To many, the city of New York is synonymous with Manhattan. But beyond the skyscrapers and Wall Street, away from the theater district and deluxe Fifth Avenue stores, lies a different reality.
New York City is comprised of five boroughs, the largest of which is Queens. Manhattan covers 22 square miles; Queens, 119. Manhattan has a population of one million five hundred thousand; Queens more than two million. Manhattan is known for its diversity. But in many respects, the variations within Queens are greater.
Queens embraces forty-four distinct geographic entities, each a community within itself. It is a mid-station between Manhattan and the affluent suburban communities of Long Island; an amalgamation of one and two-family houses, apartment buildings, industrial plants, and stores. Its “good” areas are home to almost two million white middle-class residents who seek the amenities of semi-suburban life on a limited budget without leaving New York. In the midst of this middle-class milieu, however, lies a socio-economic blight of monstrous proportions.
South Jamaica is the ghetto area of Queens. A disproportionate number of its 100,000 residents are on welfare. Several thousand are known to be addicts on the basis of public records alone. Its population, which is more than 90 percent black and Hispanic, suffers from an infant mortality rate twice that of other Queens residents. Their life expectancy is six years shorter. Three times as many of their households are headed by women. Unemployment among them is twice the national average. They are, a 1978 New York Times study found, “a permanent underclass, people who are wards of the government, living out unproductive lives under conditions that most Americans, if they think about them at all, consider unacceptable.”
New York City’s 103rd Precinct lies in the heart of South Jamaica. In 1973, the year Thomas Shea was to shoot and kill Clifford Glover, the precinct’s 5.47 square miles were the site of 11,919 reported felonies. Of eighty-two police precincts in the city of New York, only two were more lawless. That year, the 103rd Precinct had 45 percent more murders than the city-wide precinct average, 167 percent more rapes, twice as many felonious assaults, three times as many robberies and motor-vehicle thefts.
To combat this wave of crime, the New York City Police Department amassed a formidable force. The 103rd Precinct boasted more police manpower than any other in the city—356 patrolmen, 57 superior officers, and 50 civilian employees—all to little avail. Only 22.6 percent of the reported felonies committed in the 103rd Precinct in 1973 were solved. For grand larcenies and burglaries, the total was one in fifty.
Meanwhile, relations between the predominantly white police and black community were a source of increasing tension. One focal point for anti-police sentiment was the cops’ apparent inability to protect the citizenry and enforce the law. More compelling though, was black concern about alleged police brutality.
Most South Jamaicans believe that cops view black lives more cheaply than white. Capital punishment in New York State was abolished by the legislature in 1965. That same year, in New York City alone, cops shot and killed twenty-seven people. A subsequent study by the New York City Police Department revealed that a grossly disproportionate number of white patrolmen and black victims were involved in these shootings, a trend that has continued unabated.
In the early 1970s, four plainclothes New York City policemen were mistaken for criminals, shot, and killed by other policemen in the line of duty. In each instance, the victim was black and his attacker white. On April 3, 1972, at 4:00 P.M in the South Jamaica section of Queens, a black detective named William Capers, who was on duty in civilian clothes, ordered a just-apprehended felon to lie flat on the ground during a frisk for weapons. Moments later, a white cop assigned to the 103rd Precinct arrived on the scene, approached Capers from behind and, without identifying himself, ordered Capers to “drop it.” When Capers turned to learn the identity of his challenger, the cop fired once, killing him instantly.
Many of the area’s residents fear the police as they would soldiers in an occupying army. On the streets, it is firmly believed that cops enjoy pushing people around. One often hears the refrain “cops are bad people.” Legends abound of police who carry toy guns so that, in the event they shoot an unarmed suspect, a “weapon” can be dropped by the body to justify a claim of “self-defense.” Other reports tell of cops who, after shooting an armed suspect, fire the victim’s weapon in the air to establish that they were fired upon.
One black attorney who resides in South Jamaica tells of being stopped by a white policeman for a minor traffic violation: “I reached into an inside jacket pocket for my driver’s license and, as I did, the cop tensed and moved his hand toward his gun. Right then, I remembered what color we both were. I told him very slowly and clearly, ‘I am reaching into my pocket for my wallet. I do not have a gun.’”
Within South Jamaica, the tendency of police to cover up the use of unnecessary force in making an arrest is taken for granted. The victim, it is felt, is invariably arrested and the charges against him tailored to justify whatever police action transpired. Thus, a citizen injured by a cop in a minor scuffle will be charged with resisting arrest, and additional charges added on to increase the chances of a guilty plea through the plea-bargaining process. Another often-alleged police practice is pushing a suspect down a flight of stairs. Handcuffed, the victim cannot break his fall, yet the arresting officer can claim that the suspect slipped, tripped, or twisted free and stumbled, all of which may account for his injuries.
The aforementioned acts constitute crimes. But as a practical matter, prosecution rarely results. Even when a case of police brutality is well documented, the matter is usually left for internal discipline by the Department rather than criminal action by the district attorney’s office. Strong predictable sanctions in cases of police wrongdoing are seldom imposed.
“When all is said and done,” notes one black clergyman in South Jamaica, “only a small percentage of New York City cops are prone to violence. But it’s a big department, and one percent of thirty thousand cops is three hundred men. That’s three hundred screwballs scattered around New York with guns and the authority to use them. They can hurt a lot of people.”
“Something happens to most men who put on a uniform and join a paramilitary system,” the clergyman continues. “They change. A cop should undergo psychological testing every few years, but the Department’s medical resources are totally inadequate. You know who a cop is sent to if he has a drinking problem? A police chaplain. That’s where the force is at. And the problems are getting worse, not better. Ten years ago, being a cop was an honored profession. Now, after Vietnam, Watergate, and the urban riots, idealistic young whites don’t want to be cops anymore. Nowadays, the New York City Police Department gets the butchers.”
“Butchers,” one patrolman from the 103rd Precinct remarks bitterly. “That same preacher would have a fit if you called someone from his congregation an animal. But he’s pretty free with labels, isn’t he? I know the people who live in South Jamaica are human. But I’m human too, and they seem to forget that. I walk down the street, and all I hear is ‘Hey-y-y, motherfucker.’ I walk it at night, and I’m lucky if I don’t get hit with a bottle coming off a roof. I bleed too, you know. I got a wife and kids to feed too.
“Civic cooperation in the 103rd Precinct is virtually nonexistent,” the same cop continues. “Community members should be a cop’s allies in fighting crime. But in South Jamaica, nothing could be further from the truth. Stop a guy in a white neighborhood to make an arrest, and there’s no problem. Stop him in South Jamaica, and there’s a big racial altercation. The first thing you know, you’ve got a crowd on your hands and you’re lucky to get out alive. Then witnesses to the crime say they saw nothing and are unwilling to testify. Victims refuse to press charges. I hate to say this, but let’s face it. We’re in an adversary relationship with the people we’re supposed to protect. And don’t give me that crap about social grievances. Even if they hate cops, that doesn’t explain why they throw bricks at firemen.”
Since the urban riots of the 1960s, course work at the Police Academy has been altered to include heavy emphasis on police-community relations. A continuing theme, which has become a standard part of police indoctrination, is the one sounded by former Police Commissioner Vincent Broderick at a promotion ceremony in 1965:
If you believe that a police officer is somehow superior to a citizen because the citizen is a Negro or speaks Spanish, get out right now. You don’t belong in the Police Department.
If you will tolerate in your men, one attitude toward a white citizen who speaks English and a different attitude toward another citizen who is a Negro or who speaks Spanish, get out right now.
If you will tolerate physical abuse by your men of any citizen, get out right now.
If you do not realize the incendiary potential in the racial slur, if you will tolerate from your men the racial slur, get out right now. You don’t belong in the Police Department.
Yet no amount of indoctrination can shake the belief among many cops that, once in the ghetto, they are dealing with people who are lawless, uneducated, and irrational; people who regard arrest as a mere inconvenience.
“There are people in South Jamaica,” one cop contends, “who don’t see any stigma at all to a conviction for mugging. And that’s how they’re bringing up their children. There are twelve-year-old kids who are in jail for four or five days before their parents even know they’re missing.”
Disrespect, hostility, mutual antagonism. With elements like these, a small spark can precipitate a crisis. The cops in New York City’s 103rd Precinct are aware of this. They know that it is “just plain stupid” to engage in acts of brutality. And by and large, they avoid them. But there is an additional, extremely unpredictable element at work: fear.
Most white cops on duty in South Jamaica are afraid. They have ridden the side streets off New York Boulevard to the accompaniment of rocks thudding against patrol-car windows, and they remember the case of a young cop paralyzed from the neck down by a brick that crushed his skull. They know that routine fistfights have ended in death when one of the participants grabbed a knife and plunged it deep into the chest of an intervening officer. They have learned to open police patrol boxes with their faces turned away, just in case some kid has placed a firecracker inside or a bomb has been planted by someone even more dangerous and deranged.
During the past fifteen years, seventy-one New York City policemen have been killed in the line of duty. In response, less than one percent of all police fire their guns in combat each year. But despite their restraint, most cops live in fear of an attack. And many of them have been conditioned to believe that, when it comes, the attacker will be black.
On May 19, 1971, Patrolmen Thomas Curry and Nicholas Binetti were standing guard in a police car outside the Manhattan home of New York County District Attorney Frank Hogan when a passing motor vehicle sprayed their car with machine-gun bullets. Both men survived, although Curry’s face was permanently disfigured and portions of his brain were destroyed. Within hours, the New York Times and radio station WBLI-FM received identical notes that read, “The domestic armed forces of racism and oppression will be confronted by the guns of the Black Liberation Army.”
Two days later, on May 21, 1971, Patrolmen Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini were patrolling a Harlem street when a pair of black men walked up behind them and fired two bullets into Jones (who was black) and twelve into Piagentini. That night WBLI-FM received a second note stating, “Revolutionary justice has been meted out again by the righteous brothers of the Black Liberation Army with the death of two gestapo pigs.”
On January 28, 1972, Patrolmen Gregory Foster (who was black) and Rocco Laurie were gunned down by three black men on a Lower Manhattan street in much the same fashion as Piagentini and Jones. Laurie was shot six times; Foster, eight. After Foster fell, his assailants turned him over and shot out both his eyes. The following day, United Press International received a note that read: “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 oppression and exploitation. This is the start of our offensive. There is more to come.”
The effect of the Black Liberation Army executions on police morale in the 103rd Precinct was galvanic. Cops are viewed by many as pillars of strength, but the reality is considerably less imposing. Many are in their early and mid-twenties and inexperienced. None are bulletproof. Functioning in a precinct where a large percentage of residents carry guns and knives and virtually all are black, most cops in South Jamaica feared for their lives. Yet, just when they had the greatest need for reassurance, a new irritant was thrown into their midst. On April 2, 1973, a black police captain named Glanvin Alveranga was appointed Commanding Officer of the 103rd Precinct.
Born in Harlem, the son of immigrants who had moved to New York from the Caribbean island of Jamaica, Alveranga represented a new breed of police brass. His father had been a cabdriver; his mother, a member of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. After graduating from high school, he spent two years in the United States Army and two more with the Port Authority of New York Police.
On November l, 1955, Alveranga joined the New York City Police Department and was assigned to a precinct in East Harlem. Thereafter, while moving up the ranks, he served as a Police Academy instructor, consultant to the New York State Crime Control Commission, and Commanding Officer of the 88th Detective Squad in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Fort Greene in Brooklyn.
By 1972 Alvaranga was one of the city’s few black police captains. In April 1973, at age forty-five, he became the first black precinct commander in the history of Queens. At the time of his appointment, in a city that was more than twenty percent black, black cops made up less than eight percent of the Department’s manpower. In the 103rd Precinct, which was the greatest minority bastion in Queens, only thirteen out of 413 cops were black.
Alveranga’s appointment brought a generally negative response from cops in the 103rd Precinct. Stocky, five feet ten inches tall, with a deep voice and heavy jowls, he had a tendency to make cops summoned to his office wait while he leafed through papers on his desk. He had a thick black mustache that hung heavy on his upper lip and a full head of hair that one white cop described as being “combed back with some sort of pomade.” Some of Alveranga’s men defended him as being studious and reserved; others saw the same qualities as arrogance and “false pride.”
Alveranga knew that his appointment was unpopular among the precinct’s white cops. “The Police Department,” he later said, “is a reflection of the rest of our society. Black-white friction on the force is the same as anywhere else. All I wanted from my men was professionalism and respect. I had a wife and two teenage children I could go to for love.”
But the respect Alveranga sought was not forthcoming. Many white cops viewed his appointment as “political” and a “sellout” to appease the black community.
Others complained that their new captain was more concerned with protecting “his people” than doing a proper job. Some cops openly declared that Alveranga himself was a racist.
The fact of the matter is that many cops in the 103rd Precinct simply weren’t ready to accept a black commander. The mistrust that existed between them and the black community had reached feverish proportions, and they felt that only a white commanding officer could be fully on their side. Thus, with Alveranga’s appointment, the siege mentality that existed in the decrepit red-brick station house that housed “South Jamaica’s finest” escalated. With hostility and antagonism on all sides, the 103rd Precinct had become a festering sore waiting to burst.