fucking maniac. When I had a rookie with me, he’d shit at what I used to do. We’d go on a family fight—if I decided to go on the job, most of the time I didn’t even bother—and here’s some big fucking drunken hump, some Puerto Rican or some colored guy laying there, drunk. His wife’s all bloody, the kids all fucked up, there’s no food on the table because he drank up the welfare check…. I would go into a complete rage. OK, you cocksucker, you’re leaving. Ah, you ain’t throwing me out of my own house. I ain’t, huh? I’d pick him up bodily. Open the door. Throw him right down the fucking stairs…. I must’ve thrown guys down the stairs like that ten, fifteen times.
The truth was, most cops hated the ghetto. And for many it was a short leap from being disgusted by the people and the conditions of that environment to fleecing it shamelessly for personal profit. Was it possible that racism contributed to the practices that Phillips, Droge, Logan, and Serpico had described? Was there a connection between the attitude that made it possible for a group of detectives to frame a young black kid like Whitmore for murder and the belief that the ghetto was a shithole to be plundered?
Such questions were beyond the purview of the Knapp Commission. And the press of the day seemed incapable of placing the subject of police corruption in a racial context. The commission hearings were historic in their detailing of the finer points of a diseased system, but the underlying attitudes that may have contributed to the system’s pathology remained safely out of reach—and would continue to fester within the institution for decades to come.
Even with its limitations, the Knapp Commission hearings rocked the lives of many within the police universe—not the least of whom was Phillips’s wife, Camille. As was his custom, Phillips even kept her in the dark about the fact that he’d flipped and was cooperating with the government. Until the day it happened, she had no idea he was slated to testify at the hearings; she read about it in the newspaper—in her case the Daily News—like everyone else. The news caused a neurological short circuit:
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t believe it. I just sat there numb. I didn’t even read it. I just sat there, crying, trying to put myself together. The next thing I remember I was home, sitting on the couch, crying…. I read the paper and put on the television. I would say for three days I didn’t move from the couch. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat. I didn’t answer the telephone. I wouldn’t see anybody. It hit me like a ton of bricks…. For seventeen years I was married to a hoodlum, and I didn’t know it.
THE KNAPP COMMISSION hearings dominated the headlines in the fall of 1971, but the war between the NYPD and the BLA hadn’t gone away. For weeks, like two sides of the same coin, the two stories vied for space in the tabloids. Fallout from the hearings, and new revelations about BLA suspects plotting attacks on cops, seemed to suggest a police apparatus that was fighting for its very survival—attacked from both the outside and within. Unnamed sources told reporters repeatedly that morale among the NYPD rank and file was at an all-time low.
That same year, a college professor named Nicholas Alex was granted clearance to interview dozens of NYPD officers as part of a survey of views within the department. The study, eventually published in book form as New York Cops Talk Back: A Study of a Beleaguered Minority (1976), gave voice to a cross section of officers at a critical moment in the department’s history; they were markedly forthcoming in their comments, in part because they had been promised anonymity.
“I don’t think we will ever come back in the eyes of the public the way we were six or seven years ago,” said one cop. “The damage has been done.” Another cop complained that “The Knapp Commission was crying out corruption, corruption, corruption. They publicized it. Even if there was what they say there is, they shouldn’t publicize it…because it is demoralizing to honest cops to see other cops taking graft, being arrested, et cetera. It doesn’t look good.” Said another cop: “[They] put it right on television just before the kiddie show. When my daughter usually watched Sesame Street the Knapp Commission was on TV telling everybody how corrupt we are. What do you say to a kid who hears this stuff? It’s like being a saint—the more you protest the crazier you look.”
There was one notable trend within the comments Alex gathered: even when they were being asked specifically about corruption, many of the cops wound up talking about race. Said one patrolman, “Blacks have more rights than they ever had and they want more. They don’t want to be equal to whites, they want to be superior to whites! They want reverse position with whites, that’s all they want. Blacks are a different breed of people. The way they think. They have no family life…. There is no one supervising them. They want to do things for kicks. And they want more and they don’t want to work and it’s easier to steal. They love to commit crime. They love it. They love to stick a knife into you. They have a revenge for doing this and they get money for it, too. They are ruthless people.”
Some white cops expressed dismay about how black residents viewed them, but it never seemed to cross their minds that it might be because of the way blacks were treated by cops. “A call came over one night on the radio car that they wanted an ambulance. A lady’s son was very sick and she would not let policemen into her house because they were white and she was black. They wanted a black policeman, plus a black ambulance attendant to come. Now this brings up two things: the public doesn’t want you, and in this case, the person doesn’t want you because you are white. We are helping her and yet she still rejects us.”
One white officer assigned to Harlem reported that “Nobody likes you in Harlem. And I’m not the only cop who feels that way. They rag-mouth you. They will say anything. They know they can get away with it…. Out in Brooklyn, forget it. Black kids have never respected us anyway. They call you a pig and a motherfucker. This is not something new. They see you in a car and call you a motherfucker and spit at the car. If I get out of the car it would be an incident, so I stay in the car. Sometimes I might say, ‘Do you know me to call me that?’”
Most cops had resigned themselves to hostility from blacks, but the Knapp Commission hearings left them convinced that the entire system was against them. “To me it’s understandable why a great many of the men have the idea that the least I do the better off I am. I don’t have to worry about civilian complaints. I don’t have to worry about going out and having to answer for my actions to some review board because I haven’t done anything. I pick up my paycheck every two weeks. I don’t give a damn what happens.”
ON A FREEZING night in late January 1972—not long after the Knapp Commission hearings wrapped up—a cascade of bullets once again pierced the vital organs of two policemen. This double shooting was, if anything, even more disturbing than those that came before.
On Avenue B and East Eleventh Street in the East Village, Officers Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie—rookies who had both served as combat marines in Vietnam—were ambushed from behind by multiple gunmen and executed in the middle of the intersection. A total of fourteen bullets were unloaded on the two officers, many while the two men lay on the ground. Patrolman Foster had his eyes shot out, his brain matter reduced to liquid on the pavement. Witnesses described one gunman—a black male—standing over Patrolman Laurie. “Shoot him in the balls,” said an accomplice. The gunman shot Laurie in the groin at point-blank range; then, according to a witness, he danced in the street and fired shots in the air in celebration.
The East Village was a hub of narcotics activity, and at first there was speculation—even among some in the police department—that one or both of the cops might have gotten mixed up in the dope trade. It was a nasty issue to raise, an insult to the memory of the two cops, but a logical question at a time when police corruption was the number one topic of the day.
The day after the shootings, a lette
r concerning the shootings arrived at the offices of United Press International. It read in part:
This is from the George Jackson Squad of the Black Liberation Army about the pigs wiped out in lower Manhattan last night. No longer will black people tolerate Attica and oppression and exploitation and rape of our black community. This is the start of our spring offensive. There is more to come….
The letter, which was immediately forwarded to Chief Seedman at police headquarters, was signed by the “George Jackson Squad,” a reference to a prominent Black Panther who’d been killed while attempting to escape from California’s San Quentin prison. The reference to Attica concerned a notorious riot at the Attica prison in upstate New York three months earlier, which was still under investigation. After the riots began, Black Panther Bobby Seale had flown in to facilitate negotiations between rioting inmates and prison authorities, but his efforts were in vain: the four-day riot had ended only after a National Guard unit called in by Governor Rockefeller had massacred the rioters. Thirty-nine people were killed, including twenty-nine inmates, all of them black and Hispanic.
The Foster-Laurie killings were a chilling codicil to both the Attica riots and the Knapp Commission hearings, and they touched off a new round of hysteria in the press. Commissioner Murphy, normally circumspect in his public statements about the Black Liberation Army, went on the offensive, describing the BLA as a highly mobile group of approximately one hundred members spread throughout the United States. “Too many policemen have been killed,” said Murphy. “Too many policemen have been wounded. And obviously there has been a pattern. I think the hunt for these men should be one of the highest priority problems in the country.”
By now, a number of corruption cases stemming from the Knapp Commission hearings were starting to get under way, and some suggested that Murphy’s daily press bulletins about the BLA were an attempt to divert public attention from the department’s internal scandals. In the Eastern District of New York, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Scopetta was building a series of criminal cases against cops, using former narcotics detective Robert Leuci as the star witness, that promised to make the Knapp revelations look tame in comparison. The NYPD’s public relations nightmare was far from over.
Commissioner Murphy’s possible motivations in leading the charge against black militancy were not lost on Dhoruba Bin Wahad’s attorney, Robert Bloom. As a veteran of the Panther Twenty-one case, where he represented Curtis Powell, Bloom was a seasoned combatant. His strategy was to always land the first blow. In February, Bloom filed an injunction in court to prohibit the police commissioner from making further public statements about the BLA. Bloom contended that Murphy was polluting the jury pool for upcoming trials, trying to win sympathy for the department at a time when their standing in the community had reached a new low. Federal court judge Charles H. Tenney disagreed; he ruled against the plaintiff and stated that Commissioner Murphy’s statements about the BLA—whatever his motives—interfered with no one’s right to a fair trial.
The battle lines were drawn: the police on one side, the black army on the other.
AS MUCH AS he may have wanted to, George Whitmore could not escape the times in which he lived. As a black man fighting for his freedom, he had seen the quaint days of “I have a dream” give way to a culture in which cops were lethally ambushed on city streets, peaceful civil disobedience had given way to organized radical violence, and prison riots filled TV screens with images of death and destruction. In 1971, soul singer Marvin Gaye released a hit song asking “What’s Goin’ On?” There were no easy answers.
On February 12, 1972, with the shock of the Foster-Laurie killings still very much in the air, Whitmore once again walked into court to hear his fate determined by a judge.
It had been almost nine years since the Career Girls Murders, eight and a half since that fateful night when Whitmore was led into the Seventy-third Precinct station house in Brownsville by two policemen. Twenty-three hours later, he had signed the longest written confession in NYPD history. Before that, however, Elba Borrero had given her much-contested identification of Whitmore as the man who tried to rape her. The questions surrounding that identification had become the tiny glimmer of hope on which Whitmore pinned his daily dreams of exoneration.
Attorneys and civil rights activists had tried everything on his behalf. Most recently, Myron Beldock had argued the case before the New York State Court of Appeals. He had come close, but Whitmore’s conviction was upheld by a 4–3 vote. This led to a final Hail Mary pass, an appeal to the United States Supreme Court to hear the case. Beldock had filed his papers; the arguments had all been made. Now, at the federal courthouse in the Eastern District of New York, George Whitmore would learn whether the Supreme Court would free the “Negro drifter” from Brooklyn.
He had few supporters in the courtroom. George and Aida were estranged, heading toward divorce. His brother Gerald was upstate doing time on a burglary conviction. His longtime attorneys, Miller and Beldock, were there, as was his mother, who had stuck by her son through every trial.
It took all of thirty seconds for the court to deliver its verdict. Whitmore’s appeal to the Supreme Court was denied.
Whitmore was beyond tears. It appeared as though his fight was over. He was put on a Department of Corrections bus and taken to the Brooklyn House of Detention, where he was held for a few days before being shipped upstate to Green Haven prison.
A week after he was returned to custody, Whitmore was visited by Selwyn Raab, the former newspaper reporter. Raab, who had never stopped following the case, was not surprised by the Supreme Court ruling. “All those stories in the press about the black liberation movement and the Black Liberation Army—that did not help Whitmore’s chances,” remembered Raab. “It created a climate that made it difficult for people like Whitmore to get a fair hearing.”
At Green Haven, Raab found a young man who had given up hope. Until now, George had always found a way to stay positive, but the years of legal struggle had taken away his spirit. George showed some curiosity about the movie that was being made of Raab’s book, but even that was a source of disappointment. The project was now being produced by Universal Studios as a TV movie for CBS, with Abby Mann as screenwriter and executive producer. Universal had promised to hire Whitmore as a technical consultant, but they’d reneged on the offer and never paid Whitmore a dime, even though the production was almost complete. Raab promised to look into it.
“Next time you come, can you remember to bring cigarettes?” asked George. It was his standard parting request to all visitors: cigarettes seemed to be the only thing he had left to care about. “You won’t forget?”
“Sure, George,” said Raab. “I won’t forget.”
Raab left the prison more convinced than ever that Whitmore was innocent. There must be something to do about this, he thought, some way to make it right.
[ eighteen ]
LONG TIME COMIN’
AFTER VISITING WHITMORE at Green Haven prison, Selwyn Raab put in a call to Myron Beldock. As the journalist and the lawyer hashed over the case, searching for anything that could form the basis of a new appeal, they agreed that one last thread was still dangling, one detail that had never been adequately investigated: Elba Borrero’s sister-in-law, Celeste Viruet.
From the beginning of Whitmore’s ordeal, none of the many patrolmen, detectives, and assistant D.A.s involved in his trials and hearings had ever mentioned Viruet’s existence. It was only after Beldock joined Whitmore’s team that the handwritten note about Viruet in Patrolman Isola’s notebook came to the defense lawyers’ attention. Beldock had discovered the entry almost by chance:
Sister-in-law saw he grab me from her window (Celeste Viruet).
That one scrawled line was like a beacon: a description of the assailant that conflicted with Whitmore’s appearance in every detail except for the fact that he was a black man. Was the description from Borrero or from Viruet? The question had never been answered. No o
ne acting on Whitmore’s behalf had ever spoken with Celeste Viruet. She was a phantom. Of course, it was quite possible that there was nothing to it; if questioned, the woman might ultimately back up her sister-in-law’s account of that night. But the very fact that police investigators had never conducted a follow-up interview with her—that Viruet was never produced to corroborate Borrero’s version or even mentioned in court by detectives or prosecutors—led Raab and Beldock to suspect that there was a reason she’d become a phantom. Chances were, her version didn’t fit the prosecutors’ version of the crime.
“I’m not sure who came up with the idea first,” Beldock said, “but Selwyn and I both realized that we needed to find Celeste Viruet. She was our last hope.”
It wasn’t going to be easy. No one from Elba Borrero’s family was going to help Whitmore’s lawyers find Celeste Viruet. She was a transient Puerto Rican who lived part of the year in Brooklyn and part of the year in her home country. After some preliminary inquiries in and around Brooklyn, Beldock and Raab came up empty. She didn’t live there anymore; she hadn’t been seen by anyone in a long time.
Finally, the two men pooled their resources and hired a private investigator—a former FBI agent with the unlikely name of Richard “Dick” Tracy. The P.I. with the famous cartoon name followed Celeste Viruet’s trail to the Bronx, where she had moved after leaving Brooklyn. But Viruet didn’t live in the Bronx anymore. She had moved back to Puerto Rico. An acquaintance told the P.I. the two things she knew: that Viruet lived in Isla Verde, and that she owned a store with the word naranja (Spanish for “orange”) in the title. That’s all they had to go on.
The Savage City Page 43
