I’d been a sworn officer with the New York City Police Department for five years. During that time I’d achieved an impressive record of approximately one thousand arrests, not counting assists. I had taken many guns off the street, prevented an untold quantity of drugs from reaching customers, and placed numerous felons in alternative housing courtesy of the prison system. To put the number of arrests into perspective, I’d say that the average cop with my time on the job had around fifty arrests—very active cops perhaps up to two hundred. No one I know of has ever amassed arrest numbers that approach mine during five years on the job. At twenty-six, I’d also garnered over a hundred departmental medals (I would finish my career with 220 medals and 35 awards from civilian organizations).
I loved what I was doing. Every day I went to work amazed that I was actually getting paid for something I would do pro bono if the city suddenly went belly-up financially (an event that came close to reality several times during the 1970s).
The 41st Precinct’s Anti-Crime Unit was my home. I loved doing my part, the cops, camaraderie, and the excitement. I would have gladly stayed there for my entire career, but I also coveted the gold shield of a detective, a lofty goal, but one that I thought I deserved. Still, no promotion was forthcoming.
I was told countless times how valuable I was to the unit, and that got me thinking that perhaps I was too valuable and that my lack of movement might have been a selfish tactic of the area commanders. The thought wasn’t crazy, even if it was paranoid. Not only were street thugs out to get cops, but the NYPD bosses weren’t above sacrificing a cop or two when some political problem needed a remedied scapegoat. Or, as one cop I know so eloquently puts it, “It doesn’t mean you’re paranoid if someone really is out to get you.”
I’d never been political, never sucked up to bosses for favors. I just did my job, whatever was asked of me. If I were in the military, I would have been deemed a good soldier. So it came as a bit of a surprise—just as my hopes were growing dim—when I was told I was being promoted to detective, third grade, not for my arrest record but for the fifteen bribery arrests I’d made since I’d been in the Four-One.
The NYPD’s Integrity Review Board was established to reward police officers for their honesty, and there was no better way to gauge that than by a police officer’s history of bribery arrests. Fifteen arrests for bribery is indeed a big number, but when you take into consideration the thousands of potential bribe situations I’d been in (every time I made an arrest), the number of bribe offers seems reasonable.
Most bribery collars are pretty similar: I’d arrest someone, and then the prisoner would offer a sum of money, drugs, some kind of stolen swag, sex—you name it—to be cut loose. After the initial proposition, I’d get wired for sound by the Internal Affairs Division and then have the prisoner repeat the offer for posterity. As soon as he did, the charge of bribery of a police officer (a felony) would be added to whatever he was initially charged with. The size and nature of the bribe were irrelevant. I’d been offered anywhere from ten dollars to several thousand dollars to look the other way.
The Integrity Review Board was looking for a poster boy to counteract the bad press the department received during the recent Knapp Commission hearings on police corruption, which had painted police work with a pretty broad brush of systemic corruption in certain units. To my knowledge no cop had ever amassed fifteen bribery arrests, so I became a promising candidate for swaying the public’s opinion that all cops were crooked.
I was told that my promotion was imminent and was asked if I would like to remain in the Four-One Anti-Crime Unit as a detective. I was thrilled with the offer, even if I didn’t quite believe it. It came as little surprise to me that when I was promoted in a very public ceremony, which was covered by the media, it was announced that I wasn’t going to stay in the Four-One Anti-Crime Unit. The NYPD is famous for asking cops being promoted where they wanted to be assigned and then sending them in the opposite direction. My new home was to be the 34th Precinct Detective Unit in Washington Heights. I was being transferred to Manhattan? This wasn’t good.
The 34th was a very high-crime command, not unlike the Four-One—which was a good thing. But being in Manhattan was going to screw up my system of getting in and out of court rapidly, a system that I’d honed over the years in the Bronx. Most people knew me in the Bronx’s criminal justice system, especially the court personnel who worked with me to grease the wheels of justice and get me out of court in as little as an hour.
Manhattan Criminal Court was as far away as one could get from the 34th. They were located at opposite ends of the island with a nightmare of traffic between. A two-or-three-day wait to see an assistant district attorney and a judge in Manhattan Criminal Court was not uncommon, especially on weekends. Cops would actually bring lawn chairs to court with them and recline while waiting to get through the system. I envisioned my arrest numbers rapidly diminishing; every day spent staring off into space or sprawled on a lawn chair waiting in court would be time away from the street.
I called people I thought could help me get back to the Bronx. No good. A source in the Personnel Unit told me the only way to get back to the Bronx was to get a “mutual transfer.” This meant I’d have to find a detective in the Bronx who for some unfathomable reason would rather work in the 34th in Manhattan and trade places with me: a body for a body. Plus the bosses of both respective squads would have to sign off on the transfer.
I set a plan in motion. I spent my first two tours in my new assignment designing and printing flyers requesting a “mutual,” then visited every detective squad in the Bronx and posted them. Day number 3 found me in the police academy attending the first day of the five-day Criminal Investigation Course (CIC), which all new detectives are required to take and pass—a sort of Detective 101 to acquaint the newly minted sleuth with a different skill set.
While I was in the CIC the miracle happened: a detective from the 52nd Precinct Detective Unit agreed to go to the 34th, and both squad commanders signed off on the transfers. I was back in the Bronx.
* * *
The 52nd Precinct covers the northern portion of the Bronx and was considered a medium-crime precinct. I was born and raised in the Fordham section of the Five-Two and knew better; crime was everywhere in New York City in the 1970s. You just had to know where to look.
It had been a neighborhood of Irish, Italians, and Jews when I was a kid; it was now slowly changing to an area of immigrant Albanians, Hispanics, and blacks. As the older generations died off, their children were choosing to seek opportunities elsewhere. As with any recently arrived ethnic group from a foreign country, the Albanians tended to keep close and retain the customs of the old country. Many of the males sought employment in the upkeep of residential and commercial buildings as superintendents, janitors, and porters. The women mostly stayed home and raised the kids. A hardworking lot, the supers and janitors of yesterday became the landlords of tomorrow. Arthur Avenue, known as the Little Italy of the Bronx, would, by the early 1990s, be inhabited mostly by Albanians. When the Italians began to depart, the Albanians bought and continued to operate most of the Italian restaurants in the area.
Albanian gangs began to proliferate. Like the Italians, they were highly structured and exclusionary crime families (outsiders need not apply). Disputes were settled with guns—many Albanian men in the area carried them and weren’t afraid to use them. It was about this time that I arrived on the scene and made it my mission to take as many guns off the street as I could. As eager as I was to begin my mission, I first had to ease myself into my new home: the 52nd Precinct detective squad.
I was well known in the Bronx, but I didn’t want it to appear that I was going to be a lone wolf who didn’t listen to and respect authority. My dream was reality: I was an NYPD detective and was very proud, not only for what I’d accomplished but because I was now part of the best group of detectives in the world. However, with this promotion came some trepidation. I began experiencing separation anxiety after leaving the Four-One, which had become so much a part of who I was. I believe that Fort Apache was unique among the seventy-seven precincts that make up the NYPD. I’m certain I learned the job faster in the Four-One than I could’ve anywhere else. The Four-One was intense, not only for the mind-blowing crime and poverty problems but also for the bond created among the police officers assigned there. Cops depended on each other no matter where they worked, but it was always my suspicion that the Four-One created the strongest friendships in the city, not unlike infantry soldiers who face death on a daily basis and form connections that last long after their service is completed.
In many respects the Five-Two was the opposite of the Four-One. Because poverty and crime weren’t rampant in the command, I was going to have to acquire a new set of social skills when it came to dealing with the residents.
Then there’s the question of my own competency. I was a very good street cop, but I was not yet familiar with being a detective. My area of expertise was making arrests on the street, usually for crimes I’d observed in progress. Did I have that ability to reason, deduct, and carry a case through from beginning to end? I’d find out soon enough.
I knew a cop who got promoted to sergeant, and he told me that walking into his new command as a boss was one of the scariest days of his life. This, coming from a Vietnam combat veteran and excellent street cop.
“One day you’re a grunt, working the street with your buddies,” he’s said, “and the next day you’re a boss supervising a group of cops just like those you were working with the day before. All sorts of doubts fly through your head: Am I good enough to do this job? Can I come up with answers when asked for advice? Will I be a good sergeant, respected by my peers and subordinates?”
I had similar feelings, the fear of the unknown.
* * *
There were nineteen detectives assigned to the squad, and we were under the command of Sergeant Stephen Cantor. Cantor was a former cop with the Tactical Patrol Force who had the reputation of being a fair-but-no-nonsense boss. He was in his early thirties, young for a sergeant at the time, and very young to be a squad commander. Most of his subordinate detectives were older, but they all respected him.
All he knew about me was that I was twenty-six years old, had made over a thousand quality arrests, and earned numerous departmental medals. He was going to control me from the start and make me realize who was boss. I had no objection to what I knew was coming; I’d do my job just as I’d always done, prove myself, and then earn the freedom to really make a difference.
The mere fact that I was transferred to the North Bronx slowed down my high-voltage adrenaline flow to a trickle. There was going to be an adjustment period, but the blood and death that naturally came with policing the streets of the Bronx in the ’70s would resurface, and shortly my adrenaline stream would catch up. I caught my first case a few days after my arrival.
“Ralph,” Cantor said, “take care of this.” He handed me a complaint report.
I read the details, in disbelief that handling it required a detective. Two women in their eighties had gotten into a verbal dispute that had changed course when one of them hit the other one with a hairbrush. The victim wanted the hairbrush assailant locked up for assault. A detective surely wasn’t necessary for this bullshit—patrol could’ve handled it! But I was being tested to see how I followed orders and to get a clear understanding of who the boss was.
Sergeant Cantor probably expected me to complain, but I didn’t. I smiled, nodded, and said, “I’ll get right on it.” His expression was one of thinly veiled amazement. I was going to play the game until the good sergeant realized that I could be a team player. Once he understood that, I’d go about doing what I wanted to do (with the improved results).
I went with Detective Cortes, who was instructed by Sergeant Cantor to let me conduct the interview with the two women in order to see how I’d handle myself. Both ladies were still highly agitated, and the victim had a black eye. She insisted that I lock up her attacker for “ferocious assault.” Normally, when an assault victim with an obvious injury wants an arrest made, a police officer has to comply. In this case, I was damned if I was going to march someone’s grandmother into the Five-Two in handcuffs so every cop in the house could have a good laugh.
I used my discretion and deemed Hairbrush Lady a person in need of psychological evaluation. Instead of a paddy wagon to the slammer, she got a ride in an ambulance to the nearest hospital psych ward. They’d probably look her over, then send her home. No jail, perp and victim happy, and me not looking like a clown.
Back at the command, Sergeant Cantor called me into his office as soon as he saw me. “Where’s your collar, Detective?”
“The perp was obviously in need of psychological help, Sarge,” I said with a straight face. “She was transported by ambulance to Jacobi Hospital.” I smiled. “Anything else?”
Cantor stared at me for a moment, and I could see the look of grudging admiration on his face. I’d outsmarted him, and he approved of it. Detectives think on their feet, make decisions based on expediency and what’s good for the squad. I was beginning to like Sergeant Cantor; his main concern was what was good for the job. I knew I hadn’t seen the end of the ball breaking, but he knew I could take it. I’d have to pay my dues before I became a trusted member of the team. I didn’t know what was coming next, but I didn’t have long to wait to find out.
Cantor gave me my first homicide case a few days later. The deceased was a squirrel, the victim of an alleged gunshot.
I played it with a straight face. “I hope he didn’t suffer, Sarge.”
“Well, Detective, that’s what you’re going to find out. A parking lot’s being constructed at Fordham University. One of the crew found the critter DOA, looked like it’d been shot. The squirrel could’ve been a person … someone taking target practice … or we could be dealing with a serial killer, just warming up, so to speak. Get right on it, okay?”
“Absolutely.”
A fucking squirrel murder. I couldn’t believe it, but you would never suspect it to look at me. The boss wanted an investigation, and he was going to get one.
* * *
A backhoe operator pointed the “victim” out to me. “I almost ran over the fucking thing … just lying there in the dirt. Looks like someone shot it … right?”
“Yes, sir, that’s what it looks like.” The animal was almost blown in half, the bullet long gone. “Did you hear a shot?”
He looked at me quizzically. “This is the Bronx. I always hear shots. I sort of tune them out, but this was close to home.” He pointed at the dead squirrel. “Coulda been me laying there.”
“Yes, sir.” I was taking this seriously—as seriously as Joe Friday from Dragnet. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to bring chalk with me so I could outline the body. “I’ll take care of this from here, sir. Squirrel lives matter. Thank you for reporting it.”
I scooped up the remains with a piece of cardboard, put it in the trunk, and headed for my next stop.
* * *
Sergeant Cantor dropped his pen. “You did what?”
I was back at the house reporting in. “I took the body to the ASPCA”—that is, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—“to get it autopsied … had to ascertain the cause of death, you know. Tried the morgue first, but they told me they only autopsy humans. ASPCA said definitely a gunshot, but the round passed through the beast and wasn’t recovered.”
I was going all the way on this one. If I did everything I was supposed to do, I’d inundate Cantor with paperwork for a week.
Sergeant Cantor knew when he was beat. He leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Whaddaya say we call this a suicide and close it out?”
“You know, Sarge, you may have something there. Some people in the neighborhood said the squirrel looked depressed.”
Sergeant Cantor never busted my chops again, and we became very good friends, a friendship that endures to this day. He even saved my life once—but more on that later. I’d found a home in the Five-Two detective squad and would become even more productive than I’d been in the Four-One. Another plus was that I lived only a quarter mile beyond the precinct border, just over the city line in Yonkers.
* * *
Roger Cortes became my first partner. He was a second-grade detective and about seventeen years my senior, the old man of the squad at age forty-two. For over twenty years he’d been an active cop—you don’t get promoted to second grade by being a slacker—but after his transfer to the Five-Two squad he slowed down. Roger was far from lazy, but he was more centered on his family. He had seven kids, five of them daughters, and he lived to be with them. He’d also had a run-in with a boss a few years back and had gotten himself transferred to a detective squad on Staten Island for nine months. For a cop who lived upstate, getting assigned to Staten Island was the equivalent of an FBI agent being banished to North Dakota.
I liked Roger from the outset, but he needed a fire lit under him to rekindle the days when he was my age and eager to do the job. It didn’t take long. We started cracking down on the area’s problem of illegal gun possession, stopping cars and relying on our gut feelings. Back then, making an arrest relying on street smarts with nothing more than a “feeling” that an individual was up to no good was considered good police work. While there was a chance that some of the arrests would be tossed due to lack of reasonable cause, we still accomplished our goals: guns off the street and the people who carried them in the crosshairs of the NYPD for future reference.
In today’s climate such arrests are forbidden and could result in departmental charges. The closest the job came to resembling the old days was the stop-and-frisk program under Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, the present PC’s predecessor. Thousands of illegal guns were seized yearly and violent crime took a nosedive. This policy of stopping and frisking random individuals was deemed unacceptable with the new administration because cops were mostly stopping African American and Hispanic young men, and the strategy was halted. While it was true that the NYPD was targeting those ethnic groups, it is also true that the strategy was effective. Now imagine how effective it would be if police were getting guns out of the hands of white perps too! Time will tell if additional guns on the street will have a significant lasting effect on crime statistics, but since Kelly’s policy was halted, homicide rates and other violent crime has risen.
Back to the ’70s. I’d take the collars, and Roger got the assist. He was happy with the arrangement because he didn’t have to spend time in court and could go home to his family.
We’d taken so many guns off the street that someone had circulated my picture among the community so the people with guns could spot me coming. My photo was also circulated at JFK Airport. Given that so many of our arrests were Albanian, newcomers arriving from the old country would immediately be made aware that I was to be avoided at all costs.
For Roger it was like getting back on a bike after many years; he was into the swing of things and felt like a productive detective again. He thanked me numerous times for rejuvenating his outlook. He even mentioned setting me up with one of his daughters, thinking I’d make a fine son-in-law. After a year working together, however, and by then having insight into my social life, he would tell me, “If you ever go near any of my daughters, I’ll shoot you myself.”
* * *
Most detective units in the NYPD have an unofficial suit-and-tie dress code. Detectives have a tendency for trying to outdress each other, making the detectives of the NYPD arguably the best-dressed sleuths in the world.
I was never comfortable in business attire, preferring jeans, boots, and leather jackets. I’d occasionally throw on a sport jacket if I had to testify in court, but mostly every day was casual Friday to me. I wanted to fit in with the street people, who could spot a detective a mile away. The bosses never said anything about the way I dressed because I was bringing in numerous quality arrests, thereby substantially increasing the clearance rate for reported crime—numbers of arrests for reported crimes—in the Five-Two.
I had made 125 arrests after my first year in the Five-Two detective squad, compared to 38 arrests for the entire squad of nineteen detectives. Don’t get me wrong: the squad had a fine bunch of detectives. I was just a bit more compulsive when it came to the hunt. Plus, the other guys spent lots of time in court, while I had my trusty system. I could have shown up in a football helmet and a dress and the bosses wouldn’t have made a peep.
* * *
Another benefit of the job was free transportation. I was using department cars and would take them home to Yonkers with me every night. Many cops would do this with unmarked autos, but I’d also take marked radio cars back and forth to work, parking them out of sight in my building’s underground garage. For gas I was using the NYPD pumps allocated for department autos. When the oil embargo hit the country and there were gas lines snaking around city blocks, I never had to wait to fuel up.
While not exactly permissible, the bosses looked the other way because of my arrest numbers. I was making the Five-Two look good.
* * *
The more time I spent in the Five-Two, the more I localized my efforts on problem areas that remained for the most part unaddressed. The Purple Gang was a perfect example.
The Purple Gang migrated from Detroit in the 1930s after the end of Prohibition. They originally specialized in running booze, but after alcohol became legal again, these hardened gangsters branched out to the usual array of enterprises favored by organized crime, changing their specialty to murder for hire.
The current crop of gang members mostly constituted the male children of members who were either dead or in prison. Truly a family business. Mostly in their twenties and thirties, these junior gangsters were looking to make names for themselves, just like their dear old dads and grandpas before them. Their goal was to either get inducted into one of the five New York Mafia families or gain enough street cred to make crime a lucrative career on their own.
While I couldn’t make it my life’s mission to follow these punks around 24/7, I could make their lives miserable. Gang members had a hangout on Jerome Avenue, just south of Bedford Park Boulevard. They’d park as close to the location as they could, which meant on sidewalks, in crosswalks, in front of fire hydrants. To launch my operation I did what no other detective in the NYPD ever did: I began carrying summons books. Detectives don’t write summonses—that’s something left to the uniform contingent. I broke new ground by writing tickets for every Purple Gang parking violation I saw (to the tune of over twenty-five summonses a day). In addition to costing the gang members thousands of dollars in fines a week, I was gathering information to pass on to the NYPD’s Intelligence Division, compiling massive lists of license plate numbers and physical descriptions of regulars and associates. I also pulled them over in their cars and made numerous gun collars, recording intel along the way. I did this for years and was recognized by the Intelligence Division for supplying valuable intelligence.
* * *
On January 20, 2016, Police Commissioner William Bratton published an op-ed for the New York Daily News in which he wrote: “We want to develop well-rounded, highly skilled police officers, not arrest machines.” Under Bratton, stop-and-frisk confrontations were down 96 percent from their level in 2011, when he took command. Bratton was training his cops to sharpen their “problem-solving skills,” which means fewer arrests.
While my time on the job occurred in another era, it’s difficult to see how implementing reactive responses will lower crime rates in the long run. Homicides were up 6 percent in 2014 (the last fully reported year), and, at the time of writing, the first month of 2016 has already seen a jump.
My consistent harassment of the Purple Gang by peppering them with summonses and making arrests proved highly successful in intelligence gathering and showing career criminals that they were constantly being monitored. In today’s NYPD the term for what I was doing is profiling—but I did not profile based on race. I profiled based on behavior because that’s what good cops do. The Purple Gang members were mainly ethnic Italians, yes, but if their gang members were known to carry guns, they got searched. If gang members violated the law, even if they were minor violations such as traffic infractions, they got slammed with tickets.
Quality-of-life violations such as illegally parking, harassing motorists by cleaning windshields with squeegees, jaywalking, and congregating (especially by youths) were targeted under previous administrations and proved effective in preventing more serious incidents. In my opinion, losing these tools and doing away with the stop-and-frisk technique will eventually affect the law-abiding public. But cops like to look good—and, in one form or another, that’s nothing new.
* * *
A detective’s job is to investigate crime, but that didn’t stop me from making pickup arrests; I’d still go out on the street and bust people with guns and drugs. When there was a sudden spike in robberies, I was asked if I wanted to work with the Robbery Investigation Program (RIP), a unit of Five-Two cops from Anti-Crime whose sole job was to work out of uniform and make robbery arrests, I jumped at the chance. I’d be the only detective in the ranks. We’d be working the street, and I wouldn’t stand out from the other men in my street garb. Who says you can’t go home again?
I began riding with Timothy Kennedy, a highly decorated RIP cop, originally from the 45th Precinct, with four years on the job. We were similar in many ways: both bodybuilders and looking to clear the streets of people who shouldn’t be there. He also looked vaguely familiar when we were introduced upon my arrival in RIP. It turned out that we did know each other. A few years back, I was within the confines of the 45th Precinct when I got involved in an off-duty arrest. I apprehended a man with a gun, one of two armed men, while the other had gotten away. After cuffing my prisoner, I called 911 to provide transportation to the Four-Five station house and who do you think responded? Tim Kennedy. He took my prisoner, and I was supposed to follow in my private car.
As Kennedy approached the command with the prisoner, he got a call from the dispatcher to respond to assist an off-duty officer with an arrest. When he heard my name, he told Central that he’d already responded to that job and was already transporting my prisoner.
“There’s another arrest—same cop … Friedman,” the dispatcher replied.
On the way I had spotted the second perp from the first arrest and disarmed and cuffed him. When Kennedy came back to pick me up, he said he wanted to be just like me when he grew up. I was pleased to be working with him in RIP. While not a full-time assignment, it was satisfying to see instances of robbery plummet in the Five-Two.
We began piling up arrests for street robberies. Victims would ride along with us in some instances, and we’d cruise the neighborhood looking for the person who stuck them up. Invariably we’d find them hanging around a street corner bragging to their friends about their score. They never even had the presence of mind to change clothes to muddy the identification.
* * *
I always had a good relationship with the uniformed cops. Patrol is the lifeblood of the job, and without the rank-and-file cops, the city would dissolve into anarchy. Some elitist detectives talked down to cops, but I found this attitude to be wrong on many levels. For one thing, there were only nineteen detectives in the Five-Two, but there were a couple hundred cops, who were a wealth of intelligence. It made sense to pick their brains and treat them with much-deserved respect. And eventually one of them brought me one of the most rewarding cases I ever handled as a detective.
Patrol cops came to me often with information on criminal activity, garnered though their day-to-day interaction with the community.
I was in the squad room processing a collar and catching up on paperwork when a young cop, whose name I’ve since forgotten, showed me a complaint report he’d just prepared.
“Check this out, Ralph,” he said. “Thought you might be interested.”
It began as a standard report of domestic abuse. A woman named Jacqueline Karlan called 911 to report that her former husband, Eli Morton Gorin, had shoved her against her apartment door and threatened to “break every bone in her body.” The two responding officers took the report and advised her to call if he showed up at the apartment again. As the officers were leaving, Ms. Karlan said, “Oh, by the way, my ex is wanted by the FBI.”
This detail was added to the victim’s complaint report. The cop who brought me the case figured if he didn’t notify someone before he handed in the report, it would be mixed in with the copious other paperwork being processed that day and the most important part would be overlooked.
This was hot! I thanked the cop and began doing some preliminary research.
Eli Gorin had been an upstanding citizen who’d never been arrested for anything until he lost his job and seemed to go off the deep end. He held up a bank with a gun, was caught, and was sentenced to thirty years in prison, where he was deemed criminally insane. In the mix of it all, his wife divorced him.
After seven years, he escaped from Lompac Penitentiary in California and made his way back to New York, vowing to anyone who’d listen that he was never going back to jail. He’d been a fugitive for about eighteen months when we got our lead, during which time he had been tried in absentia for the escape, convicted, and sentenced to an additional six years. But someone would have to catch him first, and so far the FBI had no results.
I requested his photos and got all his family information.
I went to see Sergeant Cantor and laid out the facts. He understood how big this case was. After contemplating a few seconds, he said, “You think you can get this guy, Ralph?” I knew what was running through his mind: the FBI hadn’t had any luck, so why should I?
“No doubt, boss.” The FBI didn’t know the Bronx like Roger Cortes and I did.
“Okay,” Cantor said. “You and Roger are off the chart. Get him.”
An NYPD detective handles many cases at once. A load of fifteen cases at a time, or more, isn’t rare, unlike detectives in the movies, who handle one case and devote all their time to it. The FBI works that way, but not us. The Gorin case, however, would be our sole focus, and we would work off the traditional work schedule.
As I turned to leave, Cantor said, “And I want to be involved. When you’re getting close, let me know.”
“Sure, boss,” I said. In the time to follow, Cantor would work the case with us most of the time while still managing to run the squad in his usual efficient manner. Steve Cantor was sharp: after a distinguished career with the NYPD, he became an attorney and is still practicing law today.
The next day, Roger and I interviewed Gorin’s mother at her home in the 44th Precinct. She told us that her son had stopped by but hadn’t been there lately.
Later that day, Special Agent Corliss of the FBI called me and advised that Gorin was to be considered armed and extremely dangerous.
We interviewed Gorin’s ex-wife, Jacqueline Karlan, who was scared shitless and was very helpful. “I want that bastard caught before he kills me,” she said.
She told us that Gorin had come to New York and was due to attend their son’s bar mitzvah. The ceremony was to be conducted at a local shul, followed by a reception at a catering hall. Roger and I both attended, accompanied by Sergeant Cantor. We tried to blend in by wearing yarmulkes, but we stuck out like three sore thumbs, this despite the fact that I am Jewish. I did concede to wearing a business suit, which probably made me look even more awkward. Sergeant Cantor pretended he didn’t know me.
“I like the suit,” he told me. “You look like a hit man for the local Hadassah.”
Gorin didn’t show at the shul; we hoped he’d make it to the reception. We split up at the catering hall, mingling and eating some food that was so good it made me regret I wasn’t more in touch with my Jewish roots. Roger, completely forgetting he was undercover in a yarmulke, exclaimed with surprise, “This shit’s great!”
Gorin didn’t show at the reception either. It was time to do the tedious part of detective work.
We interviewed the ex-wife again to see if she remembered anything else she could tell us. No luck. While the ex-wife was obviously on our side, we couldn’t be sure about Mom, figuring her natural instinct was likely to be to protect her boy. But when we talked to the super of her building, he told us basically the same thing she had: Gorin had stopped by to see his mother but not lately.
Roger and I canvassed the neighbors next. Most were helpful to the extent that people who don’t really want to get involved with the police are helpful. Most denied ever seeing Gorin. Those who admitted observing him around the building were vague about time and frequency.
We sat on the building for a few days, hoping to get lucky. No Gorin. We returned in the early evening to talk to those neighbors we’d missed during the day. We got lucky, at least as far as finding a woman who said she’d seen Gorin and was willing to go the extra mile to help us. She was single, around thirty-five, and seemed to have taken a fancy to Roger, which was probably why she agreed to keep an eye out for Gorin and write down his license plate number should she see him again. We also alerted the 44th Precinct detective squad to be on the lookout for Gorin. I had twenty pictures of the fugitive printed and had them delivered to the 44th detectives and the A/C unit.
Three days later, bingo!
The female neighbor had seen Gorin briefly the day before getting into a car in front of the building, and she wrote down the plate number. I ran the plate, which gave us the address of an apartment building on Shore Road in Long Beach, which was right over the New York City line in Nassau County, a continuation of Rockaway Beach in Queens. The car wasn’t in Gorin’s name, and since it hadn’t been reported stolen, we figured he had borrowed it. The owner’s name was Audrey Glazer, whom we located by tracking down the real estate agent who managed the apartment building. She lived in apartment 5L. She was clean—no criminal record.
Roger and I staked out Audrey Glazer’s building the next day for a few hours. We didn’t see Gorin, so we decided to talk to the super, who was cooperative. He told us that Glazer had been a tenant for a while, kept to herself, and worked during the day, though he didn’t know where or at what. He also recognized a picture of our fugitive, saying that he had begun living with Glazer recently. He added, “Oh, yeah! He’s got a dog as big as a fucking Buick. I think it’s a German shepherd … really big. Don’t look too friendly neither. He don’t go nowhere without that dog.”
Great.
“Either of them home?” Roger asked.
The super shook his head. “After she leaves for work in the morning, he goes out … with the dog. Sometimes he’s gone for days.”
“You know the dog’s name?” I asked. We might have to calm the animal after we collared Gorin.
“Don’t know, man. Never asked him. He don’t seem like the friendly type. You know what I mean?”
“Listen,” I said to the super, after giving a conspiratorial nod to Roger, “we need to get into Glazer’s apartment. Urgent police business.” We had no right to enter the apartment without a warrant, but I doubted the super knew that. He didn’t and handed over a master key without comment.
I opened the door to apartment 5L after knocking and receiving no answer. I made enough noise, assuming that if the dog decided to sleep in that day, he’d hear me. No dog. Audrey Glazer’s one-bedroom apartment overlooked the ocean. It was neat and clean. We went into the bedroom and found men’s clothing in the closet. Under the bed was an unlocked attaché case that contained two revolvers, a few boxes of ammunition, and a ski mask. After a brief discussion, Roger and I decided to leave everything in place. We would have had a tough time explaining how we came into possession of the case and its contents, since we had no right to be in the apartment. After making sure we left everything exactly as we found it, we drove back to the Bronx to confer with Sergeant Cantor.
* * *
Sergeant Cantor, Roger, and I held the strategy meeting in Cantor’s office.
We were dealing with a state-certified crazy escaped felon who had sworn never to go back to prison or be taken alive. A lot of cons say that, but in this case we felt Gorin meant it. At six foot four, 250 pounds, and likely armed, he could be major trouble if we didn’t take him right. If we fucked this up, we might have a major war on our hands.
We agreed that busting into the Shore Road apartment would be a mistake, primarily because we didn’t know if Gorin was going to be there and because cornering him didn’t seem like the smart thing to do. Audrey Glazer might wind up a hostage; even if Gorin was alone, the situation might degenerate into a nasty standoff. It was April, and the weather was getting balmy after a long, hard winter, so we decided to keep canvassing the area. We figured we’d get him walking his dog.
“I’ll notify the Nassau County cops and the Long Beach PD,” Roger said. It was protocol to advise the local police if you were going to be working on their turf. Both departments had jurisdiction in Long Beach.
“Not a good idea,” Sergeant Cantor said. “They’ll need to know why we’re going to be there, and we’ll be obligated to tell them. You think they’ll leave us alone?”
Cantor was right. The local cops would not only want to be there when the arrest went down, they might want to take command and lock up Gorin themselves. After all the work we’d done, that wasn’t going to happen. Additionally, given Gorin’s status as an insane fugitive with no desire to go back to the can and given that he was likely heavily armed, the cops would want an overwhelming presence in the area. Gorin might be a lunatic, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d be on heightened alert and would spot a large number of police officers no matter how dressed down they were. Like cops, criminals, particularly those who are looking at numerous years behind bars, have sharp observational skills.
“Let’s sit on the Shore Road address tomorrow, see what happens,” Cantor said. He got the necessary permissions from Bronx Area to venture into Nassau County, even though we’d been working there for a while already. We needed the job’s okay to cover ourselves when we nabbed Gorin.
* * *
Spring doesn’t last long in New York. It always seems to come and go in less than a week, and then the humidity wraps us up until September.
The three of us were sitting up the block from the Shore Road building waiting for Gorin to materialize. About 150 feet to our right, the boardwalk was crowded with people taking advantage of the weather, strolling casually and gazing at the ocean. We heard the surf and could smell the salt water. If we weren’t there on intensified alert, I would’ve called it a relaxing day.
Then I spotted Gorin, and I didn’t have to be a supersleuth to see him: he towered over most of the pedestrians on the boardwalk. I elbowed Sergeant Cantor, who was seated next to me in the front seat, then pointed to the boardwalk. Cortes perked up.
Gorin was wearing a black leather jacket and jeans. His right hand was in his jacket pocket and his left held a leash, at the end of which was a very big German shepherd. The super wasn’t kidding about this dog’s size. We watched Gorin for a while. He seemed to have no interest in the dog; all his attention was focused on the people around him. We knew this wasn’t a good sign. We all thought the same thing: he’s holding a gun in the jacket pocket.
Cantor said, “We should spread out, approach him from three different sides. Ready?”
Roger and I said “yep” simultaneously, and the three of us exited the car.
There had to be over a hundred people in Gorin’s immediate vicinity, which was good for our concealment but bad if things went poorly. If he indeed had a gun, there could be collateral damage.
We split up: Sergeant Cantor increased his pace to get in front of the target, Roger went left, and I went right. As we walked, we kept narrowing the distance between us and Gorin. When we were within about five feet of him, we drew our guns and Cantor whirled to face him. As soon as Cantor did that, we all yelled, “Police, don’t move!”
I caught Gorin’s right hand in a death grip before he could take anything out of his pocket and stuck my revolver in his ear. Roger did the same to his other ear. Cantor jammed his gun in Gorin’s mouth, and the three of us forced him to the ground with enough power to take down a water buffalo. And the Hound from Hell? He sat down and watched his master being arrested. Maybe my tattoos scared him
Pedestrians started screaming and running away from us.
Gorin was grunting from the knockdown but otherwise remained silent. I reached into his pocket and extracted a fully loaded .357 revolver containing hollow-point ammunition. He was also carrying loose rounds for reloading. The three of us hustled the fugitive into our car and drove back to the apartment, where we recovered the attaché case, ski mask, and guns still inside. The pooch went docilely with other cops to a local pound. Then we headed back to the Five-Two. Gorin took his right to remain silent seriously; he didn’t utter a word.
Now that we had Gorin, we had to figure out what to do with him. He was eventually handed over to the FBI under the For Other Agency (FOA) policy, meaning the arresting officer simply handed over the prisoner to another agency for prosecution.
Special Agent Corliss of the FBI, astonished that we nabbed Gorin, was very generous with his praise. The special agent in charge of the New York office would send a congratulatory letter to the police commissioner, which would go into our personnel files (commendatory letters are a big plus when being considered for promotion).
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) had me fly down to Virginia to testify against the person, a cabdriver, who bought the guns for Gorin—known as a straw buyer. A straw buyer is someone who legally purchases firearms for the purposes of reselling them to an unauthorized buyer. The ATF agents treated me well, putting me up at the best hotel in the area and taking me to some great restaurants.
In the end, Gorin went back to prison, which he said he would never do. He had the time he still owed for the bank robbery, plus the extra six years for the escape and a few more for the guns. The woman who harbored him while he was on the run, Audrey Glazer, wasn’t prosecuted because it couldn’t be proven that she knew Gorin was a wanted fugitive. Gorin will be well into his seventies by the time he gets out of prison, if he gets out.