WE WALKED OVER TO FOP HEADQUARTERS ON A FRIGID, WIND-WHIPPED AFTERNOON IN LATE FEBRUARY. A UNION SECRETARY DIRECTED US TO A HALL, no fancier than a grade school gymnasium, where the FOP held parties and fund-raisers for families of fallen officers. Rows of folding chairs sat before a stage. Reporters from every news outlet in the city filed in. Barbara and I took seats up front. We exchanged polite, nervous chatter with the Inky reporter seated next to us. FOP president John McNesby took to the podium. A semicircle of fifteen plainclothes cops lined up behind McNesby. They stood shoulder to shoulder, arms crossed, glaring at us.
Bring it on, I thought.
“At a time when we’re burying police officers at an alarming rate,” McNesby began, “we have a newspaper that on the same day—the same day—we’re laying one of our fallen heroes to rest, is persecuting another officer for frivolous, mindless, baseless allegations.”
McNesby was a former narcotics cop who had worked with Jeff. With his square head, rotund body, and triple-thick turkey neck, McNesby was a city icon. He was famous for his inappropriate, politically incorrect rants, which reporters considered a gift, a pinch of hot sauce to spice up an otherwise bland story.
McNesby swore that the FOP would “go to the wall” to defend Jeff. The attack turned personal. “You have to remember, you’re dealing with a confidential informant here. A confidential informant in the city of Philadelphia is one step above a Daily News reporter.”
The snarky remark drew laughter and applause from the roomful of cops. I could feel my cheeks redden in anger. I crossed my legs and began to furiously pump my foot. I was having a Napoleonic moment. I envisioned pulling all of McNesby’s search warrants. He better watch it, or we’ll investigate his fat ass, I thought.
Next came Bochetto’s turn on the podium. He handed out copies of the binder compiled by his private investigator. The binder, Bochetto promised, offered proof that Jeff had rented the house to Sonia, not Benny. How was Jeff to know that Benny had struck up a romantic relationship with Sonia? The argument was so stupid that I bit the inside of my cheek to stifle a snicker.
The supremely confident Bochetto was spooling out a barn burner. He began to pontificate: Naturally Benny was scared. The guy set up scores of dangerous drug dealers who wouldn’t hesitate to kill him. “His life was in danger and in order to save himself, he made up this fanciful story . . . that Jeff Cujdik made up all the facts in the affidavits and that it couldn’t possibly be him. Why? To save his own skin!”
Bellowing from the podium with the fire of a preacher, Bochetto claimed he had warned Barbara and me, weeks ago, that to print Jeff’s name would put the cop and his family in danger, and we’d responded, “That’s not our concern.” It was like pouring gasoline on a flame; a disapproving gasp rippled from one cop to the next. I wanted to jump out of my seat and scream, as if it were the Salem witch trials, “He’s lying!”
Bochetto said he’d been preparing a lawsuit against the Daily News when the company filed for bankruptcy protection. Now he wasn’t sure if a suit would be feasible. The press conference, he said, would serve to put an end to the hysteria generated by a newspaper desperate to stave off its extinction.
McNesby and Bochetto vilified us for almost fifty minutes. The moment they finished, TV news crews swung around and trained their video cameras on Barbara and me. They trailed us out of the building; they needed b-roll of our stricken faces for the evening newscast. Two radio reporters and the Inky’s Joseph Slobodzian, whom reporters called Joe Slo because they couldn’t pronounce his name, asked us for comment. Barbara and I didn’t know what to do.
“Maybe you should call Michael Days for comment,” I said.
Never before had the FOP orchestrated a press conference specifically to single out and intimidate individual reporters. The attack was unprecedented, and Michael Days, a journalist for more than thirty years, knew it. Looking back, he wished he’d sent another reporter, instead of Barbara and me, and fretted that he’d inadvertently subjected us to a public flogging.
Now he worried about our safety. Police officers were anguished and their emotions volatile over the deaths of so many of their brethren, and Michael feared they’d misplace their anger.
Philly cops and the Daily News had a long-standing adversarial relationship. To us, “the People Paper” wasn’t just a slogan; it was a journalistic doctrine. That meant we didn’t just regurgitate the police version of a controversial story, like a police shooting. We hit the streets to get the neighborhood’s account.
Michael knew the Tainted Justice series would forge an even wider divide between the newspaper and the police department. But he didn’t waver.
Michael, at fifty-five, had a glossy bald head and a compact, athletic build. He favored steel-gray suits, paired with a bold-colored tie and crisp shirt. He scanned the paper early every morning and tore out stories he liked, scribbling words of praise on Post-it notes. Denise Gallo trotted across the room in her sensible pumps and slipped the Mike-agrams into our mailboxes. Michael was so generous with accolades that sometimes we wanted to ask, Did you really like it? Or are you just being nice?
At news meetings he listened intently, his right palm pressed against his cheek, as editors describe the day’s top stories. He never raised his voice. He wasn’t the type of boss people feared. When he disapproved of something one of his editors said, he’d drop his chin to his chest and tilt his head to the side. He’d raise his brows and widen his eyes with a fixed stare.
“Oh reeeeally now,” he’d say slowly, probably thinking, C’mon, are you for real?
And when something tickled him, he let out a loud, contagious chuckle that made his body shake so hard that he gripped his tie to keep it from swaying back and forth.
Michael became the first black editor in Daily News history in 2005. He loved stories that thrust the bullhorn into the hands of the little guys, people on the fringes who felt neglected, even punted to the curb, by the city’s power elite. Michael understood the struggles of row-house people because he was one. He and his younger sister grew up in a hard-bitten part of North Philly with their mom, who didn’t have a high school diploma and worked long hours making salads at the stately and grand Ben Franklin Hotel.
His mom, a strict, no-nonsense woman who stressed education, wouldn’t allow Michael to use the word can’t. She enrolled him in Catholic school, even though they were Baptists, because she believed public schools weren’t good enough. They rarely ate in restaurants, didn’t have money for a car, and his mom didn’t have one credit card, but once a year, she took them to see Santa Claus at the Wanamaker Building, where they ate lunch in the elegant Crystal Tea Room with hand-carved columns, intricate crystal chandeliers, and crisp table linens.
Michael came of age when the civil rights movement was in full throttle. In 1967 Thurgood Marshall became the first black Supreme Court justice, but out on the streets, police were using tear gas, whips, and clubs to subdue civil rights marchers. Michael was a high school sophomore when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He boiled with anger.
In 1991 Michael and his wife did something few couples would even consider: they adopted four brothers, between the ages of four and nine, who had bounced from foster home to foster home. The boys had deep emotional scars from being born to a drug-addicted mom and a father they didn’t know. Michael and his wife soon learned the youngest was autistic.
At home and at work, Michael dutifully played the role of quiet guardian. Barbara and I never doubted he would defend us. The quote he provided for the FOP story was so Michael—succinct and definitive:
“The stories are accurate and we will defend our reports and our reporters.”